Down to the final hours

The CNN countdown to election clock just reported 2 days, 10 hours, and 50 minutes until the polls close on yet another election for President of the United States. We are all suffering election fatigue. Nothing new there. Some of us were tired of this months ago.

Now the post traumatic stress disorder kicks in. Having had the last two presidential elections stolen caused a lot of PTSD among the voters.

I remember in the closing hours of the 2000 election praising the citizens of the United States for not rioting in the streets over that. Any third world nation would have and the UN would have sent in peace keepers. In 2004 while the BBC was alleging irregularities that the US press were only barely covering I thought maybe it was not a good thing there was no rioting in the streets. If they try to pull this this again I am personally going to be in the streets leading the riots until I am arrested and hauled off to Gitmo.

That said I do hope all works smoothly and in the spirit of democracy which GW Bush gives a lot of lip service to even if he has the tendency to undermine it here on our shores. I hope he does not allow a terrorist attack (or encourage one) to sway the election. I hope nobody tries to assassinate either candidate despite the inflammatory rhetoric being tossed around by McCain/Palin. I hope that there are no last minute major highway renovations in heavily Democratic precincts. Or that any new registrations have gotten lost by Republican administrations.

We still do have computerized voting machines with no paper trails that can be reprogrammed with a cellphone in the parking lot of some major precincts. But we have Federal attorneys lined up for calls on Tuesday should there be any voting irregularities. And I do believe we have gotten rid of all hanging chads.

In some areas which suffered some major issues in 2000 and 2004 the early voting has been up to 60% of the registered voters. These people do not want their opportunity to vote yanked away from them as in the past. And yet my friend in a neighboring community reports that his friends think the election is so in the bag they do not have to take the time to vote. Shame!

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone that could vote did vote? If we surpassed that 1/3 we usually hover around because we truly believe nobody counts them anyway. Went all the way up to the 60% they are projecting for this election and into that rare space of above 75% of registered voters. How historic would that be?

But I just want an honest count. I want the United States to reclaim its reputation (sorely damaged in the last two presidential elections) of being a model of voting propriety.

Voting Fraud?

In the 2004 election New Mexico was one of the three states investigated by the BBC for voting fraud.

We have always rather excelled at the graveyard vote but this was different. We had those computerized voting machines with no paper trail and evidently a large number of those voting somehow missed voting for President. And then it was shown that with a cell phone votes could be changed from the parking lot.

New Mexico, under the leadership of Governor Bill Richardson changed over to paper ballots in the 2006 election. We were one of the first. Ohio still hasn't fully transferred back to polling with a paper trail. Nor has Florida I understand.

But irregularities at the polling places was not the only irregularity. Here in New Mexico a Republican organization in 2004 made a major drive to register voters. Seems they only registered Republican voters. And when those that thought they had registered Democrat showed up at the polls there was no record of their registration. They were allowed to cast provisional ballots but when no verification of their registration showed up the ballots were not counted.

So a couple months back someone professing to be from the Democratic Party called to ask if I wanted a mail in ballot. They would have one sent to me if I did. They said I could still take the mail in ballot to the polling place on the actual election day if I chose to do that.

My friends choosing to mail in their ballots have all received them. Once said the deadline for returning them was November 4th. I started to wonder about the information I had received over the phone so I called the Secretary of State Office. And she said that no way would I be allowed to vote on the day of the election if I was sent a mail in ballot. She referred me to the Colfax County Clerk who was very helpful. She checked the computer records and no request for a mail in ballot was made in my name. And I would have had to sign the form.

So my choices now are early voting an hour and a half from here or wait to the actual day. But there is something strange about that too. In the dozen years I have lived here we have always voted at the Community Center. They have changed it to the Angel Fire Courthouse - Clerk's office which is considerably smaller and which would require we all stand outside to wait to vote. This in November and with a far heavier than turnout expected.

So next week I am taking a day and driving to the County Clerk's office in Raton to vote. I really do not trust the process after GW cheated his way into office twice. So I am willing to go the extra miles and take the extra time to avoid being excluded from the process.

Paranoid? Maybe.