Does Your Vote Count?

The Democratic process is in full swing across the nation, or at least, we hope so. Getting out the vote is the hot topic in the news today, as well it should be. However, some of the reports coming in are a more than just a bit disturbing. Some major issues have been brought to light, such as pencils sitting on the desks of the absentee ballot processors in Iowa. When it was discovered that a writing device made available to the processors could actually interfere with fair processing, the pencils were swiftly removed. The worry there was that an unscrupulous processor could potentially use the pencil to alter ballots. Then the legal battle waging in Ohio, with GOP watchdogs vowing to prevent voters who were registered, as they claim incorrectly, by Democrats, from being permitted to vote.



Quite frankly, whatever party affiliation a citizen subscribes to - that type of 11th hour partisan wrangling and intimidation should outrage all Americans. In Florida, Theresa LaPore, the notorious Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, has come under fire for altering the laws governing the allowable distance from polling places where reporters, campaigners, and non-partisan voter-assistance groups can gather. Should anyone have such power to change laws without any process whatsoever, to serve their own purpose?



In Philadelphia the latest reports tell of a GOP legal action, claiming that four electronic voting machines are suspect, and the 13,000 votes cast in those machines should be thrown out. Huh? Toss out votes? Is that the American way?



Perhaps the most worrisome of all the Election Day revelations is the fact that in most of the states where electronic voting is in widespread use, there is NO PAPER TRAIL.



In the wake of the 2000 election debacle is anyone really comfortable with that? How could there possibly be an accurate recount, should the need arise, without a paper trail? How could there be any argument against it? And doesn't the suggestion that 13,000 votes be nullified in Philadelphia punctuate the need for a paper trail?



Computers have been known to eat information before, and let's face it - they are susceptible to a certain degree of tampering, either via hacking or virus.



At best these partisan tactics are an annoyance; at worst, and it could easily escalate to worst, it disrupts the process utterly. How sad that in this great nation it has come to the point where partisan interference does so much to dishonor our history of democratic elections. It poses the question: Does every vote really count?



The campaign trail absolutely must be followed by an Election Day paper trail, or literally all could be lost.

What do Medusa and Pippi Longstocking Have in Common?

Well their stories are the stuff of legend - Pippi being unnaturally strong, and Medusa being so frightfully hideous that any who look directly at her are forever petrified in stone. They also happen to be the characters my daughter and I chose for our Halloween costumes. She was Pippi, of course, and a winning one: she took First place in a costume contest. I was green with envy (pun fully intended.)



Donning a Medusa costume brought forth an alarming number of people who had no earthly idea what the Medusa character is. So I would explain that she is actually a rather popular character in the Greek mythologies. Which would be met with a blank stare that practically screamed Huh? The whole experience really caused me to wonder how these folks ever managed to graduate high school, let alone college. Two of the clueless are acquaintances of mine and I know for a fact they both attended universities.



Alternately, there were many who immediately recognized Medusa, and commented on the creativity of my costume, but only after they gushed over my adorable Pippi counterpart. My serpent headpiece was a conversation starter and had strangers at a local fair coming up to me specifically to touch my head and see what it was I made the snakes with.



To their credit, a great many children recognized Medusa. That heartened me. I took comfort that at least some of the younger generation were being taught the Greek tales in school, until one little ten-year-old boy looked at me and exclaimed, "Medusa rocks! She's a creature in a lot of games." Be still my heart.



I fear the tales of antiquity shall be told only in excerpts of freshly made-for-gaming plots, and the rich characters stretched so thinly across the cyber-world, that their literary significance will be lost forever.



In the immortal words of the Wicked Witch of the West, "What a world, what a world."