syn. worried, bothered, stressed
From a New York Times editorial:
Electronic voting proved to be, as critics warned, a problem. There is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale. But this country should have elections in which the public has no reason to worry whether every vote was counted properly, and we're still not there. In Franklin County, Ohio, one precinct reported nearly 4,000 votes for President Bush, although the precinct had fewer than 800 voters. In Broward County, Florida election officials noticed that when the absentee ballots were being tabulated, the vote totals began to go down instead of up. Voters in several states reported that when they selected John Kerry, it turned into a vote for President Bush.
These problems were all detected and fixed, but there is no way of knowing how many other machine malfunctions did not come to light, since most machines do not have a reliable way of double-checking for errors. When a precinct mistakenly adds nearly 4,000 votes to a candidate's total, it is likely to be noticed, but smaller inaccuracies may not be. There is also no way to be sure that the nightmare scenario of electronic voting critics did not occur: votes surreptitiously shifted from one candidate to another inside the machines, by secret software.
In his editorial, the author urges with increasing concern that the American people must take notice of the faults in our voting system in order to improve them for future elections. While there were no major blunders, he cites examples of cities where miscalculations were made to prove that his concerns are genuine. He also describes the scenario of electronic voting as a “nightmare” in order to evoke fear that machines, and not the people of the United States, are controlling this election.
“About Those Election Results.” The New York Times. 14 Nov. 2004. 15 Nov.
2004 < http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/opinion/14sun1.html >