"A Vote that Counts" - Commentary by Tony Seton

A Vote that Counts

Officials around the country are trumpeting huge bulges in voter registration. Here in The Golden State, the Secretary of State predicts a record turn-out of 73% of the eligibles. He’s talking about the number of registereds who will actually cast ballots, but that doesn’t include all of those Californians of voting age who could have but didn’t register.

If Kevin Shelley, a long-time pol who’s being investigated for misusing get-out-the-vote funds for political purposes, is right, then that record turn-out will mean that only 54% of those who might have will vote. It’s obscene that we should go tromping around the globe in the name of democracy and half of our own citizens who could don’t vote.

In Afghanistan, where the Bushies claimed to have registered more people than actually would be eligible, the election last month was something of a mess. Probably because so many possible voters were in the fields harvesting a record opium crop.

In Iraq, where The Bush Boy claimed to have 100,000 locals trained as police when in fact the number is less than 10,000, the talk is of a need for more troops to make an election in January not safe but even possible. But there aren’t more troops to send.

Another point, if we were serious about our elections, we wouldn’t allow people to vote weeks before the actual date of the election. Already, millions have cast their ballots; this before the latest horrific revelations about Iraq -- the slaughter of unarmed police which our puppet Allawi blames on American negligence plus the disappearance of 380 tons of high explosives -- not to mention such problems at home like the drop in consumer confidence, the soaring price of gasoline, the failure to provide enough flu vaccine, the declining jobs picture, the astronomical deficit. Surely that news would have changed at least some votes.

It’s crazy in our communications-saturated society that our citizens shouldn’t have to cast their ballot in a timely and informed manner.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.