Election Day 2004... Disenfranchising a NEW generation of voters
They've just announced that Michigan's 17 electoral votes are projected to go to Kerry... and Minnesota's 10 votes will go to Kerry. This puts Bush at 249 and Kerry at 238. (And Hawaii now goes to Kerry... Bush 249-Kerry 242). While there is still hope, I have come to a radical conclusion: The voting system, in American, needs wholesale changes. We need to scrap the entire voting system and create something new... something that uses current technology... something that allows EVERYONE (not just white people, or people in suburbs) the chance to vote. The fact that we vote on a work day during the week is RIDICULOUS! I was on the red line train (which is a subway near the loop [downtown Chicago]), and I heard two black men talking. They were talking about how long the line was to vote... how hard it was to get out of work to vote... and how many people were probably not going to be able to vote because of the other two reasons. We're not talking about the 1800s here, not everyone has to walk to get to the polls. We should be using the technology that we have at our disposal... phones; the internet; Hell! if we could figure it out, why not drive-thru voting? We've got drive-thru everything else. Other than that, the very least we should do is have elections over a weekend, so more people can get to the polls.

By the way, I had a conversation with my friend Chip, who voted for Bush. I really wanted to know why he voted for Bush. In the course of our conversation, at no time did he say something about Bush being the better man for the job. It was more about not liking Kerry OR not wanting lots of federal government, rich parents, blah blah common Republican BS. I then said "So it has nothing to do with the issues at all?"... and he pretty much didn't answer that, because we're friends and he knew I got him. It has nothing to do with the issues... or Bush being the "right" person for the job.

In other news, in almost every state that had state constitutional amendments on the definition of marriage as that of a union between a man and a woman (this includes Michigan), the vote to amend passed.

I owe Maggie Holdershaw and the lovely Miss Chelsey Wagemaker each a kiss for voting. No one else, interestingly enough took me up on my offer.