Not Gone Yet !

Back again - twice in two days. This must be a record or something - certainly for this year !

Voting!

There's the normal shambles of indecision. Who's running ? Ask 95% of all citizens of the US and they'll say "McCain & Obama" ( or "Obama & McCain" ! ). However, in this "land of the free" there are other choices:

Republican Party has nominated John McCain
Democratic Party has nominated Barack Obama
Libertarian Party has nominated Bob Barr
Constitution Party has nominatedChuck Baldwin
Green Party has nominated Cynthia McKinney
Ralph Nader is running as an independent, whatever that might mean here.

For all know there may be more, but hardly anyone knows that they exist. I'll ask my wife when she gets out of the polling booth area if she noticed anyone else.

For those used to getting given a piece of paper and a scruffy bit of pencil and being ushered into a cloth cubicle like those used for privacy around your hospital bed (but much smaller), American Elections are Modern and use Voting Machines ! These used to be mechanical gadgets that punched holes in some of Hermann Hollerith's Cards (the ones we used to program on !) but there were too many mistakes along with too much corruption in Florida and Ohio (?) two elections ago and since then there's been a big drive to go all-digital !

That's great, but now the authorities are realising that with digital machines come viruses, worms, trojan horses, and problems with power cuts, power spikes, power sags, peaks, and other nasties, along with lightning strikes and the problem that one professor exposed just last week: given 18 minutes alone in a booth any self-respecting teen studying comp. sci. should be able to hack into the voting machine and change all the votes cast so far that day !

Good one, that. Let's all go back to the way of the Athenians ..... black or white stones into an old amphora.