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Election time is coming and once again, it is time to talk chaos.

Not of the political system, which is beyond repair, but of the voting process.

Every cycle we seem to return to the same absurd problem…ballots and machines designed to make voting easy but that have the opposite effect.

One year it was the infamous butterfly ballot in which 23,000 people claimed to have either punched the wrong hole or a second one in an attempt to undo their initial choice.  Another year it was the hanging chad, a snippet of paper that was neither counted or uncounted.  Perplexing instructions, confusing layouts, missing ballots, faulty machines…you would think designing a way to record votes was the most complex challenge of all time.  We sent men to the moon, designed Hoover Dam, yet we cannot seem to record votes.

Clearly we need a national system that can be used equally everywhere in the country and that takes advantage of the digital reality of the rest of our lives.  Pipedream?  Not really since there actually is such a system already in place.  It works smoothly, fairly, efficiently, accurately, and nationally.  It is instant, cheap, and familiar to everyone.  No one complains about it.  Everyone trusts that it is accurate.  It is even fun.

I’m talking about the state lotteries.

Why not use the lottery machines for voting?

Once every four years, for a twenty-four hour period, we turn the lottery machines throughout the country over to the election process.  Lottery machines in each state are tied to central computers that instantly tally the numbers.  The machines are accurate and trustworthy; have you ever heard of anyone complaining that the machine printed out the wrong numbers?  Or mistakenly awarded them millions? 

In addition, you immediately get a receipt that you can check.  And the machines are simple to use...all you have to do is fill in the boxes for your choices and hand the card to the clerk who inserts it into the reader.  The machines instantly reject any card that is improperly filled out.

There are other advantages to using lottery machines too.  They are located in retail areas where people tend to go anyway, not in churches and schools off the beaten path.  Granted, this might lead to long lines on election day, but no more than we already have at voting locations and certainly no longer than the lines for mega-jackpots, which no one seems to mind waiting on.

Details would have to be added like an ID for each voter to prevent fraud and a one-time use ticket.  Other than that, it is the exact same process that everyone uses to play for a fortune and with little confusion.  Anyone without access to such a machine could mail their card in, just as they do now.

Improve the system, simplify the process, guarantee the results, cost next to nothing, and be available right away…not bad as a design solution.  Come to think of it, we could increase voter turnout substantially by combining the vote with a national lottery. 

Kill two birds...vote and win.

Naturally there will be people who think this approach taints our election process and demeans voting by associating it with gambling.  As though the two are not already the same.  Besides, voting and gambling are simply two different ways of tabulating data.  Right now one works pretty well and the other is a national disaster.  Chaos, as the theorists tell us, is a fact of life in the universe and we have to learn to live with it.

But that does not mean we have to vote for it.