counting

  And the counting continues. I was hoping for a projected winner this morning but that isn't happening. It appears that the mail-in and absentee ballots are the ones holding up the count. I don't think that is a surprise to anyone. Just imagine if all voting was done in this fashion? How long would it take then? And, of course, there is the question of integrity. With votes floating around somewhere, how much faith do we place in them all being counted, indeed all of them being legitimate? Well no matter what, counting will be done. I don't think anyone would argue that this election cycle has done significant damage to the voting process as a whole. Do we need to place blame for that? I'm not certain that would be of any benefit to anyone. But I do think this whole ordeal should be used to have a conversation about it all, in a way that restores a measure of faith in the process.

 I do think we will be hearing about the whole electoral college thing once again. The talk will be to move toward that Democracy that you hear talked about all the time. It is something I continually stress, we have a Republic and should not surrender that. The electoral college is a mechanism to provide a level field to all citizens of this nation. Remove that process, the mob rules! I'm certain it won't happen in my lifetime, the decline of a Republic takes longer than a few hundred years. Still I hear the murmurs, the hushed discussions, of doing just that. The only path to accomplishing that is to convince the children. But how do you teach children about that? Can you really expect children to understand the reasoning behind it? 

 In my opinion that process has begun. What are we teaching our children? Are we teaching them about accepting responsibility for their choices, or that everyone gets a second chance? The later is the predominant theme these days. Make bad choices and get rewarded because of those choices, sympathy extended. That's the message being sent, time and again. It's alright, we will give you help. There are many excuses you can employ and no one can dispute them. Your race, your economic background, your lifestyle choices can all be used as excuses for your failures. It's not really your fault at all, it is the prejudice of others. If you aren't getting what you feel you deserve, sue somebody! That's what you do. Anyone that doesn't agree with you is a racist! People don't make bad choices, objects do however. Hey guns are killing people, not the people using them. If you just take the gun away, the person won't make that choice. You see, it's not their fault, they need help. 

 In the last election cycle the loser complained about the electoral college. We all heard about that. time and again. It needed to be abolished. It should be based solely on the popular vote! But that would mean a constitutional amendment and the end of the Republic. Now I'm seeing the writing on the wall for this time around. This time it is going to be solely about counting the votes. There won't be much discussion about those electoral votes, nope, this time it is the votes themselves. What do you hear? I hear them saying, we haven't counted all the mail-in and absentee ballots yet. It is the ones that we aren't certain about, the ones that can be reasonably questioned, that are going to tip the scale in one direction or another. It isn't as simple as opening the envelope and putting a check mark by the persons name. Each one has to be verified as legitimate. My question is, and has been, how to do that? The person opening that envelope has first crack at saying it's good or bad. How many do you think you could do before you began to get tired? We are human beings after all, yes we all have good intentions, I'm not calling anyone's integrity into question, just the ability to remain completely focused on such a repetitive task. And if a ballot is disqualified then another person has to go over that and double check it. That's a lot of handling. 

 I'm wondering if we should not release any results until the counting is done. Perhaps each state should tabulate the votes, keeping those results secret until it is time to deposit them in the national box. Then we could count the states, one by one, and track that on the electoral map. A winner is declared. The problem, as I see it, is in knowing how many legitimate votes are cast in the first place. With such a huge population how can we track that? It is estimated that there are 240 million eligible voters in the United States. We know that not everyone eligible will vote. That number appears to be larger this time around due to early voting, mail-in voting, and absentee ballots. Yes, convenience makes a difference, and make no mistake about it, that is what all that is about. There are many that will only vote if it is convenient for them to do so. That should tell you something. Perhaps we should just have a period where you can cast your vote, in person, after being verified you are eligible. Surely there could be some national database that would show whether you had already cast a ballot. We have computers that can instantly take money your of your bank account, why not a voting account? That money goes out instantly but it takes a week for any mistake to be corrected! That same computer could tabulate any disputes and see if that number would alter the results. We don't need to change the system, we need to change the way we count. That's my thinking.