Of course, I could participate, but I'd rather just vote and keep these crystal ball gazers in the dark — it's the voting that makes the mark.

Which is not entirely true. The results of these polls get enormous press, which in turn influences how people look at the issues, who they vote for, and whether or not they even bother to vote. The modern poll isn't an innocent reading of what's happening; in the hands of the sophisticated, it's a weapon.

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The ability to take these wide swaths of data and publicize the results depends heavily on technology. The telephone is the usual collection device of choice, while computers add up the responses and calculate the statistics, and the technologies of print, television, radio and the Internet deliver the goods.

Of course, the resultant impact compromises the ability of polling to make an accurate prediction — the moment the polling results appear, the tenor of the crowd changes — once again demonstrating that technology is the silent partner of history. As in this instance . . .

What happened on Election Day 2000 in Florida showed that ballots can be horribly designed, and that technology only made matters worse. I think this is one of the very real reasons why so many people are choosing to vote absentee this time around.

Through what I read and who I speak with, my sense is that an absentee ballot is no longer the poor stepchild of voting in person in a cardboard booth with a funny curtain, hastily assembled from a pre-fab kit.

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Absentee ballots let you take your time filling them out. You can make sure you have entered your votes correctly. You can take the final ballot down and put it in their hands, or place it in the trusty U.S. Mail, for which federal law imposes severe penalties for tampering.

And that's just the beginning of why they're great. We know that absentee ballots get special attention, and are frequently counted by hand. We expect our voting officials to take special care when they count our vote. That is, of course, should they even need to.

To my mind, there is a new sensibility here that runs counter to the faster-cheaper-better frenzy we've been living with for several decades now.. In a case like this, we want things done right — and the people responsible can take their time about it.

No one will be surprised if we all wake up in the morning on November 3rd, and we still don't know who'll be President. That prospect no longer presents itself as unthinkable. I don't think we'll mind if they're spending that time continuing to carefully count all the absentee votes.

But if it's some hornet's nest of technology failures, or teams of lawyers trying to make mountains out of molehills, if it's yet another mess, we Americans will do something about it — that much I know for sure.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.

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