I Have Voted

In part because New Mexico was one of the states investigated in 2004 by the BBC for voting and registration irregularities I drove the three hour round trip to my county seat to vote early.

I drove through the ranch land dominated by McCain/Palin signs on fences to vote for Obama. I had two Democratic candidates I wanted to support and one I decidedly wanted to vote against. I wanted my vote to count. I did not want problems on election day and have to cast a provisional ballot.

I am a registered Democrat but mostly because in this state the Democrats seem to have more people running in the primaries to vote for. If the Republicans have one for every office in the primaries they are doing well. In my youth I even was on the staff of a Republican Senator who was working to end the war in Vietnam. I vote issues and people. Not parties.

Well, until this whole Red State/Blue State crap. I wore blue to vote but I refuse to be so branded. And I think we need serious reform with the Electoral College. States should be able to divide their electors on the basis of percentage of vote. We can divide our Senators and our Congressmen. I voted for Democratic Senator Udall. He has been my US Representative for a good many years and I like his approach to issues and his response to his constituency. His vacated congressional seat is being hotly contested. I don't like the Democrat Lujan or the Republican so I voted Independent. I don't think he has a snowball's chance in the Bahamas but at least I can say I did not vote and am not responsible for either of the other two.

I wish there had been, like on the multiple choice tests of college, a "none of the above" option. There were a couple instances when I would have opted for that. As it was I chose to not vote for a couple choices merely because I wanted it known that I did not approve of any choice offered me.

If either party learns anything from this election it should be that we do not like the electoral college as it stands today. I makes it so possible, as in 2000, for a person not liked by the majority of the people to be made president, and it leads to sharp divisions at a time when we should unite to solve our problems. And negative campaigning just makes it harder and harder to come together after the election.

If the parties are not going to work together for reform on elections, the electoral college, and campaign financing then we need to start a movement for a Constitutional Convention to change it ourselves.

From the Bottom Up

Obama won in North Carolina last night and won by a big margin. And in Indiana he came within 2% points of carrying that state. Just when some of us were counting him out.

And not just him. We were also counting any chance of real change in this country. I personally was counting out the United States because if we don't change I personally think we are done. What the last seven years has done to our economy, our respect in the world, our military, our freedoms, our democracy and most importantly the hope of the citizens of our country was frankly looking like a death blow. Too many people had tuned out of the process that once made this country great. And for me the most hopeful sign of the two primaries last night was the record number of voters that turned out to vote.

Joan Baez toward the end of the long and difficult fight against the war in Vietnam decided to step out of the public eye. Our ballad singer for peace was leaving us. And she said in one interview that she had come to believe that it was not the surfer on the crest of the wave that could change the direction the wave was taking but the molecules of water within the base of the wave. And they are doing just that in this election.

The least of us is contributing to Barack's campaign for change. And the little voters that once said they did not matter (with lots of evidence to back that up given the last two presidential election debacles) came out to cast a vote.

And the polls are saying they do not like the sound bytes that had become the way to win an election. The ratings on the various presidential debates which CNN, ABC, Facebook and others mounted was significant. The American people care about the issues, not the terms like Flip Flopper and Up or Down Vote. They are tired of a dictatorship for idiots and want to change the direction the wave is going.

We want a country where the least of us count. Hillary says she has proved she can will the big states. As a citizen of a small state I find that offensive. We are electing someone to be a president of all the states. California, New York, Ohio and Florida have stolen our voice too many times. There are fifty states and we deserve to be counted. If we cannot change this process through the primaries that are being run this year then we need a movement for a constitutional convention to change the election process.

And only the people can call for a constitutional convention. It takes petitions to get it on the ballot of as many of the states as possible. And then we have to vote for it. If our elected officials will not address issues like shortening the election process, setting some real limits on the money so someone cannot buy a presidency, and take a long hard look at the electoral college then we the people. Those little molecules of water need to take control of the direction this country is heading.

Let this be the last election where we are fighting so hard not just for a candidate we can believe in but for the very idea of democracy and one person, one vote that counts. Not to the highest bidder goes the highest office.