I live in Australia, where people vote with pencils, piles of paper, eyeballs, and telephones. Thanks to massively parallel processing we usually know who's going to form the next government by bedtime on election night. The first-past-the-post tallies are invariably known on the night, but the winners are decided by a rather complicated algorithm to avoid the Nader effect, so the closest electorates take weeks to count. The government has to get its legislation passed by the senate, which uses an even more complicated algorithm, and often takes a month to determine.

But it doesn't matter. Really important politics, such as abolishing slavery, liberating women, banning alcohol, or providing public funding for education, happens over decades or centuries. Even on such an immediate issue as building a dam on the Franklin River, political debate took years. Urgent decisions such as going to war would usually be decided the same way by any party that might win an election. Voting machines gain only speed, while only accuracy counts.