Post-election unrest?

MamaS - Jeb Bush is no longer governor of Florida. Charlie Crist has been governor since Jan. 2007. Not that that negates your point. The SYSTEM is rife with corruption nationwide. But since we are a nation that allows states to govern themselves (theoretically), it will take time and due dilligence to craft a proposal acceptable to all states. And then, of course, someone would have to care enough and have the support to actually make the effort to do so. I think there should be specific federal guidelines for voting in a federal election, to include, but not be limted to: In-person registration at a voter registrar office greater than 30 days prior to any federal election; a tamper-proof federal voter ID card required for presentation at the time of ballot casting (IDs that have been damaged or tampered with will nullify the validity of the ID and therefore disqualify a citizen from voting); notarization of ALL absentee ballots attesting to the fact the federal voter ID was presented and that the person profiled on the ID is the same person who completed the ballot. (A certified copy of the ID must also be presented with an absentee ballot submission.); a federal database that instantly crosschecks all federal voter IDs at the time of ballot casting. Once the ID has been presented for voting, it will be locked out of the system for use anywhere else in the nation; English literacy. The reality is that even though English is not the officially declared language of the U.S., it is the language of communication. If a voter is not literate in the langauge of the land, they cannot decide for themselves the veracity of the information they receive about issues and candidates and therefore are unable to make an informed independent decision. Additionally, motor voter registrations should be eliminated and replaced with open voter registrations held at all polling places either semi-annually or quarterly. This would place the availability of voter registration within the neighborhoods of this nation. If it is too difficult for a citizen to go to the polling place to register, how do they expect to get there to cast a ballot? People have to take responsibility to exercise their right to vote. And these requirements would apply only to federal elections and not state, county or municipal elections. In that, the federal government is only taking responsibility for the votes that affect the nation as a whole and not the individual states.

I think parts of the country accept and encourage voter fraud. Here in Minnesota we use paper ballots counted by machines. You fill in the circle, which means no hanging chads. Clear audit-able results. We have a non-profit, good government organization that conducts audits after every election to detect voter fraud. You can register at the polls with two pieces of mail with your name and address on it and a voucher, which is easy to find. If there is any question about eligibility, you get to vote. It is a good system and one that I think every state should adopt. Electronic voting machines without a paper trail are open to getting exactly what you saw in West Virginia, voter fraud. I think the federal voter ID card is a red herring. The idea that some unscrupulous group is somehow going to organize groups large enough to go to polling place after polling place and cast enough votes to make a difference just doesn't hold water. People are not that good. I'm from North Dakota and they don't even have voter registration - you show up, you can vote. And they don't have voter fraud. The real fraud, in numbers that can change elections, are those having to do with either widespread disenfranchisement of certain groups or tampering with voting. And as to the idea of a voter card, I can tell you I can barely find my wallet from day to day. The idea that I could have to find a card once every four years to vote, well I can tell you, it wouldn't' happen. And no one should have to speak any language to participate in our democracy. It should be open to everyone. Our non-speaking groups have a wide variety of campaign materials translated. On Tuesday, I was reading the endorsements from our Spanish newspaper, in Spanish. Our last mayoral campaigns translated literature into four languages. Websites now also are going up in several languages. I would also say, proudly, that my state senator, is Latina, most recently seen wearing a t-shirt that says "Obamanos" which I thought was a hoot.

You make some good points, Wonk. I particularly like the idea of the paper ballot with the fill-in circles because there is a paper trail of each vote. That one item can eliminate much fraud. I am amazed at the requirement of voting you cited for North Dakota. I'm sure if that state weilded more electoral votes, someone would be all over them. My point about English literacy, however, stems not just from the degree of primarily Spanish-speaking households, but for myriad other languages that are dominant in homes across America. What would be the cost of translating all speeches, campaign literature, newspapers, magazines, Tv and radio broadcasts into say just 30 different languages - many of which do not use the standard alphabet? I think requiring literacy in any country's dominant langauge simplifies social processes - not just for voting - and keeps the electorate better informed. To go OT for second, I also think as a nation of the world, the U.S. is WAAAY behind many other developed countries when it comes to required or encouraged lingual abilities of its citizens. I think students should be required to have 4 years of at least one foreign language to qualify for high school graduation. When I was last in The Netherlands, I watched a young woman - early 20s I would guess - at an information booth speak 7 different languages fluently in the span of 30 minutes. I asked her after that, how many langauges she spoke. Nine.

In Minneapolis, we have four dominant languages - English, Spanish, Hmong, and Somoli. Every campaign translates pretty much all their stuff. There are a smattering of other languages but those cover about 99% of people who would have a language problem. What we have also found is that typically, for people who don't have a good grasp of English, they have a family member that translates for them. (often a kid raised here) Having friends in the UK, I do agree with you on the lack of language education here in the US. But we are getting lazy too, as more and more of the world speaks English as a second language.

OK, educate me. I would venture to guess that Hmong would be like a Cambodian language or something along those lines? What is the nationality of the latter two you mentioned? Thanks.

