Presidential Election Blues

I've resisted writing about the Presidential election mainly because everyone else is writing about it, and many of them know far more than I do about the results.  Of the bazillion or so sites carrying news and opinions about the election, here are three that I think are worth reading:

The Old NFO has Around the blogs…, which provides a list of worthy reads.  Pick and choose as you like.

The The Silicon Graybeard , a man whose academic achievements and thoughtful commentary I admire brings us Let's Be Clear About That Michigan "Computer Glitch".

Then we have the irrepressible impudence of Glen Filthie over at the Thunderbox, with Filthie Full Moon Friday The 13th.  He's that rarest of birds, the Canadian Conservative.

My thoughts?  Pour yourself a refill and relax.

Ever since the first Moonbat got caught stuffing a ballot box and the final count tallied to the entire population plus the local graveyard, plus an additional ten percent, We the People have known that our election process is less than perfect.  We also know that some candidates are not above cheating to achieve victory, be it an election or the passage of a property tax to fund the failing school system we enjoy here in the Buckeye State.  And I'd like to add that Detroit is worse.

Strike one is the lack of a voter identification card.  This implies that we don't know just who is voting, when in fact that isn't the case.  We do know; it's just that the Federal government has never done anything about it.  Many of the people who vote are not adult citizens of the United States.  Instead, we have illegal immigrants, felons, dead people, underage people, and completely fictional people.  Unsurprisingly, these people usually vote the straight Democratic ticket (if they don't it's because somewhere, someone really screwed the pooch).  They also vote to pass tax levies, particularly property tax levies.

So let's fix it.  A voter ID card should have the name, address, picture, and thumbprint of the voter on it, and it should be self-verifying.  In other words, slip it into a card reader and see if you come up with three bells.  The argument that I remember is that having a voter ID would somehow disenfranchise certain people, which is a load of stable dressing.

Strike Two is the electronic voting machine.  Recently someone discovered a software glitch which wasn't, by the way, a glitch.  The machines were rigged to turn Trump votes into Biden votes.  As in fixed - like a fixed horse race, the fix is in, and don't worry, we've got it fixed.  What few people are saying is that since this is reality, who and what else got fixed along with Trump?

An electronic voting machine is fine, so far as it goes.  However-comma if I wanted to fix an election, the very first thing I'd do is switch to an electronic voting system.

True Story... Once upon a time a jerkwater company called Head-Hunterz-Ink employed an oxygen thief named Neil.  Neil wrote a voting system for a Michigan county in the Detroit area, and the fool did it using IBM CICS running under TSO/MVS on a System 390.  Or, in other words, an International Business Machines Customer Information Control System running under Time Sharing Option / Multiple Virtual Storage, System/390 IBM mainframe.  I have a clipboard made out of one of the circuit boards from an old dinosaur like the 390.  So...

Right in the middle of a local election the thing craps out, which is no real surprise given the porcupine who wrote it.  He got called for support around 1:00 PM, and he screwed around with the thing until it started working again.

I had a multitude of questions, but the subject of lost data never came up.  That, of course, is the easiest way to fox the system.  You just lose the votes you don't want.

So fix the voting and counting systems such that there won't be any question about legitimate votes.  No, it won't be perfect, but it will be good enough.

Strike Three.  Declare election day as a national holiday.  Really.  No one should have to take a financial hit in order to vote, nor should they be forced to wait in long lines to be served by people who don't know what they're doing.

I'd write more, but I'm late for happy hour, and this is kind of pointless anyway.  I'll leave you with this thought: We are electing a President, not a god-king.  We survived eight years of the Ayatollah Obongo; not much will destroy us now.