Z/Web

Regardless of which side of the political line you fall on, you’ve got to admit that voting in this country is messed up. That’s putting it politely. Here we are the most technologically advanced country in the world and we can’t even figure out how to get people to vote electronically? That’s ridiculous. I’d fire the president and every single politician currently in office until that is fixed. Just fix it. No excuses. It’s absurd that we can’t know the count for days, and it’s absurd the incredible hassles we force people to go through to vote. For instance, I drove way out of my way and ended up at the wrong polling place — apparently it’d been changed since the last time I voted. At the new polling place there was no parking. I had to drive around the parking lot until a space opened up. Then there was a long time. Nothing like waiting five or six hours as in some states (ridiculous), but the entire process did take close to forty-five minutes (driving, parking, waiting, voting, etc.). That’s just too long, especially for young people who find it a drag waiting four minutes for a microwave dinner to cook. The bottom line is we need a uniform system that’s the same nationwide, we need a technological solution that eliminates errors and gives us a quick and accurate count, and we need a way to vote via the Web, cell phone, and other simple technologies so that voting is more convenient.

This morning I got a call from the title company in Oregon. It appears this process is more complicated than I expected. Apparently the documents are overnighted to me in California (I receive them Wednesday), then they go back to Oregon (Thursday), then they have to come back to California (Friday) to the bank for funding. So the earliest we can close is Friday. That would be fine as long as it happens and we can record that day, but it’s certainly tighter than I prefer. I’m scheduled to be in the house on Monday the 8th, so if we don’t record on Friday, we could have a problem.

I just called the local notary I have to meet with tomorrow for signing the final docs: we’re going to meet at the local title company. So that’s at least set up. Once I sign those docs and deliver my cashier’s check for the down payment and closing costs, it’s out of my hands. Oh, I guess I also need to set up an automatic payment system for my mortgage as that was listed as a requirement for funding by the bank. I just got my account number for my new account in Oregon, so hopefully that can be done now.

The media isn’t biased, eh? I don’t normally watch the news or read newspapers or magazines because I don’t like the bias, but for current election coverage I did tune in to see how the different networks were reporting on the Election 2004 mess. Wow, it was actually painful. Fox News made it sound like it was impossible for Kerry to win: he’d literally have to win every single remaining state and get all the provisional ballets in Ohio and even then the numbers didn’t quite add up. But on CNN they showed Kerry and Bush in a dogfight with almost identical electoral votes and had analysts who were pointing out what a tough road Bush had ahead and that once Kerry won Ohio it would be almost impossible for Bush to win! Dang, I hate this politicking and the divisiveness it creates. It was ridiculously easy to see the bias in the networks. I tuned to CBS to see Dan Rather viciously attack a Republican analyst, interrupting the guy’s spin with his own comments and conclusions, simply because it was obvious Dan didn’t want to hear that Bush had won. Why bother to have the guy on if you aren’t going to listen to what he has to say? I found it quite distasteful. On the other side, Fox News shows “Democrats” who agree with Republicans (i.e. a Dem who says that Bush won).

On another note, on several channels I saw reporters deny their own polls and surveys. The reporter would reveal a new poll that showed that the number one concern of voters were moral and ethical issues, but then the reporter would dismiss that and point that that was ridiculous and obviously the voter’s main concern had to be the war and terrorism and security! What war are they talking about? That silly little skirmish in Iraq? Please.

As to the whole “who won” issue, the media was at fault for encouraging it. Obviously controversy provides ratings, so the media purposely encouraged the concept that we didn’t know who won the election. In reality the numbers were clear that Kerry couldn’t win Ohio but still a number of networks wouldn’t call the election. If they had, perhaps Kerry would have conceded earlier like in a normal election. But with the precedent of 2000 before us, the media jumped on the slightest whiff that that could happen again. Instead of being responsible, the media hurt the country but promoting indecision and confusion.