Somali - from Somalia Hmong - Vietnam/Laos - basically they worked with the United States when we were fighting in Vietnam - the US then abandoned them when we left and things went very badly for them - slowly they have been able to leave refugee camps and relocate to the US.

Thanks, Wonk. I kinda thought you might have hit a typo in there with the Somali thing. I actually used to speak a little Somali as I lived there for three months. Of course, people were trying their best to kill me on a daily basis just because I was trying to protect infrastructure so starving people could get some food. But since I'm here, I guess they blew it. Did you know the Somali word nag means woman? Too funny that! Sorry to hijack the thread, folks. I should probably point out I am a woman lest someone blast me for being a chauvinist. :-)

Wonk, can I ask this since you've been very vocal on the Iraq issue. I've read how you feel about the millions spent there to date and how we could use that money now. But in seeing this post I thought I might ask. Should we now do the same to Iraq..."abandon them" and allow them years of things going "very badly" only to relocate slowly. Since history tends to repeat I'm wondering what your views are.

Well my perspective is a two part answer. The first part has to do with what we have the financial capacity to do. Understand that in my heart of hearts, I would love to go and march our armies into every country that has starving children, build schools everywhere that they don't exist, provide working capital to third world countries so they can build their own economies, do away with every dictator and make the lives of everyone out there better. Now comes the first dose of reality. For the first time since statistics were kept, Americans owe more than they own in assets. It isn't just the housing melt-down but also the credit card melt-down, the lack of retirement savings, but all sorts of easy credit and incentives to spend in our system. This wouldn't be so troubling but when we dropped trade barriers, our labor force came in competition with labor forces in China, India, Russia, and other parts of the world. In supply and demand terms, supply for labor skyrocketed while demand didn't. There is someone in China or India willing to do your job for three peanuts (and feel like they are living like kings). So wages in the United States are stagnment or declining depending on exactly who you are and where. For me, because of wage concessions, my union has me working for 10% less than I was making five years ago. And my employer wants more wage concessions. Add on top of that, escalating health care costs have eaten up any potential wage increases for people. Couple this with the Bush tax cuts that have dramatically shifted more wealth to the very top wage earners, reducing the money avaiable to the middle class, while at the same time taking on a war financed with debt, a financial bailout financed with debt, a prescription drug plan financed with debt and a growth in government financed with (yes) debt to all pile up to the largest federal debt in history, financially we are waist-deep in doo-doo. Really ugly, smelly doo doo that is still rising. We are going have really ugly financial times ahead as all these roosters come to roost. Now we have illegally invaded a country that doesn't want us to be there. They have "insurgents" which basically means freedom fighters from their perspective, trying to get us to leave. I don't see any "win" in this. There is no day when they are going to say, Yay, thank you for invading my country, killing 100,000 of us and forcing 5 million of us into refugee camps. We need to leave. And we, honestly, can't afford to stay. Our economy won't support us doing this. We need that money desperately at home. I believe in the planned troop withdrawl. Soon. Do I think that there is a risk that a dictator will re-emerge? Possibly. That is what happened with Vietnam and Korea. It may be that a dictator is what is necessary to hold the various factions in that country from falling into civil war and killing each other off. I do believe that communism failed because people saw what capitalism would do for them. And I believe that even hardened dictators are starting to see what capitalism means for their own self-interest. We are seeing this in some South American countries where dictators are backing off and letting capitalism in. So the best thing I think we could do, and something at a much lower cost, is to expand investment into production - roads, power, water/sewer, and banks - functioning banks for Iraqis to start businesses. To me, if we can pull that transition off, we have been successful because we are no longer there trying to manage a country but it becomes self-managing. We no longer fear the country that did the most damage in the 20th century - Germany - because we did exactly this. The Marshall Plan transformed them into our trading partner and a country we never now even think might attack us. Because they don't want to lose what they have. That is the transformation that we really need to make. But it isn't with troops. It is with development. And it costs way less than tanks and bombs and stuff we simply can't afford. But it is way less cool than the "whacking" that Ed talked about.

Not that I want to engage in a debate on the Iraq war, Wonk, but I did want to point out that we have very essential military bases in Germany. As we do in Japan. And in other areas of the world. At the end of WWII, the Allies dictated the terms of surrender and these nations, among others, would never again be allowed to amass an offensive military. Which has much to do with why we don't fear attacks from certain nations. Free trade is hardly a factor on that issue.

I don't believe that our military bases in Germany or Japan are the reasons why those countries have not attacked us. I just don't. If those countries had wanted to kick us out, they could have decades ago. In Germany, military service has been required for all young men. It isn't the military bases that kept Germany and Japan from attacking us. It is the desire for capitalism and trade. We can disagree on that one but we could pull every troop out of those countries and those countries would not attack us.

We can agree to disagree, but it's quite difficult to attack without an offensive military.

Back to the OT: Have you guys seen any sign of unrest or issues brewing?

Gratefully, not a single, solitary thing. As a matter of fact, people have been genuinely supportive of one another in my neck of the deep South. It reminds me of how folks were right after 9/11 - we were all only Americans.

Nothing here in cali - where we aren't historically completely opposed to riots and the like....though thankfully it's been a while :)