Finally, this past Saturday, four whole days after the election, Florida was called for Obama.
This is, of course, after waiting nine hours to vote, some voters finally leaving the polls at 1:00 in the morning.
Say nothing of over 340,000 ballots yet to be counted in Arizona, of course (unsurprisingly, many of those votes were cast in infamous Maricopa County).
This is in addition to instances of voter suppression and intimidation, from voter i.d. laws that had to be struck down to SCOTUS poised to possibly strike-down the heart of the Voting Rights Act.
An Oregon poll worker was fired for allegedly changing ballots, filling-in blanks with Republican candidates.
In some areas, Dems were told to vote in the wrong place.
Voting machines switched votes, as voters watched, from Obama votes to Romney.
Flyers were mailed to Ohio voters, giving not only the wrong precinct information (do people not proofread???), but the wrong election date.
I could go on, but the point is made. For all of our bluster about freedom and democracy, we're not that good at running elections. Waiting in line until 1:00 in the morning is not something a Secretary of State should be proud of. The fact that votes were being counted almost a week or more than a week after the election is something to be ashamed of. I hate to quote Aaron Sorkin, but he's right in this fictitious TV speech:
And with a straight face, you're going to tell students that America's so starspangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.
Until we get our shit together as "the world's foremost democracy" maybe we should STFU about it. I understand a little mayhem; it's one day where all of a sudden a bazillon people all show up to do the same thing. But my heavens, some of this shit is
orchestrated.
I submit to you, in case you forgot, PA House Majority Leader Michael Turzai:
Let's get our shit together and have serious conversations about how we get people to vote, about how we encourage people to vote, about non-partisan redistricting, about voter registration.
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