Like many voters, I walked into my polling place today with high level of skepticism - would my vote count?  First, in Fairfax County, VA we vote on paperless electronic machines.  Who knows what happens?

A common problem for voters is their name missing from the voters list.  My name was there, but my son (also Edwin) had voted absentee - and they had checked off my name as voting already.  After multiple back and forths, and confusion about our names that was finally resolved by the chief election officer, I voted - after proclaiming that "I ain't voting no provisional ballot."

My problem was minor and fairly easily resolved. But what if I was someone else -- not a middle-class white guy in a polling place populated with people like me -- and the pollworkers had not started with the presumption that I was telling the truth?  We know that pollworkers react differently to different voters and the result is often the a discouraged voter or a provisional ballot that is never counted.