Election Recap

Well, two days ago we all (READ: 40% of us) cast our votes to determine the future of our nation. I walked into the church at which I vote, marveling for a moment at the complete ineptness of our current voting procedures.

First I walked in and identified myself soley by giving a name, birthdate, and address. I have to provide more information than this to buy my allergy medication. But we can't make people provide voter IDs, because that would cost them money. Money they have to spend if they ever want to drive, buy alcohol, cigarettes, go to a doctor, or be employed by most companies. But we can't require it to vote, cause that'd be a poll tax.

Then the old bitties who run the polling location screwed everything up, because they're old bitties and moderately senile (extremely well-intentioned, but moderately senile nonetheless). Why do the people who work the polling place have to be incapable of running it efficiently? We don't pay them anything to work there, that's why.

Then, while standing in the makeshift polling booth, the wall of it continually crashed on my head while I try to vote, because we can't spend any money on getting decent polling equipment.

Damn, if only we had a ton of money that was raised in relation to these elections. Then we could take a small percentage of that money and use it to subsidize voter IDs, polling place wages, and decent equipment. God let me think...is there any money that gets changed hands during elections?

Oh hey, how about that $117 million that Michigan candidates raised? How about we take 1% of every dollar a candidate raises, and put it towards a general election fund, rather than one more goddamn flyer distribution. (You can get some info on campaign finance at the Michigan Campaign Finance Network. That's where I'm getting my number.)

Dick Devos raised over $40 million for this campaign. That means $40 million was spent to NOT elect a candidate. Add to that all the other candidates who lost, and Michigan alone probably spent over $50 million not electing people. Take that nationally (and assume that only 10 other states spend that much), and over half a billion dollars was just spent to not elect people.

Even if you don't think that our current lack of real campaign finance regulations creates a worse overall government (and it'd be hard for you to convince me of that), I think we can all agree on something: spending $500 million to not accomplish anything is pretty fucking stupid. You wouldn't, for example, spend $500 million dollars to not build a building. Or to not solve poverty. Or to not be able to shoot down a nuclear missile. Wait a minute...

Anyway, if there were any one law I could pass tomorrow it would be that every type of election would have a cap on how much money you could spend on it. $500,000 for congressional elections. $2,000,000 for Senate. So on and so forth.

But all that money did at least accomplish something: we have (for the time being) a Democrat-controlled House and Senate. Woo-hoo! Thank God.

Now we can look forward to a continued lack of direction in our foreign policy, a continued lack of interest in cleaning up corruption, and a continued lack of fiscal responsibilty. I've never been less excited about my team winning something in my life.

But, at the very least, we have a conflicted government now, and that's something. I think the 1994-2000 era was one of the greatest in our government's history, and I credit that largely to them not doing anything in particular. And I'm looking forward to nothing getting done for the next two years.

And if nothing else, this means our country is shifting back towards the center and out of the hands of the crazy religious right, right? Right? It does, doesn't it?

Well, in the words of the The Wolf, let's not start sucking each other's dicks just yet. Especially not while in the bonds of holy matrimony. That's right, another seven states voted to ban gay marriage.

But that's old news here in Michigan, what we're interested in now is affirmative action. Old Prop 2. The only thing on the ballot any of us really felt strongly about (except of course for the doves...lousy goddamn doves).

I don't want to get into an argument on the merits of affirmative action, or into the question of whether or not Prop 2 will affect a whole variety of programs that have nothing to do with affirmative action (although if you want to talk about either, leave a comment and I'm happy to do so).

But I do want to share with you a facebook message a friend of mine received. He had replaced his profile picture with the "NO on Prop 2" logo as many people had. He happens to feel strongly about the issue, as he is an African-American. This is the message a girl sent him this week:

"no on 2 eh??? im a WOMAN and i say YES on 2!!!!! it should be the most qualified person for any position!!!! you must be a nigger"

Now I'm certainly not equating people who voted yes on 2 with this obviously misguided girl (for example, I'm sure most of you don't feel it necessary to use multiple punctuation marks, and also believe in capitalizing the word 'I' and the beginning of a sentence, but I digress). I'm confident that many people voted yes on 2 because they geniunely felt that affirmative action isn't the best way to create equality, and maybe you're right about that. But if you voted yes on 2 because you don't think there's still inequality, I refer you to one of my favorite Chris Rock quotes: "There still ain't a white guy in here who would trade places with me - and I'm rich."