Reply #4

This was a prime discussion segment on "Up With Chris Hayes" this morning, and the consensus was that our voting system is ridiculous. Especially so when we chide other countries on how they vote.

It's a mess and there are more than 30,000 jurisdictions out there.

Why isn't it centralized, and why, in this day and age, is the burden on the person to register when the US government can do it? Chris Hayes correctly made the point that they sure could locate every 18 year old male in the draft days.

Look at 2000. The Supreme Court 5-4 coup stopped the voting. Not because it would cause harm to the US, but because it would cause harm to Dubya. The New York Times led a group of newspapers in paying for the recount to go on. The end result was that under any chad situation Al Gore really won Florida. That is not even counting the trick ballot in that one community of mostly retired Jewish voters where most of them were trying to vote for Gore but voted for Pat Buchanan instead. Or all the people thrown off the rolls because they had a similar name to felons who had been scrubbed.

This all happened in a state where Bush's brother was governor and his state campaign director was the head state voting czar. Totally improper.

Think about where we might be now if Al Gore, not Bush, was sworn in January 2001, as he should have been. It's tragic how this played out, in a lot of ways, one of them is a lot of young people would be alive and whole now instead of dead or maimed physically and/or mentally. Decisions matter and this one more than most.

So we need to get this right. Obama, in his victory speech, gave us the impression he know this. I hope he's serious.