10.28.2008

'To making it count!'

On my archived blog, “I See My Dreams,” I ran a feature atop my left sidebar titled “daily brief.” Three times in 18 months, I posed in that feature this question:

“What issue always makes headlines a couple of weeks before a general election, then as soon as the polls close goes away?”

Not once did readers of that blog attempt, in comments, to answer that question or even inquire about it.

Well, it’s happened again, and it’s probably the one pre-election story which ticks me off the most.

In the 1960s the Warren Court ruled on a series of cases dealing with "reapportionment," decisions which required electoral districts to have equal populations. In writing the opinion of the Court in Reynolds v. Sims (1964), Chief Justice Earl Warren set forth the principle, “One man, one vote.”

To a younger generation of voters coming along, that principle might seem today “a no-brainer.” But, is it?

Yes, once more, two weeks before Election Day, there are suddenly stories across the nation involving early voting snafus, voting machine foul-ups, long lines where people on lunch breaks are “disenfranchised” because they have to give up and return to work before voting. Machines still not equipped to yield voter-verified paper ballots. Ad nauseam.

These problems might better be dealt with if the media would focus on them at the beginning of an election cycle rather than at its end.

No citizen should leave a polling place wondering, “Did my vote count?”

As my mother used to say, “It’s enough to make a preacher cuss!”

4 comments:

airth10 said...

How about your representative in Congress? Shouldn't he/she be the ones to confront this problem. Shouldn't they address the question more than anybody else, including the press, because of their personal vested interest in getting elected?

B.J. said...

Good point, airth10! Senators Lindsey O. Graham and Jim DeMint and Representive J. Gresham Barrett know me by my first name. My friend Shari, who helped me this summer with about three years of acculated filing, can attest to a foot-high stack of snail-mail letters to them! The problem is they are more influenced by the media than by me. I’m just a lowly voter.

Papamoka said...

Next time you write them BJ, tell them you are a blogger with blog connections. Some of those friends with bigger blog friends and so on.

I have to agree with airth10 too! Now you have the upper hand to discuss what is important to not just you as one voter but as the voice of reason that many of your readers happen to agree with.

Anonymous said...

I'm happy to be voting by mail, as it is the way we vote in Oregon. But I will say that I'd stand in line for however long if I had to. When I read about the newest assassination plot on Obama I thought it's like the Freedom Riders--you just have to go on. I also do think there is a lot of business as usual going on in the polling. It's not all under fire.