VOTING SITCH

Even though I'm still elated about the Democratic (big and little d) victory last night, I think it needs to be said that we have to fix our voting system. The issues raised by Black Box Voting and the "Hacking Democracy" documentary still need to be addressed.

Private companies managing the most important element of our democracy--i.e., the franchise--is unacceptable. If nothing else, Diebold and the other companies must be forced to allow their proprietary software to be open to vigorous scrutiny by the people who are paying good money to use it.

Because '08 will be here before we know it, and we can't have the kinds of things that happened this time happening then--or any time. Not that I think we lucked out this time. We obviously overwhelmed any diabolical scheme about vote rigging with sheer numbers. But until we make election days national holidays, we can't always count on overwhelming numbers. But we should always be able to count on the reliability of the vote-taking and especially the vote-counting.

I should point out, though, that my voting experinece on a Diebold touch screen machine (with paper trail!) couldn't have gone more smoothly--no glitches, no flipping, no discrepancies between onscreen display and printout. But still...

FINGERS CROSSED!

Oh please oh please oh please oh please...the Dems have got to win!

Let us note that most polls, even those of Fox News, show that the Dems are on the upswing and expected to take back control of either (if not both) houses of Congress.

So when the elections are stolen by the black boxes, we will know that the will of the people has been subverted. Gotta vote, to be sure, but also gotta be sure that the votes are counted accurately...

There's a lot I want to get to, but my son's been sick for a few days now and everything's hectic. Since he's been sick, he's laid on the couch watching a lot of TV and we enjoy watching "Avatar: The Last Airbender." I always thought it was stupid before, but now I think it's completely awesome.

Come to think of it, if I think I'll really hate something without even giving it a fair try, that likely means that I'll actually be really into it once I give the thing in question a good try. Kind of like when people get way into gay-bashing, a la Ted Haggard--they're gay themselves.

And I just wanted to say--thank you, Mike Jones. As a friend of mine said this morning, I hope a rich celebrity with a big gay fanbase is helping you with whatever legal hassles the 'Pubes may try to throw your way (Barb? Liza? Brad Pitt?)...