This is my first ever diary entry so please no flames
There are so many hopes that I've had dashed by the Senator's loss, that I don't want to forget that there is no way to check the machines. I've been writing software for over thirty years and after reading the studies on electronic voting machines I can state that our first priority is to demand that voting be transparent: require a paper trail from all voting machines, do not allow any private software to tabulate our votes, the public must have complete access to all aspects of our voting system. The odd pattern of exit polling being much more in error only in those states that didn't have paper trails is disquieting but without recourse
After consoling my son, who in his first ever election, saw his candidate go down to defeat and the man that his parents reviled for the last 5 years returned to our White House (yes we even hated him when he was campaigning). I've decided that reading blogs is informative but can also be an echo chamber of our own making.
I'm going down and joining a political party for the first time in my life, I've been an independent since I went to college because I always assumed that I could chose the best from either party. I no longer have any congruence with Republicans or their platform. The Democrats are now Americas last best hope for the forseeable future. Next I'm going to read George Lakhoff's books on the semantics of framing our arguments and I'm going to spend the next two years getting ready for the next elections. I'm lucky to be a Left Coast refugee whose state's (Oregon) democratic hold on government is improving. I'll increase my letter writing to my Democratic congressman and make sure that our newly re-elected Democratic Senator is similarly informed. Its not much but if we all do it...?
We have been defeated, we have not been beaten