Digital Alterity

My heart is with those in London who are injured. My heart is with those all of the UK who are uncertain at this hour whether their loved ones are safe. My heart is with the families of those who were lost to this barbaric act. No matter how illogical it may be. London is my hometown. The city speaks to my heart in a way no other city has. Prior to meeting Allyson, my whole life was one big scheme to get back to London on a more permanent basis.

To all the non-existent Brits who read this journal, know that my thoughts and prayers are with you and yours today.

Today, I am a disgruntled libertarian. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I knew that the presidential election was sure to disappoint me either today (in the case of a Bush victory) or a few months from now (in the case of a Kerry victory). Truth be told, I really don’t care about the presidential race overmuch. Nonetheless, I have had a real pisser of a day today based solely on the horrors of the 2004 elections.

Eleven states passed constitutional amendments prohibiting gay marriage. They have used the power of government to ban certain contracts based solely on a personal attribute of the parties entering into said contract. Millions of born-again Christians(1) apparently have forgotten all about the lions and the crucifixions and have opted to start persecution of their own variety once attaining political power. I have no desire to air my family’s dirty laundry, but believe me when I assure you that if anyone had a legitimate reason to distrust homosexual folks, it’s most certainly me. You know what though? I’ve decided that it’s more important to me to put aside my own scarring experiences in favor of a true Christianity that seeks to love others, spread hope, and generally shun being a royal asshole(2).

Alaska voted down a chance for marijuana legalization. While I’ve never used pot (or even smoked a tobacco cigarette for that matter), I recognize the government’s War on Drugs as a miserable failure that has drained our tax coffers and severely damaged our civil liberties.

Here in Florida, we voted for a minimum wage hike of a dollar over the Federal mandate. Furthermore, our new constitutionally-mandated minimum wage is raised every year to match inflation. Small businesses like the locally-owned grocery store where I got my first high school job simply won’t be able to hire as many folks or provide as many hours to the folks they do hire. I strongly disagree with the assertion that the minimum wage should be a “living wage”. I’m of the firm opinion that you shouldn’t be having children if you’re only earning minimum wage. Perhaps you could take advantage of the billions of dollars in federal education spending to teach yourself a skill that will actually earn you enough to live(3). In fact, the only amendment that didn’t pass here in Florida was an amendment authorizing local officials to tax slot machines in specified venues. What happened? Well, the folks who came out in droves to vote for Bush saw the vice of gambling and voted no in the name of Jesus(4).

Libertarians running in my local area didn’t do so hot either. I am deeply annoyed that people somehow feel more comfortable voting for a Democrat or a Republican even though they haven’t bothered to research any of the candidates. I understand that if the Libertarians can ever hope to make a difference at the top levels of the Federal government, we simply have to start winning at the local level. I equally understand that a controversial presidential election with record (partisan) voter turnout isn’t exactly the best time for a Libertarian to get voted into office, but it’s nonetheless disheartening.

The whole election left me with a sense of hopelessness to be honest. If you’re a socialist, there’s all sorts of wonderful countries you can run to that embrace your political ideals to varying degrees. If you want to live in a theocracy, there’s several options that might fit the bill. What do you do if you’re a liberty-minded individual who wants people to leave you alone? What if you dream of a world where anyone can buy a gun and yet gay people can also get married if they choose to? What if you want smaller, less intrusive government that collects fewer taxes from you with absolutely no income tax/withholding?

I have this nearly uncontrollable urge to move to New Hampshire.

Footnotes

1. A category which I consider myself a part of by the way.
2. I really ought to write an article about being a Christian Buddhist sometime.
3. While I personally have compassion and want to help every single person that’s having trouble, I strongly resist the notion that government is the conduit for that assistance. If you’re hungry and no one will help you, dammit, come to me and I’ll buy you dinner. I’ll try to help you find a better job. I’ll help you study for a GED. I just think that the decision to help should be my personal choice. Enforced morality is worthless. If you only do good out of fear or complacency, then your good deeds are barren and empty.
4. On Thursday, November 5, it turned out that the gambling amendment did end up passing because a computer program in Broward county ended up skewing the vote count after reaching an arbitrary ceiling of 32,000 votes. Upon reaching that figure, the program began decrementing the tally. I consider the passage of this amendment to be a vaguely positive thing, but it does nothing overall to stem my election-induced bitterness.

