Author: cdymek

Well, it’s nearly three in the morning and I’m signing off, as we wait to see if we’re in for another extended mess. Some news organizations are calling Ohio, others aren’t. The poll workers of Iowa have decided that there are mechanical problems and they’re tired, so they’ll finish up the counting sometime tomorrow. And neither candidate has that magic 270 number in the electoral college. Maybe by the time everyone reads this we’ll have a resolution. If not, there will be plenty more for the news organizations to talk about for a few more weeks.

Long story short, I’m tired like an Iowan poll worker.

I received a number of responses (ok, two, but that’s more than most entries generate) to my idea for revamping the election process. In fairness, Nicole told me about President Match, which identifies the candidate who best matches your position based on your answers to a series of questions about what policies/ideas you favor/oppose.

And no, I didn’t know about this site before I made my recommendation. But I still stand by my idea.

In a few hours, the first polls will open. Millions of people, going about their regular daily lives, will take a few minutes out of their day to record a mark in favor of a set of candidates. Those marks will be tallied, the score will be announced, and a leader will be chosen for the next four years. Someone who, for all intents and purposes, will serve as leader of the free world. And this will take place, with relatively little corruption, with relatively little violence. What in the end is decided will stand.

Despite who wins, the very process astounds me.

I’m going to propose a new voting process, at least for Presidential elections, but eventually to be phased in for all elections.

I recently read a survey from Tennessee that indicate that most voters could not correctly match the candidates with their policy perscriptions. As a result, it’s become clear to me that voters are not actually voting for candidates that they necessarily agree with, and for policies that they may not support. This strikes me as a major failing of democracy. After all, the candidate is less important than the policies that candidate plans to implement.

Therefore, all future ballots should eliminate the actual names of the candidates/policies. Instead, voters will now use a matrix to indicate their favorite issues, such as abortion, gun control, tax cuts, the balanced budget, the war on terrorism, etc., and their position on the issue (i.e. for or against). This will lead to a number between 0 and 100. Where the two candidates positions on an issue are measurabley similar, the issue will not be counted in the final tally, in order to provide us solely with contrasts. Each candidate, in the end, will be based at each end of the spectrum, and whomever has more ballots closer to his/her position based on the distribution wins the election.

This will enable us to move closer to voting on what really matters, the issues.

I have made my decision in the upcoming election fairly clear to anyone who has asked me anything about the election. I’m not shy about stating who I’m planning to vote for or why. But the recent allegations around al Qaaqaa, and the attempted spin by the White House to deny their own responsibility in the matter is simply galling. More info on the Fox spin attempts are available here.

The timeline, as I understand it is relatively well-established, although it may be necessary to wade through multiple stories to see the full picture.

The IAEA had more than 350 metric tonnes of explosives under seal in Iraq, which they monitored over a several year period leading up to the US invasion. These explosives were considered dual-use items, with both non-military (and more specifically, non-WMD) and military purposes. Prior to the invasion, the IAEA pulled out its staff, although they made one last check to ensure that the weapons remained in place under seal up to a week before the invasion. The IAEA also informed the US about the weapons under seal there, and in fact, this had been included in Colin Powell’s UN presentation prior the commencement of the war. Long and short, the US was AWARE of the contents of the facility, meaning ignorance was not an excuse.

On April 3rd to April 4th, US forces passed through al Qaaqaa, but no attempts were made to secure the facility. Some testing was done to attempt to identify if chemical weapons were present, but only more “run-of-the-mill” explosives were found. Offhand reports indicate that the seals were still intact, although no thorough accounting of the inventory was done, to the best of the public’s knowledge.

On April 10th, additional US forces passed through the facility, but again no attempt was made to secure the facility, nor was a thorough accounting of the explosives made at this time. In fact, no real search was carried out, and one of the commanders has publically admitted that to have secured the facility would have required four times the number of troops provided. Additional evidence indicates that the explosives were under seal as late as April 18th, 2003.

Sometime after this, the explosives went missing. Once the Bush Administration was the de facto head of the Iraqi state. And, as far as anyone has admitted publically, no significant effort was made to locate or secure the explosives.

What’s more, the US-run government in Iraq received warning about the missing explosives long before the loss of the explosives was reported to the IAEA. And yet they either informed no one in the White House or no one in the White House card until the Iraqi government informed the IAEA directly, which triggered a process of its own. Furthermore, there was in fact pressure on the Iraqis to not even report the incident at all.

The loss of the explosives is disturbing, as they could be anywhere now, in just about anyone’s hands. But this simply didn’t have to be the case. The Bush Administration KNEW that the weapons were there. They knew before the invasion, they knew during the invasion, and they knew after the invasion. And they did absolutely nothing about it. Until mid-October, 2004, a year and a half later, when the cat was finally let out of the bag. And the weapons had long since vanished.

How anyone could vote for an administration this incompetent is beyond me.

Presidential Election Day is my Superbowl, my World Series. Every election season I follow the candidates, the policies, the spin, the punditry. I read the commentary, listen to the spin, wade through the policy wonks. And it all comes down to the first Tuesday of November. Months of following candidates and their campaigns either suceeds or fails.

I’m tingling in anticipation. Just five more days.

“Florida voters should have complete confidence in the voter systems we’re using, and for Congressman Wexler to try to erode the voter confidence or put doubt in the voter’s mind does a real disservice to the voters of Florida,” Hood spokeswoman Jenny Nash said.

Why? Isn’t it in our best interests for people to raise issues when there’s a concern? Isn’t that how we move forward?