I spent Tuesday watching polls. I visited seven polling places for the County Democratic Party. No one was particularly thrilled to see me, but I was friendly and open about what I was there to do. Most of them warmed up to me.

At the first two places, I just asked how it was going and took notes. My precinct had a mismatch of numbers from the book (where they write the name of each person who has voted) and the machines (you know about those). At the last five polling places, I compared the list of registered Democrats to those who had already voted. An election official turned each page for me, so I didn’t even need to touch the registers. When someone came to vote, I stepped away. I took my check list of those who voted back to more volunteers, who called those Democrats who had not yet voted. I chatted with the Republican poll watchers in a couple of places. They were assigned to stay at the same polling place all day, listening for names of voters and marking them on their lists (to be picked up mid-afternoon).

Other than the miscount at my own precinct, I saw no lines longer than a few minutes and no unhappy voters (except those who had paid attention to the address on their voter card). A friend of mine was part of the Denver voting fiasco. She waited 2.5 hours on her birthday to vote. Still, that is a lot better than some people had.

I loved watching the polls. I was actually proud to be there, seeing the system (apparently) working so well. I took my children with me to watch democracy in action.

The issues of insecurity with electronic voting will not go away—nor will those fighting to ensure a safe vote no matter who is in office. Don’t forget, and keep supporting efforts to make voting fair.

Organizations Working for Fair Voting

• Black Box Voting. They are making Freedom of Information requests on the 500 reports most likely to generate evidence.
• Video the Vote. A lot of videos of (mostly young) people voting.
• Youth Noise.  More videos in their Veek the Vote section.
• Velvet Revolution. In addition to offering a $500,000 reward for evidence of election fraud, their Election Strike Force is a great collection of information and action.
• Election Defense Alliance. Their goal is to “build and coordinate a comprehensive, cohesive national strategy for the election integrity movement, in order to regain public control of the voting process.”
• Protect Our Votes. Collecting Election Outrages. They have a good list going already.
• Verified Voting. Sponsoring nonpartisan citizen poll watchers.
• Voters United. Sending the book, “Myth Breakers: Facts about Electronic Elections” to officials across the country.
• Voter Story. Collecting stories of election incidents from voters. Download these as a zip file. Add the widget to your blog. Cool tool and great idea.

News Roundups on Fair Voting

• Alternet. Election Theft Roundup.
• Truth Out. Voters Rights.
• Yes! Magazine. Voting Integrity.

Stories on Fair Voting

• Alternet. Great Outcome, Flawed Votes.
• Truth Dig. Voting Machine Crusaders. (Seriously, Crusaders? Have the writers read any history?)

read comments (0)

Notice! Move On Victory Parties tonight across the country.

I just have to say something about food. Why is the food always so bad at Democratic Parties? Even if they are completely cheap, surely they could find some cheap food other than pretzels and colorful tortilla chips (the food so bad that my children declined to eat anything at all at the state Democratic Victory Party Tuesday night). Even the White House ordered chicken tenders Tuesday. That’s Amurikan food. Too much like meat for Democrats?

When I was filling tender young college minds with my version of U.S. foreign policy, one of my students talked about his time spent interning in Washington DC for both Republicans and Democrats.

“What was the biggest difference,” I asked him.

“The food.”

What?

“Republicans serve steak at their parties,” he told me. “Democrats serve chips.”

True to form, the Utah state Democratic Party served chips to celebrate shifting from 10% Democratic to 30% Democratic in the state. yeah. If we win in Utah, could we get some salsa with that?

If you go to a Democratic party tonight, take some decent food. I’m searching for a cheesecake to take to mine.

read comments (0)

I am dazzled by simple displays of bright colors. I noticed when a colorful chart making the rounds in the news several weeks ago showed Iraq moving from Peace toward Chaos. The slide shows by arrows how much closer to chaos the situation was within a week. This was nearly three weeks ago, so I’m sure it is even closer now.

What continues to interest me is finding that this slide comes up in other interesting places. I’m clearly not the only one who notices when dazzling gradients show up in the news. Actually, most of the notice was not about the chaos in Iraq but about the chaotic information of the slide. (See full slide at the New York Times for the full effect.)

One design blog (from the creators of the great project management program, Basecamp) wondered whether the slide would be noticed by Edward Tufte. I wondered this, too! Tufte, the author of Visual Display of Quantitative Information, continues to be a topic of conversation among my friends and family, including one who took Tufte’s design classes at Yale. As it turns out, Tufte posted the image to his own blog (or blog-like complete mess of information. Surely, of all people, Tufte could have a more accessible design for his blog?).

Doesn’t it makes sense to convey chaos with chaos?

read comments (0)

First, Congress. Then, Defense.

Will the presents never stop? I’m sure they will. I don’t mean to be greedy, but I respectfully request another gift.

May we please have democracy back?
All branches, please?

I want to see Executive accountability—not only investigations into loosely covered criminal activities and corruption by corporate interests but compulsion of full compliance with all inquiries.

A new direction for America and handshakes across the aisle are great. I want to believe it. I want to see it. I am keeping in mind, though, that we don’t skip the fascist groove so easily. We need to rebuild into the system checks, rebalances, and accountability for a very nearly unthinkable corruption of the democratic ideal.

read comments (0)

Collect them all.

read comments (0)