Pardon the Quiet

Just waiting on the storm...

The Green and Libertarian Parties (called the "Glibs" by Mr. Olbermann) announced on Monday that it was able to raise the $150,000 necessary to get their recount in Ohio. Nader is getting his recount in New Hampshire. The General Accounting Office is expected to respond by the end of the week about the calls from members of Congress to investigate the multitude of issues and errors with the way the voting has been run in several states (even those where the overall results aren't in question).

In short, it is, to me, the equivalent of a tie score in the Super Bowl with only 1 second left on the clock and one team lined up for a 54yd field goal to win the game. It has me on the edge of my seat, focused, and too nervous to say anything. Well...OK...I am posting here, but you get the point.

Since I'd feel ashamed to post so little, I'll add this: all of the confirmed e-voting errors show you how little regard those running the system have for getting an accurate account of your vote. It, also, shows how ignorant YOU, the American people, are of exactly how little the system cares to make sure your vote counts.

How else can you explain NC finding out...OOPS...that computer couldn't hold the 4500 votes that were recorded on it, leading to a crash that lost ALL of the votes? How else can you explain insufficient testing done to catch little things like machines that recorded negative vote tallies? Or the lack of testing that missed it being possible that a machine in Ohio could give Bush 3900 votes more than he got on a machine that recorded 658 votes?

Maybe even a little care in making sure we truly have a representative government on all levels could have been exhibited by training Florida election volunteers a little better on the maintenance and calibration of the touch screen machines used there? For Pete's sake, they resorted to wet wipes and pencil erasers to try to get the right vote recorded. For the record, much like the popular gag video that had been passed around the weeks before the election...many people tried to select KERRY but found BUSH selected on their screen...sometimes having to repeate the process 11 times to have the machine get it right. They say "user error"...but where there's smoke, there's fire (as in a problem with the machine, not necessarily a conspiracy at work).

Go ahead...Google some of my examples if you think they're sound far-fetched (search option supplied at the top of the page)...or e-mail me and if a few people ask, I will Google and post links to newspaper articles that give every detail your heart desires.