Politics:

"Two nations, under Bush - very divisible...
with liberty and justice for only a chosen few."

Wow - that sums it all up, n'est pas? A week after the fiasco of 2004 I am still reeling from the realization that a significant proportion of American voters are so ignorant, and so immoral, that they could vote for more dishonesty, violence, inequality, arrogance, jingoism, hatred, theocracy, and destruction of the environment and the economy.

I keep hearing the fallacious argument that this election was all about "moral values" and "conservative values." That is utter bull feathers! To begin with, this election was all about fear, war, and greed; and wether each voter feels safer with Bush in office than they think they would with Kerry in office. The fact that roughly half of the voters who bothered to turn up feel safer with Bush is shocking, but can easily be fixed with education.

David Brooks says it pretty well in his November 6th Op-Ed artile in the New York Times: "The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's policy, not fundamentalism." According to that often poorly quoted Pew Research Center poll, there was NOT a large shift in the number of American's who based their vote on "values" (itself an ambiguous as phrased in the question). That roughly 20% of voters claim to vote on values should surprise no one who has been paying attention in America, it has been that way for a long time.

The really shocking facts are that so many Americans can believe that Bush's policies make them safer, that so many cannot clearly state the differences between Iraq and Iran or the differences between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, that so many cannot see that unregulated free market capitolism is what is destroying the single bread-winner family of the 1950s.

The whole "moral values" argument is offensive because it is being used as a cop out by so many progressives and liberals. Any voter who really has moral values will value human life and dignity, honesty, equal opportunity for all, social justice, economic justice, and religious tolerance. These moral values are what really make America a great place. Education is the way out of ignorance.

Politics:

There are a lot of people who argue that the election was stolen via the electronic machines. There are a lot of people who say that is a myth. Wether you subscribe to the theory that the election was stolen or not, two facts remain absolutely imperical:

1) people do NOT trust the paperless electronic voting machines, and for that reason alone the process needs to be fixed. The website verifiedvoting.org has great technical ideas for the fixes, which are truely non-partisan.

2) Roughly half the country supports the agenda of the GOP, and roughly half the country does not. This is NOT a mandate, it is a split decision. Something needs to be done to get the two sides talking to each other and thinking about compromise and agreement points.

Politics:

As of 7:12am Eastern, only 112,596,922 votes are counted...

That seems a little low to me. It would indicate an increase of 10% over the 2000 election, but that is less of an increase than I expected with the massive voter turnout and registration efforts.

Additionally, I find it hard to believe that just over 50 million Americans voted for Bush in 2000; and much harder to believe that all the same people did again, plus TWO THIRDS of new voters!

This makes absolutely no sense at all. I smell a rat.

Best to concede the election, let the GOP take the blame for all the problems of this decade, but count and recount every state. I am sure we will find shenanegans. It is time to fix the election process, for real.

How is it that the electronic precincts are still having trouble reporting?

Politics; 31 Minutes:

At 7:09 this morning, my wife and I got into line outside Evergreen Precinct's Polling Place at Mountain View Elementary School in Haymarket, Virginia. It is the first election we have voted in where the line at Mountain View extended outside. As usual, there were campaigners from both the Republican and Democratic parties outside the school pushing their own versions of example ballots. Interestingly, the gerrymandering has been so obscene in Virginia since the 2000 Census, that campaign workers don't even seem to be aware of which precincts are able to vote on which U.S. Congressional races, as there were signs for Ken Longmyer outside he school and he's running in a district (11) that no one voting at the precinct can vote in (we are in district 10).

A short distance outside the door to the school (perhaps 20 feet) was a sign saying that beyond this point no campaigning or exchanging of example ballots was allowed.

At 7:16 we stepped inside the school, still in line (7 minutes outside is not so bad).

At 7:30 we stepped into the school's gymnasium, the traditional polling place room. At this poing I could see that Evergreen Precinct had 5 mechanical lever machines and two electronic touch screen machines. The mechanical machines had old fashioned curtains for privacy from the knees up, and the touch screens had view blockers that were effected to the sides and top, but people in the line to give their names could clearly see how the touch screen users were voting over the voter's shoulders.

