Election Integrity - Best Vision I've Seen Yet

By James Strait via Mark Crispin Miller.

Machines, software, and all esoteric voting methods and procedures are forever incompatible with transparency of process. Transparency being defined as a process where the average literate voting citizen may be randomly culled from the population and then be able to perform any function within the elections process.

That is my standard…and it is a hard sell because it is simple. Modern people have come to believe that sophisticated equals complex and shiny, when in reality elegant processes are always a function of accomplishing specified work with the fewest actions.

Jim James Strait

www.straittalks.com
www.weirdmissouri.com
www.wifi1460AM.com
www.wnjc1360.com
www.VoiceoftheVoters.com

As a consultant who does process redesign for a living, I couldn't agree more.

Alright People - What are We Going to Do About This?

I am disturbed thinking about what this means:

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - A gunman barricaded the back door of a community center with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class Friday, killing 13 people before apparently committing suicide, officials said.

Investigators said they had yet to establish a motive for the massacre, which was at least the fifth deadly mass shooting in the U.S. in the past month alone(emphasis mine).

The 5th? Really? I am so angry at such a wide swath of people for inciting such violence. The political parties have gotten so mean and vile (and I *do* blame the Republicans more than the Democrats on this one), calling each other traitors, communists, evil-doers, and generally whipping their "followers" into hate-filled frenzies. Some of Palin's crap in that last election is unforgivable.

• I am angry with the greedy bastards who pillaged the country for as much money as they could get their filthy little hands on, which has caused so much hardship for so many people.
• I am angry that people suffering from the resulting hardship are looking for easy blame, rather than trying to genuinely understand what happened, and prevent it going forward.
• I am angry at politicians and media organizations who hope to get benefits, ratings, and votes from dumbing-down their rhetoric and giving people easy, largely false answers.
• I am angry with spineless Democrats who are more interested in their own stupid careers, than making the hard choices that might make a difference.
• And finally, I am angry that people see violence as a way out. What the hell is happening out there that murder and death seem preferable to any kind of life? Have we been that desensitized to violence or have we, as a society, just ceased to give our citizens anything to live for?

I hate to feel this way. We have to fix it.