Election Shenanigans

You know, I grew up political. My father was a conservative, my mother a liberal independent. I remember watching political conventions as a little girl. I was taught that the process was uniquely American, that we lived in the greatest country on earth. My father died in 1989 and I am grateful that he never had to see what his party and his country have become.

He would be horrifed by the latest tack the Republican party has taken. Here in New Mexico allegations are surfacing of Republican party calls (with caller ID verification and answering machine recordings) to democrats giving false polling information, telling democrats that they vote at polling places several miles from their actual polling place. This attempt at deception and disenfranchisment is pretty damn galling. In Tennessee republicans are calling black voters and telling them that if they voted for Harold Ford in the primary they don't have to vote a second time. Lies, damned lies.

Does anyone really believe that the manufacturers of electronic voting machines are incapable of producing a hacker-proof, reliable, extremely accurate voting machine that produces a paper trail? If Diebold couldn't do it there isn't a bank in the land that would use their ATM machines. And why in the world would we stick these poorly managed machines into polling places manned by octogenarians whose only computer experience in the real world was an abacus?

How long will Americans continue to blindly accept the outcomes of elections that are so staggeringly mismagaged? How far are they going to have to push the people before the people push back?

Share your election stories, mismanagement or fraud experiences here...