A recent Rasmussen poll determined that around a third of voters weren’t sure that this year’s presidential election would be fair and that their votes would be accurately counted. In political conversations over the past several months, I’ve heard folks from both of the major political parties grouse about how they wish they had better options with regard to which candidate to support. I’ve heard folks sympathize with the plight of Badnarik, Nader, and Cobb but who are deathly afraid that casting their vote for an alternative-party candidate will help the wrong presidential aspirant to prevail on November 2. I have yet to meet anyone who honestly believes that we’ll have a clear winner in the presidential race when we all wake up on November 3. The system is hopelessly broken, and everyone is so daunted by the immensity of necessary reform that no one is willing to venture more than a tentative solution for how to fix it all. I, in my immodest folly, believe that the following key reforms would put us on the path to true election reform.

Approve and implement instant run-off voting (IRV). If you only take one bit of information from this article, I beg that it be this particular proposal. A large part of why there’s never any real change in Washington is because we keep sending the same type of people. Neither political party feels a particular pressure to visualize any real form of change because they’re one of only two options that people currently believe that they have. In close elections, people are just plain intimidated into voting for a candidate that doesn’t at all match their political views. Wouldn’t it be far better if you could list your top three candidates in order of preference?

IRV is actually quite simple and is easy enough for even children to understand. Each person gets to select and rank his top three choices for an office. Initially, first-preference votes are counted—just as they are now. However, if no candidate receives a majority (i.e. 50% of the vote), then we eliminate the last place candidate (i.e. the candidate receiving the fewest first-preference votes). For each person who voted for the now eliminated candidate, we now count their second choice. In the unlikely event that a person doesn’t now have a clear majority, we can do the same for the third round.

Why is IRV superior to a traditional run-off election? First and foremost, it saves taxpayer money. All second- and third-choice votes are collected at the same time as first preference votes without a need for another costly day of paying poll workers, providing increased police presence, and operating buildings. Another key positive is that there’s no difference in voter turnout. Historically, run-off races only draw a much smaller percentage of the electorate, leading to a much less compelling mandate.

So, you see, it is very possible to envision a system wherein you can vote for Nader without taking a vote away from Kerry. In fact, it’s not only possible but insanely easy.

Abolish the Electoral College in favor of a popular vote. I’ve actually fought with myself a fair bit on this one. I understand that the Electoral College is what keeps politicians interested in less-populated states, and I also understand the advantages that current system affords with regard to giving a clear winner in the presidential races(1). Nonetheless, I’m also willing to accept that the founding fathers weren’t mathematicians and didn’t understand the scale that their system would eventually be coping with. As the system currently stands, a voter in Wyoming is worth 2.6 times more than a voter in Pennsylvania due to the incorrect correlation between population and electoral votes, as cited by David S. Bennahum. In fact, Bennahum is even willing to provide you the numbers he calculated in an Excel spreadsheet to back up his analysis. Furthermore, only a small number of states actually are getting visits from the presidential candidates these days anyway—the so-called “swing states”(2). The nation ceased to be a series of independent states circa the end of the Civil War in 1865. It’s time that we formalized that notion by doing away with the concept of state-elected electors.(3)

Force the second-place presidential candidate to be the vice-president for the winner. Like a large number of folks here in the States, I occasionally get really depressed by the highly partisan and segmented notion of discourse in this country. It seems that folks are content to just have dialogues amongst those who agree with them ideologically, only responding to those with different views with venomous retorts often lacking in logic and depending on harsh emotionalism to make their “point”. I am likewise frustrated with the highly partisan nature of actually handling business up in Washington. Congress tends to vote along party lines, and the executive branch is full of appointments that skew in the particular ideological direction that the elected president goes into office with. True change is extremely unlikely when the only voices you hear are those with whom you implicitly agree. Furthermore, the winner-take-all nature of the presidential election leaves nearly half of the country feeling unrepresented in one branch of the government. As such, I think that a return to the original policy of making the second-place candidate the vice-president may be in order. Immediately, each administration becomes an exercise in coalition building and, at the very least, ensures that president must listen to at least one voice representing a contrary opinion. In addition, the vast majority of Americans will feel that they genuinely have a voice in all branches of government.

