I'm Calling BS on Voting

I see the usual finger-pointing cases of voter registration fraud are starting to pop up all over the place; something I've always scoffed at, thinking well, you can register a fish to vote, but it doesn't mean he's gonna walk into the booth and vote. Unscrupulous? Yes. Meaningful? I doubt it. Matt Yglesias words it best here: "...what’s always missing from these allegations of voter fraud is instances of fraudulent votes being cast."

But for the next three weeks we'll see outrage, indignation et al. But to me, isn't the bigger story that after the last two clusterfuck elections, we're still in the exact same place when it comes to registering people and then counting votes? After the embarrassment of 2000, apparently nothing's changed; we're basically still using soda machines to vote and witless people to hand count votes. Incredible. We can't go three months without the iPhone getting an upgrade, but voting machines and counters? Nothing?

How come this was never (seemingly, at least) as much of a problem until recently? How come in, say, 1912 we could vote and have votes counted without looking like idiots? Yeah there's a lot more people/votes, but wouldn't the sliding scale of technology at LEAST equal and rise in number of votes?

I'm wondering if there's a REASON the whole voting process has been allowed to stagnate so badly. Is this a case similar to old story of GE having a light bulb that can last forever but they don't sell it cause it would mean less money for them? Or is it like the oil companies, fighting/paying off alternative methods so that they keep being the sole provider (surely I'm not the only person in the world wondering why after 100 years, cars still are powered by the exact same fuel?) It feels like somebody's making tons of money by keeping things as they are. What the fuck.

And remember: you can vote, but you can't tuna fish! Ugh. Wait...