How Safe Is Our Democracy with E-voting?

No hanging chads, but many security issues

by Jack Scharff, Editor, Professional Services Journal 

The presidential election is finally over. Hopefully, you made your choice and voted. 

But what if your vote was lost or changed? Is that possible? Unfortunately, yes! 

In the 2006 Robin Williams movie, Man of the Year, a comedian is erroneously elected president due to a computer glitch in a national touchscreen voting system. Far-fetched? Unfortunately, not!

E-voting ... Nitpickers ... Focus ... Economical effects

Now that the election is over, was your vote counted? I was saddened to learn the state of e-voting. How could we allow that to happen? Oversight is necessary in just about everything.

Closer to home, Mary Hanna's column celebrates nitpicking and whether typos can hurt a company's reputation.

I hope you're still paying attention, as we have some great experts chiming in on how to work with short attention spans. Did you tune out again? I hope not because a reader wants to know what you're doing to deal with this ugly economy.

This newsletter must be valuable to you; otherwise, we're not doing our jobs. How can we better serve you? For completing our survey, we enter your name into a drawing for a pair of Garmin Rino 100 MP3 GPS. Happy reading — Jack

A Day for Nitpickers

"Always site (oops … cite) your sources"

by Mary Hanna

I've done it. My fingers type one thing while my brain thinks another. Maybe I type "you're" instead of "your" or "when" instead of "went." I know the difference. Really. Do you think less of me for one typo? Is it fair?

If this kind of thing ever happens to you, you may enjoy hearing about Mary Hanna's experience in which she listens to a speaker who has authored over 20 books. His handout shows, "Always site your sources." Does this ruin his credibility? Or will you forgive one typo? The speaker cleverly saves himself. Do you do the same when a client or manager catches your mistake? Or do you own up to it?