Provide a national system of electronic voting with a verifiable paper trail “receipt”. Ellis Henican provides the most apropos juxtaposition of the year when he points to ATMs as an example of how voting should work. No one questions the accuracy of their ATM transactions each day. We are confident that when we pull twenty dollars out of the machine that the money will be faithfully deducted from our account balance. In fact, we are so trusting of ATMs that when we get an unexpected result from the machine—perhaps we’re told that our balance is too low to accommodate the withdrawal—we tend to question our own notion of what we’ve spent before we question the accuracy of the machine. Furthermore, each transaction is backed by two paper trails—the user gets a paper receipt and the machine itself also prints to a paper tape for the bank. Electronic voting would allow for instant, accurate counts with the added possibility of a manual recount if it were somehow required. This notion also eliminates this issue about which precinct you’re allowed to vote in since—much like an ATM—you’d be able to access your information from any machine that connects to the voting network and obtain a ballot specific to you and your locality.

As with most processes, not having the correct tools for a given task can lead to a lack of confidence in the process itself. I encounter this nearly every day in my job as a computer programmer. Feelings that an overall process is out of a person’s control are indicative of a problem within the system itself. The only way to improve confidence and faith in a previously broken system is to find and systematically eliminate the problems and bottlenecks that prohibit the smooth running of said system. The electoral process can be fixed, and the solutions outlined provide a better scenario than maintaining the status quo. If you’re content to deceive yourself into believing that doing the same thing over and over will somehow yield spectacularly different results, you’re only setting yourself up for sure disappointment.

Footnotes

1. Even in the instance of Florida in 2000, there’s not any real traction to the complaint that Gore was the true winner. From a Constitutional law perspective, there’s not any dispute at all about who won the election. George W. Bush won the election because he won the Electoral College. As the system currently stands, the popular vote doesn’t even need to occur. Electors are not even compelled to follow the whims of the populace. If you’re upset about Bush winning the 2000 election, then for the love of God, go out and vote for someone else in the 2004 election. If there’s a big enough margin, then a faithless elector would cause massive rioting in the streets. And I could use one of those plasma TVs, dammit.
2. A bit of nomenclature that scars me mentally by making me visualize an entire state full of middle-aged naked people swapping spouses.
3. I know damned well that, barring national crisis, this is highly unlikely to happen at any time approaching “soon”. I can’t imagine the smaller states being willing to go along with this at a Constitutional convention, so the likelihood of getting two-thirds approval is about the same as…well…the Red Sox winning the World Series. It’s a record year for small but non-zero chances by my reckoning.

This al Qa Qaa munitions issue stinks. I’m quickly becoming convinced that we’re not getting the full story here from anyone involved.

CNN/NBC/Drudge are reporting today that the munitions were already gone by the time that the troops arrived on-site. CNN is running with this information based on reports from an embedded NBC news crew—a news crew without training in weapons inspection. Also, as Josh Marshall notes, how did the Iraqis managed to sneak out this quantity of material while the US had the area under a blanket of surveillance leading up to the first strikes of the war? How did a convoy of trucks (which this amount of material would have required) sneak past our intelligence? To be perfectly honest, even if the administration’s/NBC’s story is correct and the munitions were already gone from the site before we headed in, I consider that a big enough intelligence failure to vote this administration out of office. When paired with the conflicting responses to the issue from various administration sources on Monday, the issue doesn’t seem so easily wrapped up with a convenient dismissive bow.

Nonetheless, the conservatives have their share of valid points. Rush Limbaugh played an intriguing Kerry clip from the debates. Kerry rather interestingly says that the administration didn’t do an adequate job protecting munitions dumps. With just a cursory glance, it sure seems that Kerry could have known this story was coming down the pipeline. The timing on this issue hitting the major media is curious in and of itself. With just a week before the election, this story could have a major impact. Could this possibly be the “October surprise” from the Kerry camp? Or could this even be a Karl Rove dirty trick to make it look like the Democrats and the “liberal media” are after them?

I’m convinced that there’s more to this story than we’re currently getting. I’m particularly wary of attempts to rapidly explain the issue and get it out of the public discourse. If the administration truly isn’t culpable in this matter, then surely it won’t hurt to dig a little deeper into the issue.

