Was My Vote Counted?

I have no reason to believe that my vote will be counted.  Today I voted on one of those electronic machines that leaves no paper trail.  There was nothing physical, nothing tangible that was created when I voted – just a byte of data on a disk somewhere.

But gosh, we’ve all experienced the Blue Screen of Death, the deletion of files, and the corruption of data on a computer disk.  It can happen, and perhaps it is happening in voting machines today.  Today in Allentown a man destroyed an electonic voting machine with a paperweight, and officials are not sure if the votes on that machine will be counted. 

Democracy destroyed by paperweight – and we’re trying to export this stuff to the Middle East?  Give me a break.  But beyond the paperweight perpetrators of the world, our nation’s election process is incredibly broken.  Perhaps the people we elect to high office – or, at least the people we think we may have elected to high office, even though our votes are never really counted – can fix this mess?  Of course not, because our political leaders were put in power by this broken system in the first place.  If the system is broke but working for you, why fix it?

Yup, I’m confident in the system. 

From failed and unjust election processes, Good Lord Deliver Us!