Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Prognostications for Media-hypage

We still have until Tuesday before the media men drift into complete mayhem, flashes of it have been appearing here and there, but I'm getting the feeling the brunt of it is going to occur Tuesday night and follow through January. Oh, and it is going to get crazy. Journalists must just live for events like this, unless you are Geraldo Rivera, and you live to... well, huh, does he even qualify as a journalist?

The race being nowhere close to landslide in either direction according to whatever one thousand people the pollsters have queried, I'm guessing there is going to be repeat of "Recount 2000 - The Hanging Chad" albeit an electronic version. Conspiracy theories are already swirling the mainstream about voter fraud, touchscreen screens requiring mid-vote recalibration to keep them from flipping your entire ticket, dead people casting ballots from their graves, and goldfish receiving voter registration cards.

It has been eight years, wasn't there a big hoopla about getting the election system to have an actual 'system' and accountability for it? Maybe as usual I wasn't paying attention.

I think American Idol has shown the truth in voting. Which means I'm not so sure that any given group of Americans *can* pick the overall most qualified person. (At least within the group of people who would vote for American Idol, who probably won't vote in the election because you can't text it to Ryan Seacrest.) It all comes down to the popular vote, which will vary depending on what genre of music you get your groove on to. How many people have won and tanked on the charts, versus runner ups being the true stars? And then there are years where no one of significance is voted to the top, so you are stuck with choosing between a Douche-bag and a **it Sandwich for a mascot (South Park).

Ah well, I'll sit back and hope for the best I guess... and hope that people vote absentee so they have a paper ballot if in a city that has those tweaky voter machines.

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