Watching America Vote

Image via WikipediaFor a quick snapshot at what the rest of the world is thinking about our upcoming presidential election, you'll find a fascinating array of articles on msnbc.com's "World Blog" that reflect the hopes, fears, frustrations, selfish wishes, and altruistic dreams for a better world that make me pause to reflect. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26716509 The headlines themselves are telling, surprising, even eye-popping: "Germans Hoping to Get Past 'Bush-fatigue'," "Vietnamese Back McCain," "Neither Candidate Will Be Good for Pakistan," "For China, US Election is Entertaining" (entertaining??!), "Iraqis Say Vote Smells of 'Honey-Promises'" (one of those weird translations, no doubt), "Egyptians Looking for 'Good Side' of America."

We can be certain this will be, as it is among Americans themselves, the most closely-watched of elections. I've been in Washington, DC this week on meetings and it is as fascinating to hear the array of views inside and outside the beltway, as it is to see the America's reflection both inside and outside the country. We've seen very little substantive discussion among Obama and McCain of a broader concept of "the national interest." We get snippets here and there: their views of our national interest in the global financial crisis, Israel, Iraq, Iran, energy policy, mostly talking points and poorly articulated boilerplate designed to enable them to skate over the tough questions. I wonder if, as we as Americans become more embattled economically, socially, politically, a greater sense of the national interest will emerge that can provide us some kind of beacon in troubled times.

But the outcome of the elections in two weeks is only part of what the world is watching. Today's papers note that in Florida, almost a third of the electorate will have voted early in this new kind of in-person absentee voting. And yet there are same problems with our faulty physical voting structure. I hope these problems won't blow up into a new national electoral crisis a la Bush/Gore. My friend in DC -- a high level technology policy expert -- had a clipping of a letter to the editor to a national magazine taped to the back of her kitchen cabinet expressing her view of what happened: two or three highly technologically savvy people monitored the computerized election returns in Ohio. When it became clear Bush would not win a key county, one of these techno-burglars quickly, anonymously, and remotely hacked into the computerized voting system and switched the vote to favor Bush. Of course, my friend the writer went on to point out, this could never be proved, but concluded with optimism that our newly computerized voting systems would be changed to restore our faith in democracy.

I wonder. The problem, of course, is not the computerization, but the lack of a means to double-check results. Basically, the lack of a paper trail. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6530. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled with Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner on Friday, October 17, granting her a stay to a temporary restraining order from a federal appeals court that ordered her to provide a system for implementing voter fraud prevention methods. It's a striking case of the Republicans manipulating the issue for their gain, with the Ohio Republican Party filing the initial suit challenging the state's compliance with the Help America Vote Act, alleging that the state has no system to deal with mismatched voter records.

I suppose we might get through Obama v. McCain without the system blowing up in our faces and into the arms of the Supremes again. But as we watch, and the world watches how American votes, and how America votes, I can only hope that our newly re-engaged electorate will care passionately enough about both results to move forward to a fuller expression of what really works for America.