Windows

Earlier this week, a woman went door to door in our neighborhood, talking about a proposed project that sounded like it would make the large (1/3 of a block) round plaza near us much more attractive and interesting.

There was a short window of time to vote for it, so we went today, curious about why there would be a vote for a single project. Yes or no? Turns out there were four different projects, and residents of Atlántida could vote for one. We got there with our IDs, waited for several people before us, then learned we needed a utility bill to prove our residence – last two lines of the blue part of the handout above, which I had simply spaced out. Simple: walk next door to ANTEL and ask for a free duplicado of our most recent phone bill.

I’ve only cast a vote once before in Uruguay, required because of country land ownership. That election was for the head of BPS, the social security system, if I recall. It involved going to the local high school, handwritten various this-and-that, taking an envelope into a room where I could privately chose and insert the “voting paper” for the candidate of my choice. Turns out there was exactly one candidate. I probably could have put it in torn in half, maybe negating my vote (fascinating subject BTW; I will have to return to it at some point), but eh: it was done.

Today was similar. The friendly lady behind the desk took my cédula (ID card), handed me a little slip of paper with four projects: our “Plaza Alondra” (which turns out means “lark,” as in the bird; I’d never heard it had a name before), a school sports facility, and two others I could neither figure out or particularly care about.

Then take a brown envelope out of the box in front of me, put my voting slip in it, tear off the end for her to register. The one I chose was fallado because it had no preprinted number. So I chose another, and all was good. After my other details, she entered the envelope number, then asked my age (why? Because for this election, you have to be over 14 to vote!), and handed me a blue envelope, into which to put the brown envelope. The blue envelope said something about “observed vote.” That then had to be folded in half to fit into the slot in the cardboard box, almost bulging full.

The process took several minutes per person, really laughably inefficient. But then I thought about voting in the Untied Snakes: here, a verified count and real recount is possible. There, it’s all as fictional as Disney World (to get a fascinating glimpse into the mechanism of electronic vote rigging in the Untied Snakes, check out this video: Fraction Magic).

So, several minutes of standing there waiting, watching a nearby unused computer display a generic screen saver for…

… Windows XP. Hang on here — didn’t support for Windows XP absolutely end a couple years ago? If networked, isn’t this computer susceptible to all kinds of hacking?

I didn’t think to angle the camera down, where, on the other side of the counter in front of us, were bound handwritten ledgers three inches thick. We both commented on how old they seemed. Who knows what’s in them, but chances are they won’t be hacked.

I wrote 5+ years ago about the Uruguayan education system and computers. I expect in 5-10 years you won’t see handwritten ledgers. I hope you also won’t see antiquated operating systems as well.

But I also expect then that, the amusement at the idea of handwritten ledgers will be accompanied by a nostalgia for a time when information was at least a little difficult to retrieve.