Up front, there are no plot twists in this diary and thank the maker for that!

I voted for Barack Obama and Joe Biden today. Yay!

First, I always vote by mail-in. It may be my Pacific Northwest roots, but I have always voted mail-in/absentee. I haven't been to a poll in years. But for some reason, I felt I had to cast my ballot in person this year.

So today I took and early lunch, stopped by my house, kissed my wife and kids and grabbed my yellow card. Colorado has early voting locations setup all over the place. Somebody else can speak to the rest of the state. In Highlands Ranch I had 3 locations to choose from, all within 5 minutes of my front door. I chose Eastridge Recreation Center because that is the recreation center my family uses the most. Comfy.

As I drove in I was greeted by a very prominant sign telling me I was at the right place. As I walked into the center I was greeted by a VERY cheerful and friendly volunteer that helped me fill in a couple lines on my yellow card. He handed me off to another volunteer who was also VERY firendly and helpful. I handed him my yellow card and my driver's license. He scanned the yellow card, had me sign it in front of him, verified my existence on his computer system then handed me off to another volunteer.  This new person cheerfully generated an access code printout and handed me to another volunteer that set me up on an electronic voting machine.  

Electronic voting! Now I get to see first hand the horrors of electronic voting I've read about for 8 years. I braced myself and initiated the electronic voting process.

This style of machine had a dial that turned clockwise to cycle a highlight through the line items. As the highlight settled upon your selection you are to press the enter button and your selection is made. As you make selections the screen automatically takes you to the next item. The layout was not snazzy, in fact it felt very much like a printed ballot.

After all of my selections were complete, a review screen appeared to verify my selections. If I had a change I was allowed to go back to make that change. I had no changes so I accepted the review screens.

Then a large (3x8 I guess) PRINTED review ballot rolled up in a window to the left of the monitor. I was then asked to verify the printed ballot. I reviewed carefully and approved each of the 3 pages that rolled up and felt very secure that I had a proper printout of my actual vote if needed. I then hit accept and got the coveted American Flag animated gif that told me my voting was complete and accepted!

This all took less than 15 minutes!

I can't reiterate enough how easy, how friendly and how fast this all was. If you have not voted yet.... GOOOOOOOOOO! now is the time. In 2006 my wife stood in the same place for nearly 3 hours to cast her vote on election day.

Thank you to all the volunteers and election officials who are manning these stations. The absolute nicest people ever and I'm sure most are staunch conservatives considering the area in which I live, but in the end we are all Americans fullfilling the basic requirement of citizenship.

Now I'm free to volunteer on election day and I hope my contribution to Obama's effort will be enough.

I love this country and I feel so good today.

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Anyone smart enough to look beyond our corporate-controlled mainstream media  (such as the famous investigative journalist Greg Palast, see GregPalast.com) will learn of Florida Governor Jeb Bush's criminal malfeasance perpetrated prior to his brother George W. Bush's 2000 Presidential election. The Governor had close friends in high places at a company called DBT Technologies, which was acquired by Choicepoint Software, a company specializing in identity record searches. Jeb Bush and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris fraudulently created a way to go beyond Florida voting laws simply preventing Florida felons from voting, and catching as many Democratic voters in their web of ineligibles, as possible. With five million dollars of Florida taxpayer money, they purchased a flawed Florida felons list, which DBT had warned as containing tens of thousands of perfectly legal Floridians without felony records. Why did the Governor and the Secretary of State go ahead and purchase this flawed list? The answer lies in WHO was incorrectly placed on the list. The list contained black, low-income individuals - a Democrat-voting demographic.   With this seven-year-old history lesson in mind, and remembering that Bush defeated Gore by such a slim margin - the Supreme Court's upheld number of winning Bush votes was 536 - Jeb's voter fraud had world changing consequences, and I wholeheartedly agree, left our world in a much worse off.  

I am not "going-out-on-a-limb" in believing that had Gore won, there would be around 150,000 Iraqi civilians, including many women and children, living out their lives as they should be doing. This is also the case for 3,000 American servicemen and women. Furthermore, knowing what little I know about Al Gore, I have to believe that he may have responded instead of ignoring the worst humanitarian crisis since the Rwanda Genocide of the early nineties - the Darfur Genocide occurring since 2003, thereby preventing the needless deaths of  hundred of thousands of innocent civilians. This crisis our good Christian President George W. Bush does not seem to interested in since there is not a strong financial incentive such as stealing oil for Exxon and Chevron.   There are plenty of other calamities because of Jeb's fraud - environ ntal regulation unraveling leading to breathing more polluted air and global warming, tax breaks for the ultra-rich at the expense of the middle class, American jobs being sent overseas, destruction of rights under the US Constitution, etc.- but some higher power must have sent a lot of Karma Jeb's way!  

Jeb's brother's unbelievably poor performance and low approval rating have virtually destroyed any hopes Jeb (or his son who is an aspiring politician) may have had, including the chance that Jeb may have had running for President. During Jeb's recent Gubnatoreal retirement ceremony, his father, Bush 41 was seen weeping. Was he weeping that his son was retiring after serving the State of Florida for so long, or because he knows that his foolish son has destroyed the Bush family legacy, and rendered favorite son Jeb politically impotent? While we may never know the answer, one thing is for certain - HEY JEB, WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND!

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My name is Barry Welsh.  I was the 2006 Democratic Candidate for Congress in Indiana's 6th District opposing Congressman Mike "Baghdad" Pence.  I will be the 2008
Candidate as well, and will be formally announcing next week at a gathering in Chicago, called Yearly Kos.  

One of my pet issues has always been election integrity.  Here in Indiana, there have been just too many problems and we are not alone in those problems.

Hopefully some accountability is coming.

This is from today's Indianapolis Star

Company fined for election law violations by Mary Beth Schneider
More below.

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Cross-posted from Blue Jersey

Immediately after Nancy Pelosi's swearing-in as Speaker of the House, Representative Rush Holt put the House of Representatives on record that the swearing-in of a Member of Congress does not prejudice the pending inquiry of a contested election in Florida's 13th district.

Holt: Madam Speaker: In light of the facts that partisan and non-partisan lawsuits are underway with regard to Florida's 13th Congressional District and that the votes of 18,000 voters were not recorded on the paperless electronic voting machines in an election decided by 369 votes, may I ask for the record whether a notice of contest has been filed with the Clerk on behalf of Christine Jenningspursuant to law, and what effect, if any, today's proceedings have on pending contests?

Speaker Pelosi: The Chair is advised by the Clerk that a notice of contest pursuant to the statute, section 382 of title 2, United States Code, has been filed with the Clerk. Under section 5 of article I of the Constitution and the statute, the House remains the judge of the elections of its Members. The seating of this Member-elect is entirely without prejudice to the contest over the final right to that seat that is pending under the statute and will be reviewed in the ordinary course in the Committee on House Administration.

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Reprinted from The Satirical Political Report http://satiricalpolitical.com

12. Voting for a Democrat results in following message from electronic voting machine: "Your vote did not reach the intended candidate."

11. Alternative message from electronic voting machine: "Due to changes to our Constitution, the vote you requested no longer exists."

10. Alternative alternative message from electronic voting machine: "The page you requested is caucusing with the GOP House Leadership."

9. Mark Foley wins re-election -- in Boystown, USA.

8. Polling places broadcast continuous loop of the "Kerry botched joke."

7. Next to names of Democratic candidates, ballots state: "The terrorists win."

CONTINUED at: http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=392

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