voting

TRX
February 24, 2012
141:
> Frankly the whole pool of people
> running are inadequate to the task.

My plan: random selection of the President and Congress from their electoral bodies.

Really. How much worse could it be than the current popularity contest?

TRX
February 25, 2012
262:
> Minnesota currently uses paper
> ballots, which don't have party levers.

30-odd years ago when I first voted, Arkansas had the big "slot machine" voting machines with levers. How they were configured depended on the type of election. For Presidental elections, they were set up to vote a straight ticket - whoever you pulled the lever for for President, everything else automatically defaulted to that party.

Later we went to paper ballots - 8-1/2x11 cardboard, with big boxes to color in with big felt tip markers. The cards went into a box, and which was periodically dumped and sorted by groups of little old ladies sitting nearby. As a former IT security geek, I thoroughly approve of that system...

Now we have Diebold electronic voting machines. They're clumsy and slow, we get no receipt, and as far as I can tell, there's no paper trail anywhere. Plus I've had an "election official" staring over my shoulder "to help me with the machine" each time I've used it. So much for the secret ballot... though since I have no real belief that my vote is actually tallied anyway, I haven't bothered to complain. Like most American voters, I've lost faith in the entire system, and I'm just going through the motions, like a rat pressing at the food bar long after the kibble hopper has run out of rat chow.

TRX
February 26, 2012
279:
> Considering that Bush1 had once been
> a CIA director, Bush2 should have
> been even more inclined to listen to
> the CIA .. yet he didn't.

Hmm? With that, plus the CIA's many publicized blunders, I can't fault him for discounting their reports.

Also, the CIA is only one of the intelligence services available to the President of the USA. He's briefed every morning by the NSA, CIA, and DIA, and each of a half-dozen other agencies has reports available should he ask for other opinions. These reports represent the opinions and best guesses of each agency, and they seldom have the same slant or emphasis.

It's kind of like the old saying, "a man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with three is never sure."