Polling Place Declares Code Maroon After Voting Machine ‘Just Needs to Be Turned Off and On Again,’ Technicians Confirm

MILLERS GROVE — Election officials at Precinct 7 declared a “Code Maroon” at 6:42 a.m. Tuesday after voting machine No. 4 displayed a blinking cursor, emitted a sound witnesses described as “a sigh in robot,” and declined to accept a single ballot.

“We performed the full diagnostic protocol,” said Dale Krenwick, the precinct’s Deputy Assistant Voting Machine Whisperer, a title he gave himself in 2019 and which the county has declined to dispute. “Step one: tap the side. Step two: tap the side with feeling. Step three: turn it off and on again. We are currently on step three, attempt eleven.”

The machine, a touchscreen unit purchased during the county’s ambitious 2008 “Computers Are the Future” initiative, has been in service for eighteen years and is held together, according to maintenance logs, by “two (2) rubber bands and municipal pride.”

Voters in line were philosophical. “The machine’s older than my marriage,” said Carol Dempsey, 61, who arrived at 6:15 a.m. and had memorized the sample ballot. “Honestly, it owes us nothing.”

County Clerk Wanda Brill confirmed that Code Maroon is the county’s third-highest alert level, ranking below Code Burgundy (printer out of toner) and above Code Taupe (someone brought a casserole). “Code Maroon means the machine is thinking,” Brill said. “We respect the machine’s process.”

By 9:30 a.m., technicians had rebooted the unit fourteen times, at which point it accepted a ballot, printed a receipt reading “THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE,” and immediately returned to its blinking cursor. “A breakthrough,” said Krenwick. “We are documenting everything in triplicate, as the law requires and as my anxiety demands.”

The county is now considering a “machine feelings log,” in which technicians record each unit’s mood hourly on a scale from “cooperative” to “blinking.” Krenwick has proposed an “emotional support reboot schedule” — rebooting every thirty minutes, quote, “whether it needs it or not, as a wellness practice.” The state elections office has requested a copy of the log “for reasons we cannot disclose.” Meanwhile the cardboard-box contingency remains on standby, its label upgraded to read “BALLOTS (PLEASE DO NOT DRAW ON) — SERIOUSLY.”

The state’s voting-machine certification lab has asked Krenwick to write up his “tap the side with feeling” technique as an official procedure. “We’ve seen worse methods,” said lab director Priya Nair. “One county just yells at theirs.” Krenwick has begun the manual. Chapter one is titled “Listening.” Chapter two is titled “Listening, Continued.”

Krenwick’s manual now has a publisher: the county print shop, “between the zoning maps and the parade permits.” Advance praise comes from Nair: “Finally, a technical manual with feelings.” Chapter three is rumored to be titled “The Blinking Cursor: A Meditation.”

The county’s contingency plan — a cardboard box labeled “BALLOTS (PLEASE DO NOT DRAW ON)” — remained on standby as of press time. Officials stressed that democracy was “functioning within normal parameters,” defined by the county as “mostly, eventually.”