Next frontier: Voting

Thursday, October 23, 2008 by Dave Winer.

With our guy way up in the polls, and less than two weeks to go, it's starting to feel pretty real right about now. Most Americans seem to understand how important this election is.  

As usual there's 40 percent who are sure to vote one way and 40 percent who are sure to vote the other, and the decision will be made by the 20 percent who could go either way.  

Me, I'm in the 20 percent. Sometimes I vote Republican, sometimes Democratic. About half the time I vote for the winner and half the time I vote for the loser. I'm no Missouri or Ohio, I'm far from a bellweather, more like a coin flip. So if you support Obama, don't take any comfort in the fact that I do too. 

Now the campaigns start to focus on making sure their supporters actually go to the polls. If they do, it seems our guy is a shoe-in. But there's a nagging doubt in everyone who's voting for Obama, remembering the Gore-Bush election and Florida, where thousands of votes were "supressed" which is a fancy word for "thrown in the trash."  

Sad fact: If the Republicans hadn't been so good at throwing out Democratic votes, Gore would have won Florida and would have won the election.  

In 2000 our democracy walked up to the abyss and barely came back. I can't watch this election unravel over corruption, not this time. And not while there's still time to do something about it. 

I'm just beginning to understand what's being done to prevent voter suppression. Apparently there's a huge effort here in California to organize lawyers to make them available to people across the country. If you've been asked to accept a provisional ballot (someone is challenging your right to vote), these people will help. I barely understand what's being done. But I'm going to find out what we can do if we feel we are being disenfranchised.  

Salon: Where the GOP could get dirty. 

I will have a hard time accepting McCain as President, should he win. But if he does, there must not be the slightest chance that the election was won fraudulently. That would not put us in a very good place here in the US and around the world.  

The Hill: Police prepare for unrest.