Lots of fucking election shit.

Well, fuck. I've been thinking of venting out my near-violent frustrations over many aspects of our electoral process lately, but didn't get around to it until now. It's about 3 AM, and I've read the news bit linked just below, and it triggered it for me... now I can't stop myself from ranting about all of this.

Okay: On CNN there's the first - of I'm sure to be many - stories regarding voter suppression. This isn't the first article on the issue during this election season, but this is the first major incident they're reporting (to my knowledge): 50,000 Georgians have been purged from the voter rolls.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/26/voter.suppression/index.html

Besides my pet project essay on the electoral college process, the many other ways in which we mis-manage our federal election just drives me fucking insane. How fucking hard is it? Fuck off with the need to verify someone's current address, whether it's the person's most recently registered address, whether the person lives in this or that state, city, whatever. One citizen, one social security number, one fucking vote. DONE. No pre-registration. What, we don't have the technology to make it this simple and straightforward?

One fucking ballot: we need the exact same design, same printing, same names listed, same method of checking off your choice, no matter who or where you are in the country. Not only should a federal election be conducted and orchestrated by the federal government, states simply shouldn't be able to make up their own ballots, using their own designs, and their own list of candidates, creating their own convoluted requirements for getting a name on the ballot, etc. It's a federal fucking election. The other elections to be made on Nov. 4th should be on a different ballot entirely. This has nothing to do with any individual fucking state.

Election Day: The idea that Nov. 4th isn't a national holiday is fucking moronic. People must be fully able to get to the polls, although the new passion for early voting is a great thing to help in this regard (assuming that these votes won't somehow get lost, which is an unsafe assumption). But if you're going to have national holidays, wouldn't it make sense to have one that celebrates democracy, and the actual act of voting, perfectly combining the two? If people want to feel patriotic, how can this not be the perfect fucking holiday? Not only should people have the time needed to vote, but they should have the time to get others to the polls as well; and how many more volunteers would we have helping out at our polling stations if people had the day off? Some polling stations are seriously understaffed, and all kinds of problems ensue (besides the ones that ensue from various voter suppression issues). And wouldn't such a patriotic holiday even help to guilt people into meeting their obligation to vote? Use it or lose it, you fucking fucks.

Not that I can really be that angry at people who don't vote. If you've read my bit on the electoral college and how intensely assinine it is that we still use it, then I needn't say more. But if we're talking about voter suppression, that's what the electoral college is; not just because of my detailed inequity of disproportionate voting power state by state, but because almost every state uses the "winner takes all" system. Using the direct election process, everyone's vote is worth the same (assuming it gets counted in the first place... again, unsafe assumption).

What fucking blows my mind even more, is that this isn't a partisan issue. There's no fucking "red vs. blue" or "us vs. them" for our nation of idiots to spaz over. It's all no-brainer shit, that any fucking fool can understand. And yet, we can't. We're the most mentally inept country on the planet, sometimes, on this and way too many other issues. All I can think of right now is the insanity depicted in Terry Gilliam's classic film, Brazil. Like Sam Lowery, I start to dream of escape from our crushing mediocrity.

And in the end, what makes me even more fucking nuts about all of this is that no matter how well Obama is doing in this election, it doesn't matter how many people want to vote for him. What matters is how many votes are successfully cast and counted. Not only does he have to overcome the loss of hundreds of thousands (or more) votes that the Republican party/operatives will steal or destroy (this is a simple, undeniable fact, that this is a blatant part of their campaign strategy for the last decade), but he - and many of his voters - are also going to be undercut by the hurdles that will be placed in their way on Election Day. Hiring off-duty cops to hang around outside urban polling centers. Greeting people with lists of names, telling them they can't vote, or that they'll even be breaking the law by voting. Telling naive (especially first-time) voters that voting for their district has been pushed back a day. If we thought the past two elections were bad, I think we ain't seen nothing yet. I would so love to be wrong.

Gah.

As for me, I'm not voting for Obama. I'm voting for Bob Barr, Libertarian candidate. I'm so far left of there it's surreal for me to vote for him, but... a third-party candidate that gets 5% or more of the direct election tally qualifies for federal election funding in the future. I figure, if the Libertarian party could actually get some funding, that will help to tear apart the Republican party even more than it has already. It's lame that I've ended up thinking this way, instead of just voting for my candidate of choice, but, hey, I'm in Massachusetts. Obama will win my state. McCain supporters in my state needn't bother ticking off a box for president, since our winner-takes-all system ends up making them worthless. I actually voted for Nader in 2000, for the federal funding issue, but at this point, since we're stuck in our two-party system (and will always be, until our country rips itself apart), I figure weakening the GOP of Bastards is the best we can do.

Lame (fucking lame).

Meh.