Exercising My Rights

Tonight we cast our ballots for the general election, using absentee ballots. It was a pretty straight-up decision for me for most of the races and propositions. But far more important for me was using a paper ballot. I do not trust the machines, and this article published yesterday just reinforces my belief that we need to fix voting procedures in this country. As I type this, there's a Washington Post article being published in tomorrow morning's paper about potential voting problems in the upcoming election. There's possibly ten states that are anticipated to potentially have problems come November 7 and beyond. Maryland is one of the states listed, and that's troubling given the problems they had in their recent primary. It's not comforting when you think about what happened in Maryland happening in at least nine other states, just over two weeks from now (yes, Election Day is just two weeks off!).

The press has been asleep at the wheel for the most part, and politicians are either taking advantage of this (see: Florida 2000, Ohio 2004), or they've actually been worried enough to advise people to vote absentee. This Editor & Publisher article discusses whether the press has been proactive enough in covering voting problems. For a good overview of some of the problems with Diebold et al, go to the excellent site Black Box Voting. It'll scare you, but at least you'll be more informed-- which to my mind is good. An informed citizenry is a responsible citizenry.

For my part, I'm leery about using any machines that don't have paper trails. I'm just glad that California will be allowing anyone who asks for a paper ballot on November 7 to receive one. Still, I think I'll skip the rush and vote now. If you're registered to vote, then VOTE! If you're not registered, then don't plan to complain to me a year from now how lousy our government is.