Count Every Vote - Let's Not

I'm going crazy with all the propaganda floating about.

There's a "Measure B" on our ballot for next week that talks about "letting the voters decide" on traffic patterns which as near as I can tell is the Planning Commission abdicating their responsibilities in favor of mob rule. I have received aproximately a dozen "we're voting for B, so should you" fliers all printed on thick, glossy, very well funded NON-RECYCLABLE stock. All of these people claim to care about the environment, but they've flooded at least 200,000 of these landfill bound things into the neighborhood. And not a one of them says anything specific about what Measure B will actually do. As near as I can tell, it's some back door way of preventing the H.ome De.spot from driving out a local harware chain. Well, morons, just don't give them a damn building permit and be done with it. The uninformed masses should vote for people they trust to make considered decisions. The specifics of the decisions should not be put to the vote. But their mantra is "the voters should decide" and they couldn't be more wrong.

Another person who couldn't be more wrong is HRC. (When I see that, I always think "Her Royal Clinton.") She wants the voters from Michigan and Florida to be counted. Well then, she shouldn't have agreed at the START of the election not to count them. She claims she would have the lead in Michigan. That's as may be, but she ran on the ballot unopposed and still over 40% of the people or more voted "other" instead of voting for her and 12% voted for Edwards. That's more than 52% AGAINST (got the stats from the newswire yesterday. Because while both she and Barack AGREED (did I mention they AGREED?) that this vote would NOT COUNT from the outset, he pulled his name from the ballot and she didn't. Only someone extremely desperate could count Michigan as a win under these conditions.

One reason for staggered elections is so that less funded candidates without celebrity name recognition can get some stumping done in places that aren't as expensive or populous. With this, they can start to "build their brand" and gain momentum in name recognition and fundraising. Then, when they get to the bigger states, they're on more equal footing with someone who started out with a big bin of cash and a series of cover shots. This allows them to run more on issues and less on "oh, that name is familiar". Because Michigan and Florida can be swing states with a significant number of votes, the Democratic party wants their primaries to be a little later in the season. CA moving up is also a problem for these reasons.

The reason I bring this up: when the early michigan and florida votes were held, Obama was the lesser known candidate. I've personally been a fan since his speech at the DNC in 2004. I've actually been surprised that more people didn't know him because his speech caused some minor celebrity action and the start of murmurings even back then about a presidential run. But it turns out that plenty of people missed that one breakout from obscurity, but they are familiar with HRC. So you have a vote early in the season that both candidates agree not to count, AGREE NOT TO CAMPAIGN in that state, where one of the candidates has major celebrity and the other is some new guy with a funny name and substantially less funding - how is the result from that vote a legitimate indicator of anything other than the fact that people recognize Hillary's name? Sure, plenty of people voted in good faith. But they voted based on incomplete disclosure, which is like asking a jury to convict someone based on half the evidence: invalid.

But now the race is "so close" even with Obama ahead, that HRC is trying to weasel in these false votes and claim them for her own. And what's worse, is the Democratic party is trying to let her. Someone needs to cowboy up and speak some truth and just say no. Those votes were disallowed from the start, the states and the candides knew the rules and the consequences and the states broke the rules anyway. And now they won't be held to the rules that the other 48 states followed. Either enforce the rules as stated or just don't have rules. By "counting" these 2 states, you're disssing the other 48. Did you think of that? I am running completely out of patience with the "if you do that one more time..." x12 method of discipline.

So I'm sitting here disgusted by both national and local politics and I'm floored at how little airtime the people who agree with me are getting. I need to write some letters to the editor and to my reps. After lunch.