Wednesday, December 06, 2006

What do we do now?

Since Diebold is so damn horrible and absentee ballots are only counted in recounts and close races, the democratic system in America is completely dead, isn't it?

Happy Holidays!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's cheerful, thanks! You're right, though. I am just slack-jawed at how uninterested the Wise of Washington are in electoral reform, investigation of electoral irregularities, etc. They act like voting is somehow incidental to democracy. VOTING IS DEMOCRACY. DEMOCRACY MEANS THAT YOU VOTE AND ALL THE VOTES GET COUNTED. ALL OF THEM!

Anonymous said...

It depends on the state you live in. In oregon, everyone votes absentee. In California 55% of San Francisco voters voted absentee up from 35% a few years ago. Personally, I think everyone should vote absentee (has a paper trail). That way if they steal your ballot, they get in trouble with the the US Postal Service. Don't mess with the Postal Service...they might go...wait for it...postal!

Chuckles said...

That pun deserves pain. Lots of pain.

mdhatter said...

We're paper-based up here in MA. Totally inefficient and 100% hand countable.

Mendacious D said...

In Canada, with a tenth of the population, we hand-count everything. Elections are centrally administered, there are loads of polling stations, and they pretty much stay open as late as necessary.

The fact have a three-to-five-party system that virtually ensures a minority government is not actually a bad thing. It forces cooperation between parties, meaning partisanship is pretty much nonexistent. Just ganging up on whoever's in power. Even the separatist Bloc Quebecois functioned as a stellar opposition party.

Of course, it also means that elections happen somewhat more frequently, like whenever a budget isn't passed. The Senate would do well to take warning of this fact.

Chuckles said...

The paper ballots were working well until Florida in 2000. Even then, had they used legal ballots (butterfly ballots are/were illegal under Florida's state constitution) there were ballots available to be counted. and recounted. The system was fine as long as al laws were followed, so why did we need to fix it?

teh l4m3 said...

Chuckles, we're talking about Florida, a state that has been ruled by Republicans for some years now. It's analagous to the situation with public schools in America: submit them to death by 1,000 cuts over the course of decades, and then come out and say "Ooh, we need to fix the schools -- or maybe just scrap the whole system." Without mentioning, of course, that you were the one who ruined the system in the first place...

Chuckles said...

Life is teh suxxorz.