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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Nov. 7th, Cleveland. Diebold impressions.


It actually went pretty well. I showed up at my usual time (8-ish, before work) and was the fourth person in line at a polling station that had 3 new fangled machines. Everyone moved along at a pretty brisk pace and the machines seemed actually easy to operate, even for the elderly and those with vision impairments.

I was rather nervous, making sure that I highlighted the correct selection. I even went back a couple of times to make sure. Then, at the end I again went back to check my previous verification. I think HBO made me a little bit nervous. Attached to my voting machine was a printer (sounded like a dot matrix) that printed out my selection at the very end. This is the only discrepancy I have found between polling stations. Some printers printed out your selection as soon as your choice was made however at our station (or maybe it was just my machine) there was a preview screen that let me go through all my selections and then print out the report page by page.

Regardless, the paper trail alleviated a lot of my unease (of course they could just throw them out at the end of the day) and I feel pretty good about the process as a whole. Now I can't wait to hear the results in the polls as they trickle in.

I love the new "I voted today" sticker. First because it says on it "vote your conscience" which makes me wonder how many people take that to heart but the mere suggestion that a little round sticker can help people make the right choices sort of makes me grin. Then there is "change our world". Indeed. Change it indeed. We need change, progress, solutions. We are going to need them more then ever in the near future. Lastly there is an image of the earth in the background. This seems partisan to me but since I am a treehugger I really don't mind. I suppose if it was partisan then there are stickers out there with dollar bills on it too.

I wonder if the average American thinks about their midterm election decision and how it affects the entire world? I wonder how many people even noticed that the earth was on their little sticker?

Oh well, it is done. Over with. Fini. Time to start gearing up for the next one.

# posted by Dru McKeown @ 12:21 PM
Comments:
The new stickers? Not so good.
# posted by Anonymous Kevin : 2:18 PM, November 07, 2006
 
While I agree that there is a possibility that there could be some sort of evangelical message I want to point out that it seems highly likely that without any sort of context the message "vote your conscience" only means what is says and that the idea of one voting what their deepest desire is isn't necessarily a bad idea.

Look, I am not one to really slam on people’s religious beliefs. I was raised one way and believe another and won’t get into an argument about whose god can beat up whose god. The important thing (to me) is that people make a choice that they can actually live with and if resorting to a catch phrase that may have been used by a group that does not adhere to your particular belief makes you uncomfortable, then you have to be ready to live with that.

People are raised to follow a certain religious creed, and if you want to argue about the affects of environment versus genetic response to social events then I will admit this isn’t the forum I will get into it over. Seek me out a bar in Lakewood otherwise I don’t have the time.

I do appreciate the response and hope that anyone that goes through the effort of looking at this also appreciates it. Discussion and conversation, of a reasonable sort, allow ideas to actually evolve into positive actions and I am all about that.

Thank you, Kevin for pointing this out. I personally don’t believe that it should affect anyone I do believe that people should be aware of religious/political groups attempting in any way to insert their message into public forum. I am all about separation of church and state as long as state does not impose it’s will on church. People (with a capital “P”) do need an outlet for continuing group discussion and exploration of the unknown and I will never be on comfortable with stepping into those boundaries with anything that could be construed as a definitive answer.

If you think this is dancing (around an issue) you should see me on “hip hop” night.
# posted by Blogger Dru McKeown : 12:32 AM, November 08, 2006
 
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