Cracked Window

Post-election observations keep washing over me, none more powerful than this: democracy worked when I had lost faith in it.

The doubt was well-founded, I continue to believe, but today I’ve never felt better about the country. I’ll feel even better when the sins of the last eight years are reversed and daunting problems confronted. Honest and tough leadership combined with pragmatic solutions will carry us a long way. And President-elect Obama’s victory speech was a paragon of sober leadership.

Before Obama won, I was so caught up in the race that I failed to anticipate how his victory would affect people. The scenes on television stunned me in the best possible way. A phone call from my youngest brother and his wife moved me even more. My brother, not the most emotive guy and never one to get caught up in politics, had tears streaming down his face, his wife said.

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Sometimes I look at things too simply. Take, for example, U.S.-style elections. Because we live in a democracy, the people decide who gets elected to make the big decisions that affect our lives. Therefore conducting free and fair elections should be the most efficient and effective thing we do as a nation.

Oh silly me. In truth, no other western democratic nation makes it so difficult for people to both register and vote. Waiting ten hours in line then getting turned away is hardly democratic. Same for having too few voting machines at too few precincts. And then there’s the issue of voting machine reliability and registration problems.

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Four years ago on Election Day, I saw the face of voter intimidation. It belonged to a tall thick-chested man standing outside the elections office in Portland. He glowered at the people waiting in line, looking them over head to toe. He was among Republicans dispatched to “protect” us against voter fraud.

Of course there is no widespread voter fraud in the United States. Investigations galore, including a bipartisan congressional inquiry, have proved this again and again. Yet Republicans across the country fraudulently hype the non-existent problem to divert attention from their systematic attempts to block voting by people likely to choose Democrats.

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No presidential election has consumed my life like this one. And it will soon be over, creating an emotional and intellectual gap that I’m not sure how I’ll fill. What will I read about incessantly? What will I talk about with family and friends?

All signs point to Barack Obama winning. Unless something momentous happens in the campaign’s waning days, a nagging fear of many Obama supporters. We can’t be blamed for paranoia, considering that this quest look impossible less than a year ago and the recent mob-mentality bile spewing from the other side.

Barring a tragedy so unthinkable that I won’t put it to words, the election is all but over. The biggest question is whether the United States can still hold a fair and free election. And that’s a fear that I never thought I’d have regarding my country.

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After reading this account of programming errors plaguing touchscreen voting machines in Ohio, can anyone have any confidence in a free and fair election? Too bad the story doesn’t detail if there’s any pattern to the dropped votes. For example, how do they correlate to the party registration of voters whose ballots aren’t counted?

And why is any electronic voting allowed anywhere in the United States when it’s not proven to be fail safe? And to think that some states don’t require a backup paper trail. Oregon has its share of problems but holding reputable elections isn’t one of them.

Once upon a time, we lived in a democracy.