Election Day Links
Republicans spamming Democrats to piss them off/dissuade them
Call 1-866-OUR-VOTE to report voting problems and questionable practices
EFF podcast about vote counting and democracy for those on the go
Keep art free starting with video games by voting down anti-gaming bills and officials
New to Madison, WI? Need to vote? Here’s the city’s poll finder!
Don’t use Diebold! Request paper ballots.
Compiled laws about voting places by state including journalistic freedoms
Diebold machines causing problems at polling places
Anybody can get this anywhere, but I felt like posting it all the same:
–Civil unions and same-sex marriages are now unconstitutional in Wisconsin
–The death penalty is to be reinstated in Wisconsin
–Democrats maintain control of the Wisconsin governorship (Doyle), senate seats (Kohl), and house (Baldwin)
Here are things I think inside my head
Well, another Election Day has passed, and as I am somewhat sure that Am’r'ca still provides some basic protections of free speech and thought, I guess I’m entitled to a few opinions.
I’d like to say that the gay-marriage ban is an abhorrent use of law. It exists for no other reason than to leverage the personal beliefs of one group of people on the entirety of the state. I could say that it hurts business by shunting people away from Wisconsin, I could say that it’s just another Republican mind-control device to get people to the polls, and I could list off any number of one-sided arguments against it, but what it amounts to in the end is that I simply believe it is wrong. Why take away the rights of people who have no intention of taking away your own? Why take away the ability of an entire populace to simply live?
The very nature of a free country is that we have the ability to govern our own lives, and I feel that this is a contrary move. It hurts people. It denies a simple comfort to a group of people who have never hurt anybody, and does so based on subjective reasoning I simply cannot understand.
So be it.
The death penalty I can understand. I can’t make myself really get behind it, but at least I can understand that there are people who are hurt in terrible ways by the actions of others and that they demand extreme retribution for those actions. There is no way I can understand the suffering of a person who has lost a loved one to an act of violence, and as such, I am entitled to only the most cursory of admonitions.
I also believe the fact that a group fashioning itself the moral compass of the world voting for what is, in essence, a revenge clause is an ironic thing to say the least. Justice with a capitol J is a difficult issue (geek note: see “The Faerie Queene,” bk. V, ca. 1590, note at end), and legislating it one way or the other won’t make it any simpler. At least the inclusion of DNA evidence as a prerequisite and the fact that it can still be voted down are concessions I can live with.
In every other way, today was a resounding victory for the Democratic party. If the polls as of now are accurate (Who knows, these days?) the Democrats have reclaimed the House and the Senate. That’s an enormous thing, and it speaks volumes about the state of the Republican party and the American people’s feelings about the direction our country has taken in the past six years.
They may have taken those offices by the skin of their testicles (and vaginae), but they took them back. People are displeased, and that’s a hell of a lot different than the last two elections. Living today in the age of 51 percent, it seems like a stiff breeze on a given Thursday preceding an election week can turn the tide. The windfall is that things are the way they are, starting now.
Now let’s see if they fuck it up.
Good luck, guys.
Obligatory note:
Spenser was driven from his home by rebels, his infant child killed, during the nine-year wars in England. Book V of the Faerie Queene is about Justice and comes to the ultimate conclusion that the only time it is admissible to take another’s life is when the act of letting that person survive is a greater affront to humanity. In effect, letting a person be killed is only acceptable to save them from hurting others, preventing sins out of mercy. Even then, it’s all a little wishy-washy and open to all sorts of interpretation.
I suppose it should also be mentioned, in this context, that the Faerie Queene contains a classic lesbian love scene (the oldest recorded in English, to my knowledge), declaring it the only pure and unadulterated act of kindness and love, in far less uncertain terms than its treatment of capital punishment. A strange circumstance, considering where we’ve come over the past 400 years of learning and work.