Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Day One

Hello, "my friends". Props to my college schoolmate and new facebook friend Alex for inspiring me to start blogging on this historic day of November 4th, 2008. You can thank me or curse me later, Alex.

I have a long day of CNN watching in front of me, and their coverage of polling problems raises an interesting question: if we're the greatest democracy in the history of the world, why can't we get it together for our national elections? Is it too much to ask that we have a uniform ratio of polling booths to registered voters in every state? How about a standardized ballot form, and the same type of voting machine everywhere? The outgoing Presidential administration has waged an astronomically expensive war in Iraq since March of 2003, ostensibly to spread democracy (at least the third rationale, after exacting revenge for Saddam's nonexistant involvement in 9/11, and to uncover his nonexistant WMD's). But how are we supposed to spread democracy overseas when our own democracy's election process hasn't been perfected? How is a Presidential election in Baghdad supposed to go off without a hitch, when we can't even pull it off properly in Florida and Ohio?

Surely this is something we can all agree on. And as American citizens, we can make our voice heard. Come on, as a nation we managed more than 97 million votes for the last American Idol finale, surely we can make our voices heard on this too?

Below are links that you can use to contact your representative in the House of Representatives, and your Senator. You don't have to know his/her name, the site will help you. Encourage your Senator and Representative to sponsor a bill that will standardize Federal elections. If we're the greatest democracy in the history of the world, why don't we start acting like it?

Here are those links:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

http://www.senate.gov/

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me. Don't worry, it won't be this serious every time you stop by. I'll blab about entertainment and pop culture sometimes too. I'm good at that, ask anybody.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It was only a matter of time. This should be good.

You are of course correct, sir. Every time I go to the Massachusetts polls at Birchland Park Middle School and have to fill in the oval with my black marker I am reminded of those awful days of standardized tests CATs, SATs, the Otis Lennon IQ test etc. And I miss the days of walking around the corner to the community room at the nearby Jersey City Marion Gardens Projects, where I would go behind the magic curtain and pull those cool levers. Oh well, at least we don't have chads.

I want to know why some states have early voting. It strikes me as kind of fishy.