More electoral craziness

As I am celebrating Obama’s victory, I have to reflect on a few more completely crazy things related to voting in USA.

Let’s start with this. MSN page leads to the article with the following quote (the article keeps changing so I’m not linking):

Obama reached the 270 electoral votes he needed for election at 11 p.m. ET, when NBC News projected that he would win California, Washington and Oregon.

Apparently after this McCain phoned Obama to congratulate him. But wait, “NBC News projected”? What does NBC news have to do with projecting election results?!? Shouldn’t that come from oh, someone like say government?!?

OK, let’s assume that statement above is just MSN nonsense and this info did come from the government. However, Obama was proclaimed victor before Alaskan voting stations closed!

Shouldn’t that be like illegal?!? I mean, imagine yourself getting ready to vote in Alaska, checking out news and seeing that Obama already won… would you still go to vote? No, you wouldn’t.

Some fine folks in Alaska got stripped of their right to vote, I say. It should be forbidden to release any results, even start counting until everyone has voted. Period.

Of course, nobody cares much about poor Alaska which has only 3 electoral votes.
(and you wouldn’t vote if you were say a Democrat in a state like Oklahoma or Wyoming because you knew that all electoral votes will go to Republicans anyway)

And don’t get me started on having to register to vote. Last time I voted was in damn Croatia and what they did is simply send every citizen mail saying “this is where and when you vote”. End of story.

OK, I let out some steam… now back to celebrations!

Your vote counts… maybe

Or maybe not! All thanks to this Electoral College mess.

I was just looking up early presidential election results on this fine MSNBC site and here’s what I saw:

At first look you would say – hey, Obama’s kicking McCain’s ass (103 vs. 58)!!! But then if you look at actual number of votes, McCain actually has more votes! WTF!!!

For anyone that remembers Bush vs. Gore elections, you know that Bush won with less votes. In fact, Gore received about half a million more votes than Bush. I mean, really… In today’s USA does it really matter if you’re voting as citizen in WA (11 electoral votes) or TX (34 electoral votes).
Just give every citizen one equal vote, damn it!

To make things worse, look up Wikipedia and you’ll see that the origins of this system are with German kings and nobles and some Christian elections (doh!). You will also find this amazing quote:

Electors are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be President, but in practice pledge to vote for specific candidates and voters cast ballots for favored presidential and vice presidential candidates by voting for correspondingly pledged electors.

Wow (a very very bad wow).

If I ever become a dictator in some third world country please remind me to change voting system to this electoral college nonsense, and give places that I have a strong grip on most electoral votes.

Then I will be able to say things like this: “I see you guys voted 99% against me – too bad you only have 3 electoral votes. These other guys that voted 51% for me (so 49% against) have 20, and all those votes go for me. Muhahahahaha!”

What democracy?!!

BTW, as I was typing this the image has changed. You think it got better? What BS!

I voted! 2008

That silly exclamation mark in the title comes from the sticker wifey and I got today after voting (couldn’t find the exact same image online to use here).

Both of us voted for Obama for president, of course. Man, do we need a change in this country! And Obama possesses charisma and smarts than we haven’t seen since Jimmy Carter for sure, possibly even since late John F. Kennedy.
Let’s hope he wins and brings us the change we need.

Note for our good Trinidadian friends: it is done.

As far as state of WA goes I also voted for Chris Gregoire as our governor (easy choice), and for congress I voted for Darcy Burner. To be honest I know very little about Darcy (though I do know she’s an ex-MSFT employee!) and close to nothing about her opponent. But someone that opposes Darcy sent tens of pamphlets to our mailbox, all explaining how terrible she is and what a trouble-maker she would be in congress.

Oh, really? Well, Darcy’s opponents – thanks to you I cast my vote FOR Darcy, and you people should get a life and learn some honesty, instead of spending all that time and money on silly smear campaigns.

 

And now – fingers crossed! Go Obama!