Hey, if it works for newborns . . .
A San Francisco attorney says that after a touch-screen voting machine he was using froze and gave him the "red screen of death," a poll worker lifted the machine from behind and slapped it hard on its backside. The machine reportedly came to life and rebooted.
Attorney Kevin Ho describes how when he arrived to his California polling place yesterday to vote in the primary, workers offered him a "paper or plastic" option -- paper being the optical-scan machine that uses paper ballots, and plastic being a touch-screen voting machine.
Being the tactile geek he is -- Ho has apparently become addicted to touching since buying an iPhone -- he opted for the plastic. (Although California banned the use of touch-screen voting machines last August, precincts provide one touch-screen machine for voters with disabilities.)
Ho says that after he inserted a card into the Sequoia voting machine, rather than displaying a ballot, the screen went red.
"Nothing moved--neither touching nor talking to the machine worked," he writes. "What's worse, the card was now stuck in the machine as there was no eject button or function."
A poll worker was confounded, but after a brief consultation with a fellow medical professional, lifted the machine's rear and whacked it.
All was well after that and mother and machine are now doing fine.
Photo: Kevin Ho (snapped with his iPhone while the machine rebooted)