Earlier today, I had the distinct pleasure of reading the lawsuit that Andrea Mackris brought against Bill O’Reilly. It made for delightfully raunchy reading. I couldn’t possibly care whether it’s true or not because I’m thoroughly entertained by it even if it’s a work of morbid fiction. As just one example…

During the course of their dinner in early May 2002, Defendant Bill O’Reilly proceeded, without solicitation or invite, to inform plaintiff Andrea Mackris that he had advised another woman to purchase a vibrator, and had taught that woman how to masturbate while telling her sexual stories over the telephone. O’Reilly told plaintiff Andrea Mackris she knew the woman from Fox. Defendant O’Reilly then boasted that the woman had her first orgasm via masturbation as he spoke to her on the telephone.

Who’s lookin’ out for you?

Well, I managed to beat the Elite Four’s first manifestation in Pokémon Leaf Green tonight. I had no right to beat the game, having team of monsters that were lower than level fifty, and I essentially won the game on strategy. My team?

Ness (Lapras). Ice Beam, Surf, Thunderbolt, and Confuse Ray.

Bunny (Slowbro). Surf, Psychic, Amnesia, and Strength (absolute filler move, that).

Hemlock (Venusaur). Synthesis, Leech Seed, Sleep Powder, and Razor Leaf.

Pinku (Clefable). Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Cosmic Power, and Moonlight.

Firefox (Ninetales). Will-o-Wisp, Flamethrower, Roar, and Confuse Ray.

Ryu (Machamp). Cross Chop, Rock Slide, Earthquake, and Seismic Toss.

I’m especially amazed by how they managed to take out my rival Garth’s Charizard that had a fifteen-level advantage. Next step: unlock the ability to trade with Ruby/Sapphire/Colosseum.

Last night, being sad and boring people, Allyson and I watched a replay of the 1992 town hall debate between Perot, Bush, and Clinton on CSPAN. I was thinking to myself that I was being overly critical of the first presidential debate between Bush and Kerry, but the comparison to the previous debate proved that assumption entirely untrue. All of the participants in the 1992 debates seemed completely on top of their game. Scarcely a word was out of place in each of their responses. For all their vaunted debating skills, Bush and Kerry both put on an extremely lackluster yawnfest this week. Hopefully the next two will have a little more zing and poignant repartee—or at least a few cogent points wrapped in coherent thought.

I got this month’s issue of Nintendo Power in the mail today, and I was excited to see that Nintendo is expanding the line of classics for the Game Boy Advance. I’ll be picking up both Castlevania and Zelda 2 nearly immediately, and I’ve already been lusting after Square Enix’s remakes of Final Fantasy 1 and 2, which has been scheduled for a November release. Particularly satisfying is the fact that nearly all of the games being released this time were games that I selected when asked by Nintendo to participate in a survey. I understand that I was just one participant that happened to be in the statistical majority, but the illusion that my opinion matters thrills me to no end.

That probably explains why I was so thrilled to find that my voter’s registration card had arrived by mail when we limped into Gainesville on Saturday night. After eight years of living in Gainesville and seven years of living in Gainesville for twelve months of the year, I finally got around to switching my voter’s registration to Alachua County. Rather than driving a 150-mile round trip to go vote, I can instead walk down the street. I’m amazed by the convenience of it all because I’m used to having to make an epic quest to go “throw my vote away” on a third-party candidate.

For what it’s worth, I also officially defected from the Republican party and became a Libertarian. If the Republican party were truly the party of the moderates they trotted out during the convention, then I might actually belong there. Right now, though, the current crew seems hell bent on increasing the size of government and getting further involved in telling people how to run their lives—essentially my polar opposite.

The question is officially settled now. In the Presidential election this year, I’m going to be voting for Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party. Allyson and I happened to catch a replay of the third-party presidential debates on CSPAN last night, and both of us were kind of blown away. It’s refreshing to find a candidate that accurately reflects your views. In his closing statement, Badnarik struck a chord in my chaotic good heart by reminding the audience that in voting for the lesser of two evils, one is still voting for evil.

And, no, I’m not afraid that in voting for a third-party candidate that I’m somehow helping Bush to victory. The truth is that if I weren’t able to vote my conscience by voting for a third party candidate, I wouldn’t be voting. My vote isn’t being taken away from the Democrats or the Republicans. The fact is that they’ve done precious little to earn it. I want smaller government with less intrusion into our daily lives. Neither major party is working toward that currently.

