The American election might have come and gone, but not before an interesting piece of news came to our attention-- a Microsoft Surface tablet found use as a voting machine in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Part of a test by electronic balloting company Democracy Live, the tablet runs "LiveBallot," a cloud-based browser application built the Microsoft Windows Azure platform.
LiveBallot allows voters to access, mark and print a ballot, before printing out results for counting by a separate machine.
The Surface makes something of a change in the world of voting machines, many of which are older machines running on 486x processors. The tablet even has built-in screen reading capability, while USB support allows sip-and-puff input devices for disabled voters.
Due to security concerns, the Surface was not used as an actual voting machine-- but the test might be something of a glimpse of the future, at least when it comes to the democratic process.