At 7:34 I gave my voter registration card to the two poll workers working my section of the alphabet, and they asked me to state my full name and address. They gave me a card, and I got into the line for an available machine.

At 7:35 my wife went to vote at the next open machine, which happened to be a touch screen. At 7:36 I voted at the next open machine, which happened to be a mechanical lever machine.

At 7:40 we were back in the car, having only spent 31 minutes actually voting, and without any sort of harassment. Of course, neither of us is sure our votes will be counted correctly, but that has been the case for many, many years.

For the record, we only had four choices:

• Yes or No votes on two Virginia Constitutional amendments (one of which was a deliberate attempt to fear-monger).
  
• Pick the electors for one of four party slates for President (Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Constitution).
  
• Pick the U.S. Congressman for the 10th district from James Socas or Frank Wolf.
  

Politics:

Two things really shock me:
1) There are, according to the highly suspect election results of 2000, roughly 50 million voters who thought that George W. Bush and his administration was their best choice in 2000. That baffles me. Even worse, according to the polls - a lot of those ~50 million STILL think that Bush is the best choice. That astounds me - we've got four years of his record, how can anyone vote for more of the same?

Alone, that first thing is appalling, but acceptable - because it looks like there will be over 120 million voters this year, and simple math means that Kerry will get a big win of the popular vote; except....

2) Elections for national offices, are determined by laws in 50 independent states, and they do not comply with any reasonable standards to guarantee integrity. The simple fact is that no one who votes on either the legacy (ancient) "Automatic Voting Machines" (the old lever mechanical beasts), or newfangled "Touch Screen" electronic voting machines will absolutely know that their own vote was counted correctly, unless there is also a printed copy of the ballot, that the voter can see but not touch, that stays in the polling place in a recount box. The sad truth is that most states using AVM or Touch Screen voting will have no such voting trail; and I am fully confident that ESNS, Sequoia, and Diebolt will deliberately mis-count the votes in those machines where a paper recount is impossible.

The bad news: The system is already hijacked.

The good news: it has been for many years, and we the people will not tolerate that hijacking anymore, and slowly (far too slowly) election systems will be forced, by public scrutiny and demand, to become more and more transparent to the voters. Elections will only get to be more and more fair.

No matter who wins tomorrow - we need to battle, in each state legislature - for verified voting. Preferably for plain old paper and pencil ballots (they are cheaper), but at least for verified paper trails on all automatic machines (mechanical and electronic) - paper trails that stay in the polling box (to avoid extortion scenarios) and paper trails that are manually counted in at least 0.5% of all precincts every election, randomly chosen.

Furthermore, we need to fight in each state legislature, to switch from the traditional, simple, un-democratic, least-of-all-evils "Pluralistic" voting, to any of the following voting systems, all of which are better: 1) Instant Runoff Voting, 2) Borda voting, or 3) Concordet (though that mandates expensive electronic systems). All three are better at sorting out the people's combined choices when there are more than two choices. In 2000 in would have left people free to vote for Nader, Gore, and Bush last - and Gore would have won with a wider margin than he had.

Ballots should not list the candidate's party affiliation, and multiple candidates from each party should be allowed (this opens up areas where on party totally dominates, and prevents ignorant voters from easily sweeping one party behind a single well known name).

Any counting software used in tallying the vote absolutely must be source code visible. Public review of the counting software must be available to any voting citizen, to prevent even the illusion that there is improper counting.

We ought to at least have a good national discussion of the Electoral College and whether it is still useful. It was meant to protect small states, from larger states in a loose federation of largely independent states. The American Civil War ended any pretense of the loose federation, and cemented this country with a strong central government. Why not at least make the election of national offices (President, U.S. Senate, and U.S. Congress) subject to national election rules? Why should I as a Virginia resident, have to accept Wyoming votes as superior to my own and Florida election practices as trusted as my own? It is time to at least standardize election practices for nationally held offices, and discuss the possibility of amending the electoral college to be more even, if not drop it all together.

It is enough to make me seriously consider running for Virginia State Assmbly seat 013 (the seat I am living in) in the 2005 elections... but that would mean a change of jobs and careers, at least temporarily.