![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ambivalent evening
1. I really like biking, and in theory I like public transit, but I didn't like the bus driver being grumpy at me when I wanted to bring my bike on the bus. But I did like being able to anyway.
2. Saw Stealing America: Vote by Vote, a documentary about, you know. Election irregularities. I'm glad they made it, but it made me feel kind of sick. Mostly the sequences about the 2004 election - I remember what it was like, watching all those swing states with pro-Kerry exit polls fall to Bush as the night went on. And then watching the stories come out over the next few days about voters that weren't allowed to vote, machines that registered Kerry votes as Bush votes right on the screen, mysteriously missing and just uncounted votes... and watching as Kerry, Congress, and the media just did nothing. Reliving that wasn't so great.
3. At the Q&A afterward, someone asked if, as a permanent absentee voter in Santa Clara County, his vote was safe. (In California, any voter can register as "permanent absentee," no reason required, and basically vote by mail.) The answer from the activists on hand was, not very. I didn't get all the details, but they felt that there were too many people with too many opportunities to tamper with the ballots between mailing and election. They recommend taking your ballot to the polling place and dropping it off in person (which kind of defeats the purpose). And they urged us to "use your polling places, because if we don't use them, we'll lose them." They're concerned that the state might go entirely vote-by-mail, like Oregon.
When I registered voters in 2004, the Democratic Party told us to encourage people to register as permanent absentees, because their statistics show permanent absentee voters are more likely to actually vote. It makes sense - not everybody has the time and ability to get to a specific place during specific hours on one Tuesday in November, but most people can get to a mailbox sometime in October. So I'm a little troubled that absentee voting, which helps more people vote, is regarded as pernicious by people who are trying to help our votes get counted.
They're big fans, as am I, of making Election Day a holiday. Or just moving it to Saturday. Write your representatives. Oh, and if you'd like to see the movie, let me know, I can get you a DVD.
4. Biked home from the movie. 7 miles, my longest ride without a break. It was a leisurely ride, and pretty nice once I got out of the creepy industrial section and past noticing the chill.
2. Saw Stealing America: Vote by Vote, a documentary about, you know. Election irregularities. I'm glad they made it, but it made me feel kind of sick. Mostly the sequences about the 2004 election - I remember what it was like, watching all those swing states with pro-Kerry exit polls fall to Bush as the night went on. And then watching the stories come out over the next few days about voters that weren't allowed to vote, machines that registered Kerry votes as Bush votes right on the screen, mysteriously missing and just uncounted votes... and watching as Kerry, Congress, and the media just did nothing. Reliving that wasn't so great.
3. At the Q&A afterward, someone asked if, as a permanent absentee voter in Santa Clara County, his vote was safe. (In California, any voter can register as "permanent absentee," no reason required, and basically vote by mail.) The answer from the activists on hand was, not very. I didn't get all the details, but they felt that there were too many people with too many opportunities to tamper with the ballots between mailing and election. They recommend taking your ballot to the polling place and dropping it off in person (which kind of defeats the purpose). And they urged us to "use your polling places, because if we don't use them, we'll lose them." They're concerned that the state might go entirely vote-by-mail, like Oregon.
When I registered voters in 2004, the Democratic Party told us to encourage people to register as permanent absentees, because their statistics show permanent absentee voters are more likely to actually vote. It makes sense - not everybody has the time and ability to get to a specific place during specific hours on one Tuesday in November, but most people can get to a mailbox sometime in October. So I'm a little troubled that absentee voting, which helps more people vote, is regarded as pernicious by people who are trying to help our votes get counted.
They're big fans, as am I, of making Election Day a holiday. Or just moving it to Saturday. Write your representatives. Oh, and if you'd like to see the movie, let me know, I can get you a DVD.
4. Biked home from the movie. 7 miles, my longest ride without a break. It was a leisurely ride, and pretty nice once I got out of the creepy industrial section and past noticing the chill.