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How nice of Michelle Benson to be thinking of us old folks as we hunt the mastodons and woolly mammoths with our stone axes and flint-tipped arrows! (“Medical info shouldn’t be kept behind QR code,” Strib Voices, Aug. 29.) As I was saying to my neighbor Oorg-makak, next cave over but one, “We really need someone to understand that we have no grasp whatsoever of modern methods of encoding data. And gosh! I sure need more paper to throw at the saber-toothed squirrels.”
Seriously, I do not need any more hard copies of the incredibly dense and poorly written information supplied by the pharmaceutical manufacturers. I write as a technical writer with 40 years’ experience. Most of what is in the information is overly technical for the consumer and even for the experts. And does Benson truly believe that the manufacturers send boxes and boxes of paper to be handed out by the pharmacies? Of course not! The pharmacies print most of these pages when they fill the prescription from bulk containers. Only the boxed medicines (read: “high-priced”) have the paper inside, typically in a font that is only barely big enough to read if you don’t have eye problems. (Reading glasses are two aisles over.)
Speaking as one of the troglodytes Benson is allegedly trying to help, please don’t. I would rather scan a QR code and read the drug information on my tablet than to toss away more paper. The pharmacies, I’m sure, would rather cut their paper and printer expenses. The trash and recycling companies would like to have less waste paper to deal with. And I would really like to have people like Benson stop thinking that I’m preliterate and too technologically challenged to live without a keeper simply because I was born before smartphones existed.
Daniel Beckfield, New Brighton
VOTING
Confusion is not necessarily malicious
I’ve been an election judge for the last six years and have noticed that young voters don’t always know where to vote. Our election laws are rooted in the idea that voters are living in more or less stable residences and have an emotional attachment to the city they live in, an assumption that doesn’t always apply to voters in their late teens and 20s. Some examples:
- A college freshman living in the dorms at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In November, this student will be only six months removed from high school. Their driver’s license will have their parents’ address, possibly in another state. Emotionally they’re still attached to family and friends back home. They know the mayor of their hometown, but have no idea who is best suited to run the city of Minneapolis. Their inclination is to get an absentee ballot and vote in the hometown election rather than the Minneapolis election. Are they doing the right thing, or could someone twist this into election fraud?
- Someone taking a gap year. They spent most of the year in a national park in Wyoming, including Election Day, but traveled some and expect to move, somewhere, for the winter. Where do they vote?
- Someone who spent a year in Montana, another in Texas. Did some traveling and lived abroad as a member of the Peace Corps, then lived with their parents in Wisconsin. They’ve been living in the Twin Cities for six months and will be here for the election, but after that, not so sure. Their driver’s license is still from Wisconsin and it has their parents’ address, but they haven’t lived there for five years, except for a couple of months last year.
These are stories about how election law can be confusing to young, mobile people, but also about the effect of election laws that take into account only a resident’s current address. It also touches on accusations of election fraud where a young person votes where they are emotionally attached rather than where they live. It’s an innocent mistake, but one ripe for exploitation.
