Why do I vote?
For the amount of time I invest in caring about an election day, I figure there are thousands of people out there voting that just do not give a damn or know about who or what they are voting for. If they bother to show up at all. So why bother?
Reason No. 1: Idiot neutralization. See above.
Reason No. 2: Moral Superiority. I vote, therefore I am better than those that don't. Those who intentionally don't vote to make a statement are excempt from this rule.
Reason No. 3: Distrust of Government - The less important the election seems, the more chance you will end up screwed. That's where they hide all the local tax initiatives.
My strategy for voting would be a very long post. Let's just say I work hard to promote deadlock.
Reason No. 1: Idiot neutralization. See above.
Reason No. 2: Moral Superiority. I vote, therefore I am better than those that don't. Those who intentionally don't vote to make a statement are excempt from this rule.
Reason No. 3: Distrust of Government - The less important the election seems, the more chance you will end up screwed. That's where they hide all the local tax initiatives.
My strategy for voting would be a very long post. Let's just say I work hard to promote deadlock.
posted by Ed C:\> at 5:34 PM
3 Comments:
Once again with this election, the paranoid have been proven right. Over 70 memory cards went missing, containing an unknown number of cast votes. I'm no stranger to technology, and yet my machine failed three times and cancelled my ballot all three of those times.
I spoke with a few election workers, and they said that in several of the machines, the "paper trail" meant to assuage such concerns was non-existent. The printers in several machines didn't have any ink. If the Supreme Court intervened in Bush v. Gore because the recount would have disenfranchised some voters (that was their stated reasoning), will they intervene in the mid-term elections when cards go missing again or votes mysteriously disappear? Not to mention the chaos that will ensue in November here in Ohio when they plan to ID everyone who shows up to vote at the polls...
You confuse incompetence with some kind of evil plot. The fact that you were able to re-vote 3 times tells me that they made sure to make yours count.
This is new technology, and it is going to have problems. The issue is whether there was any race close enough to where these votes would have made a difference. Much as I'd love to, I can't really claim that Dennis Kucinich is in office because of a disenfranchised sanity vote.
Well, they recovered all but five of the cards apparently. But, there is still no way to ensure that these machines are recording the votes properly, and there shouldn't be an excessive amount of room in the design to encourage incompetence or malfeasance. My point is that these machines are poorly designed, have poor security, etc. At least with the paper ballots you could check it and know that it reads what you wrote or punched, etc. (same with Scantron-style machines... yeah the punchcards sucked, but are these better?)
And there are a few races where the results seem a bit off. For instance, in one race the absentee ballots that came in ranked the candidates in the reverse order that they (the winner got 15 absentees, where the loser got 200 or something).
For more wacky cases from the Diebold files, read the Conyers report about the 2004 presidential election. I think I may vote absentee in the future just to know my vote actually counts.
Post a Comment
<< Home