Tuesday, November 04, 2008

W's Great Accomplishment

The Vote America Act.

I was in a bad mood when I went to vote in 2004, and when I set out to vote after a quick dinner, I decided to walk to my neighborhood polling place to get over it. Turned out, they'd changed my polling place. It was too late to walk to the new polling place a mile away. As I spluttered about my predicament, a poll worker consulted another and offered me a provisional ballot. I'd never heard of such a thing but they explained it all to me, I filled out and voted in what turned out to be an extremely close race in my state.

Vote America brought us accountable voting machines, accessible voting places, provisional ballots and a variety of other mostly good reforms to voting practice. It was a bipartisan effort which was the result of the disastrous 2000 election.

I have my electoral passions (and I'm smiling at the moment), but the most important thing that seems to have happened today is the most people were able to vote their conscience and feel that their votes would be accurately counted. That was a victory of democracy, and a victory for democracy.

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