The Sound of Silence . . .

This post is a response to an email I received about WeWillNotBeSilenced.org

Is this intended to be an indictment of the caucus process (versus
direct primary voting) or an implication that the Obama campaign was
orchestrating a huge Machiavellian conspiracy to defraud the entire US
election process?

If it is the former, then I agree there were obviously issues with the
polling procedure. And, while both parties use caucusing in their
primary procedures the Democrats splitting of primary votes from
individual states (versus the Republicans "winner-take-all" process)
leads to several issues.

If it is the latter, I think the focus needs to shift beyond the scope
of Harris Co. Texas [precinct 139] where there were apparently abuses
of the system – and to a national plot by the DNC to defraud the
American public. I will not attempt to exonerate the individuals who
wrongly attempted to influence the system in that (or any other)
county. However, I am also incredulous that the DNC is sufficiently
organized to get everyone's lunch order straight – let alone run a
shadow program of that complexity.

The ultimate point is that the American election system is badly
broken – as we were forced to acknowledge watching Dade County, FL in
2000.

200 years prior to the Florida debacle, Aaron Burr and Thomas
Jefferson had a similar problem and, as a result, the 12th Amendment
was added to the constitution. But that was a band-aid fix to the much
larger problem: Americans DO NOT directly elect the president.

We (and I use the generic american "we") like to tout our Democracy –
but we are, in fact, a Republic. We elect all of our representatives
directly – except for our president.

The Electoral Collage served a purpose 200+ years ago when it was not
humanly possible to tally individual votes for each voter (read:
white, male, landowner) by hand. But now we are able to have a fairly
accurate count in hours and a full count in days (A far cry from the
original 6 month gap between election and pronouncement in the
spring).

The problem is that elections (and their execution) is handled by
individual counties:

all 3,141 of them.

I think national elections need to be Federalized. With a non-partisan
committee appointed oversight and administration of the process.
Setting guidelines and standards for counties to adhere to and
providing an appeal process as well as oversight.

The website for WeWillNotBeSilenced.org likes to extol the edict of
"one person - one vote." While that is an appealing concept - it is
also and American fable; and until we elect our president directly, it
will remain one.

--
Brent Watkins