My Take On NOLA's Election

Thinking about NOLA's election today, it really makes me no difference whether incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin, or challenger Mitch Landreau, wins. That's for the voters of New Orleans to decide.

What is foremost on my mind, is their access to the ballot box, to make their wishes known.

Reading the press reports today, it seems as though some evacuees were bused in from places like Atlanta, Georgia and Houston, Texas in order to vote. And some were expected to drive to NOLA in their own cars for the vote.

But the real question is: why should they have to go through all that trouble?

Why should someone displaced by Hurricane Katrina, now living in Atlanta, have to treck all the way to New Orleans to cast a ballot?

Satellite voting stations should have been established in all of the major cities where evacuees have taken up residence.

This country set up satellite voting stations for Iraqi-Americans, in order to allow them to cast votes in Iraq's elections.

Yet, we failed to do that for our own displaced Americans.

Are we spreading democracy over there, so we don't have to spread it over here?

with one person monitoring one fax machine.

What if someone doesn't have access to a fax machine?

I don't have a fax machine in my home.

Many of these people have had to start all over again.

IMO, there's just no excuse for not setting up satellite voting stations.

We should be making people's access to the voting booth easier, not harder.

Kinkos.

Which is illegal!

People are not supposed to have to pay to vote.

That's why Georgia's voter ID law ran into trouble; because it would have forced people who don't currently have an ID, to purchase one to show at the polls.

Last I heard, some of the Repug legislators in GA were re-writing the bill, so the IDs would be free.

instead of complaining about twenty goddamn cents!

Where people have been DISPLACED. We have displaced Americans now, as a result of a catastrophic natural disaster.

And what I am saying is that someone who is now living it Atlanta, Ga should not have to travel all the way to New Orleans, LA to vote.

They should have set up satellite voting stations in all of the major cities where Hurricane Katrina evacuees are living.

My whole point was that we did this for Iraqi-Americans. Yet, we didn't do it for our very own.

And again, PAYING 20 cents to have to fax your vote, is a poll tax!

it's a right that all people should be given, if they are registered voters.

I'm in academia, and I abhor using a fax machine...but, more than that, nothing can compare to the feeling of patriotic pride one feels when he or she goes to the polls and casts a ballot.

Diebold make excellent money machines, machines that can dole out exact amounts every time, and send secure messages to the banks that track your money. But they can't make voting machines worth shit. We trust Diebold every time we withdraw cash, we trust them to not make a 20 dollar withdrawal a 200 dollar withdrawal. Why? Because we can track it. Why can't we track our vote? Because that's easily spoofed.

The root of the problem is trust. If voting machines were used across the country, and the Dems won, we'd call it a victory. The Repubs would call it a stolen election. There's no common ground. Hell, even if we stuck with the stoneage paper ballots, who's to say that the counting people didn't forge the ballots? The possibilities are endless. Wasn't there a story of about 10,000 votes being loaded into a truck an taken to a voting official's house, and delivered the next morning?

Nobody trusts anyone anymore. Digital or analog, voting can be manipulated.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more a "National ID" card makes sense. If it's got a public/private encryption key, then you can track your votes. Meh, I suppose that can be hacked, too.

There's no perfect system, electronic is the way to go, we just have to find a way to make it mutually agreeable.

On top of that, many will now be homeless, because they are losing their FEMA housing support.

To anyone who thinks that NOLA or Gulf Coast residents should be "standing on their own two feet by now," I only say that I hope that you never find yourself in poverty in a city demolished by a natural disaster, with only an inept federal government to help you through the aftermath.

They were interviewing people on the busses about why they didn't vote absentee. They said they didn't trust paper ballots, they wanted to vote on the machines!!! Go figure....

I won't even go there.

:(

quite clearly they bussed in enough bogus voters to get the GOP candidate re-elected so we need to make it even easier for fakes and outsiders to vote?

what "we" failed to do is "we" failed to stand up and say it is not right for outsiders to vote in this damn election, "we" failed to take a stand aga. election fraud YET AGAIN

the people who live in orleans parish right now today, the families of people who died here, the people who will die here now that mr. nagin has said there will be NO shelter of last resort for future hurricanes -- they are the ones who should have voted

and for ACORN to have participated in this fraud, for so called liberals to assist in getting the GOP candidate re-elected after all this loss of life and treasure

what is to be said

i wash my hands of it

there is no hope

there are no fair elections in america, not at the top, not at the bottom, there is no office so small and worthless they won't steal it

the GOP always wins, this is what dictatorship looks like, the fix is truly in

and that is my take on it

i'm glad you live comfortably at a distance where your only worry is how we could have bussed in even more nagin/GOP/bush/jindal voters into orleans parish

god help us all indeed

i give up, we work too hard, and THEY always cheat and there is never a consequence

from now on, i look out for myself, the democrats aren't smart enough to look out for themselves and the GOP would be happy to see every one of us dead and under water