Voting

The election is in 2 days and I'm still glued to television political shows. MSNBC is on in the background as I go thru my day. The chatter of the pundits I agree with comforts me and quells my rage at the political system and it's disfunction. Or maybe it stokes me. I don't know.

In one of the segments they showed clips from the Kennedy - Nixon election of 1960 and another clip of the Nixon - Humphrey contest 8 years later in 1968. What I noticed was the tally boards. The 1960 one was a chalk board that they would erase the numbers and write in a new total with chalk. In 1968 it was more like a baseball score board with removable numbers. But both boards held a revelation for me. In 1960 the tally they showed in the clip was about 19 million on each side. In 1968 the tally was 29 million on each side. So the electorate was about 40-60 million voters. The current 2011 census has the population of the USA at 314,165,191. Back in 1960 the population was about 181 million.

So 40-50 years ago to have 40 - 60 million people vote on one day made sense. But now when there are 314 million people in the country it makes no sense to have a single day be the only one for voting. There was an idea put out by a senator that election day should be a holiday so no one has to lose work or money while waiting in long lines. The simpler idea to stop long lines is to have the 2 weeks before the election, weekends included, be open for voting in all states, counties and cities. Early voting would then end on election day. It would give the voters time to get to the polls when they can and not worry about getting fired or being late to work.

There are long lines in Ohio and Florida right now where they are having early voting. There are lines that are 2 to 4 to 6 hours long while people are waiting to vote. They may give up and not vote. Which is a shame. Because in Ohio and Florida voting became harder. This was done by Republican state office holders and taken to the courts to block early voting, purge the voter rolls, and make voting in Democratic strongholds less than in Republican areas. If people get discouraged by how difficult it is to vote, Republicans may win.

What a shitty way for a political party to be. But it only reflects the way they have obstructed the current President. To get him out of office they did nothing to help the country. They think the office of the President is only theirs. Rich white guys. They don't realize that the angry white guys are now outnumbered by people of other colors.

Go vote. Don't let them discourage you from doing your civic duty.