Wizblog

Watching The Voting

I confessed to a slight case of election burnout in my first post back from Wizblog's weeklong forced hiatus. I'm wondering who among us doesn't wish this thing was already over. What I do know is that the last thing anyone wants to hear is one more blogger's opinion one way or the other. Any new visitor to this site could read the last few posts and know that I'm a Bush voter. For the regular reader, I'm a broken record. For months I've planned a "Why I'm Voting For Bush" post, to the point of having two different half-finished drafts in my list of unpublished entries.

If that gets done at this late date, it will be just because I forced myself to go through with the exercise, and for the additional purpose of organizing my own thoughts and justifying my own vote to myself. And of course, to be on the record personally, even if my voice has the same sound as the proverbial tree falling in the abandoned forest. Because I can't seriously entertain the notion that anything I say here and now could have the effect of influencing the vote of another American, much as I might like to do that to the benefit of the President. Are there really undecided voters out there?

I do continue to be awed and humbled each day by reading the words of others though, who are expressing themselves so much more eloquently than I could. And I will continue to try to post the best of those words here for my visitors to read, before and after Tuesday.

I have felt the need to contribute to the Bush campaign in some small way outside of my paltry financial contributions, so I've joined some friends in volunteering to work Election Day as a poll-watcher here in battleground Ohio. I have no idea yet what to expect in that effort, or even exactly where I'll be assigned. We have an organizational meeting on Sunday afternoon where all the details will be discussed, and we get our poll assignments. Reports of attempts at voter fraud by factions supporting Kerry have been numerous here in Ohio, and while I'm skeptical of the efficacy of poll-watchers of any stripe, I am furious at the attempt by the left to undermine the integrity of our electoral system, and willing to do whatever I can to help observe, document, and report the goings-on at polls, if it will help shed light on the problem.

My skepticism is based on my fear that much more "heat" than light will be generated by people who are either party-sponsored or self-appointed poll-watchers on Tuesday. The Democrats have already had their gameplan leaked to the public. That is, make accusations of disenfranchisement, even if there is none going on. Beautiful!

If I feel after the organizational meeting tomorrow that my presence at a voting place Tuesday would be counterproductive, confrontational or really anything beyond observation, I simply won't do it. But I also feel very strongly that voter fraud must be stopped, and it must be done now, before they get any better at it, either through practice or through apathy by the general public.

So tomorrow I'm going to go see what they have in mind for us volunteers to do on Tuesday. Then I'll decide if that squares with my idea of "helping". I'll post Sunday night on what's up.

Posted by dan at October 30, 2004 11:33 PM