Your Thoughts Exactly

Well, I guess you'd have to say that went about as well as the Democrats could have hoped. I'd like to say I'm happy that they pulled it off, but like I said it my last post, it was the Dems election to lose; so relief is the more appropriate word choice.

But I couldn't help thinking while watching election coverage that it was all so very depresssing. It wasn't that I didn't vote (that debate is over, I hope), it wasn't that it seemed that the Senate was going to stay Republican. What depressed me was knowing that none of the results we saw were 100% correct. It was a crappy, sickening, feeling back in 2000 whenever we heard about election problems in Miami-Dade, but it was even worse when we heard about them again in Ohio (and other places) in 2004. At least in 2000 we thought it was innocent mistakes, not voter disenfranchisement and fraud in 2004.

Now, most people are probably thinking that the vote went pretty smoothly; they didn't hear about any problems. That's true. Just like in 2004, I think that the general voting spirit of the American people was accurately represented. But in 2000, when we're talking about percentages of less than .1%, and when the winner of the popular vote loses the election, it's hard to really get an accurate feel for what the general voting spirit of the public was. Nobody cares if a few votes get misplaced in a landslide, but when one county in the entire nation can decide an election, it gets a little more important.

That there were reports of incompetence at the voting booths is not especially surprising. E-voting machines failed, memory cards were lost, ballots misplaced. People make mistakes, and elections probably won't be any different. But when there seems to be no commitment to the cause (and I think the cause is accurate and fair elections), and when "pretty good" seems to be around 98% accurate for our elections, shouldn't this be cause for concern? When the margin of error trumps the actual margin of victory, what's the point of counting at all?

I've never voted, but this isn't me trying to point out the futility of our actions and the very existence of humanity. I'm trying to say simply that for those that CARE about elections, where the vote and the participation in democracy is important, doesn't it bother you that a man can go into a voting booth, destroy the voting machine after he gets angry (this did happen) and invalidate everyone (ok, no, just their votes) who voted in that booth before him?

I don't know. Maybe 98% is pretty good, and flipping a coin for those close races is ok. But I doubt that what people think when they go to the polling places is "I'm participating in our government- that is, if I'm not denied a ballot, my ballot gets read correctly/vote gets recorded properly on this not-at-all-secure voting machine, manages to not get deleted/misplaced by apparently incompetent voting officials!" (whose average age is 72, by the way). Not that old people are incompetent; they just don't necessarily "get technology", "listen to directions", "know what they're talking about", or "care about life". Ok, that was unnecessary.

But you get my point. I think that for most of these elections, the public got what they wanted. Maybe that's a product of gerrymandering. Maybe it's because they reached consensus. But it isn't because everyone who voted got their say in the matter. Are we going to see a repeat of 2000 in 2008? I think it's certainly possible.

But our saving grace is that it doesn't really matter as much anymore. No, I'm not being nihilistic. Time magazine's latest headline is "Why the Center is the Place to Be" I'm sure they got the idea from my Unity post. After all, we are tasked with telling people how to think. But it really does represent what the elections should represent: more than choosing a person or candidate, but rather values and a direction. That's why people didn't really migrate to Canada in masses after 2004. The US isn't so simple as to be controlled by one person, even by the purported most powerful buffoon on the planet. Sure, we got pissed off, but we continued on with our lives, because progress doesn't stop (or start) with one party or person; it happens in spite of setbacks, it happens in spite of idiocy, and sometimes it doesn't despite good intentions. To end with a great quote:

"One step forward and two steps back: nobody gets too far like that. Unless you're walking backwards, in which case you'd be moving at half speed."

The battle cry for the '00 decade!