The news is buzzing today about several members of Congress sending a letter to the Secretary General of the UN requesting UN observers be present to ensure the integrity of the election. Rush Limbaugh was all fired up about this today, and I’ve read more than my fair share of Internet comments from the usual tin-foil hat crowd. Perhaps I’m just a liberal internationalist, but I just can’t come up with any concern about this. I’d go so far as to say that I’m thrilled to have outside observers performing the watchdog role that the American media seems unwilling to actively pursue. If the point of our elections is truly to elect a government that is representative of its people, then why should anyone object to several forms of independent observation/verification?

In the past several days, I have heard far too many reporters and talk radio personalities comparing our sitting president to Ronald Reagan. While the art of comparison and juxtaposition is certainly valid, I find that an astonishingly high percentage of these comparisons end with Bush being portrayed in a satisfactory light when held up to the Reagan ruler. I watched Ronald Reagan. I grew up with Ronald Reagan. I admired Ronald Reagan. Mr. President, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan rolled into office with two landslide victories. In fact, his 1984 forty-nine-state re-election ass-beating of Mondale is a feat that will be tough to re-create anytime soon in the current political climate. Reagan connected with the American people in a way that George W. seems unable to grasp. If President Bush truly wants to summon the power of Reagan, he’ll pay close attention to the following lessons that Reagan’s presidency can still teach.

Be optimistic. Leaders must take an active role in setting the tone of any discussion. The administration and the country as a whole tend base a great deal of their general holistic opinion of how the country is doing on the subtext of their president’s speeches. Reagan approached each situation, including difficult ones like the Challenger disaster, with a tone of calm assured confidence. I think that the War on Terror is currently missing that insistent assertion that it’s all going to work out fine. In fact, the current system of color-based warnings and constant “Al Queda might strike soon” soothsaying from administration officials actively work to counteract popular confidence by creating an environment of uncertainty and a feeling that things are never going to get better.

Choose your words carefully. I understand that Mr. Bush and his public relations folks are trying to portray him as a down-to-earth man of the people, the sort of guy you could sit down and have a beer with after work. However, it’s inadvisable to break the mystique that surrounds the American presidency in doing so because it also makes you seem to be less of a leader and undermines the core assertion of the presidential election—namely that we elect our best and brightest to represent us on the global stage. Reagan brought an actor’s presence and diction to the microphone every time he spoke. Every word was carefully crafted by an army of speech writers and was delivered with just the right balance of sincerity and logic. Every strange pronunciation of “nuclear” and error in subject-verb agreement undermines the actual message that you might be trying to express. It might help President Bush to think of himself as an actor playing the role of the ideal President and indeed the ideal American. There’s more than a little truth in that viewpoint.

Take responsibility for your mistakes. When the Iran Contra scandal started to take root in the dominant media, Reagan gave a speech to the American people. In this speech, he claimed full responsibility for the actions of the individuals comprising his administration since he was the man ostensibly in charge. Colloquially, the buck stopped with him because he was the leader. I must admit that I’m getting a little fed up with Bush’s current modus operandi with the media in which he denies obvious missteps and miscalculations by those in his administration and continues to praise folks who seem to have made those missteps and miscalculations. The American people are consistently forgiving of mistakes once admitted. In fact, both Reagan and Clinton serve as excellent testaments to this fact. Continuing to deny the errors, however, makes the media insistently negative and the general populace less confident in your ability as a leader.

Communicate your vision with both words and actions. Reagan was insistent that the best way to end the Cold War was to increase defense spending until the Soviet command economy just couldn’t keep up. While not everyone in American agreed with that point, it was rarely misrepresented. In contrast, several voices on the other side of the aisle insist that the Iraq War was about oil. If Bush’s goal in Iraq really is that a free and democratic Iraq will serve as a proverbial City on a Hill, lighting the Middle East with Western principles, then he’s doing a poor job explaining that point to the American public. When you leave your actions underexplained, you leave yourself open to misinterpretation. It’s remarkably easy to believe that a war is about controlling oil supply when a clear vision hasn’t been communicated in advance by the leader whose administration is waging that war. Uncertainty allows one’s opposition to fill in the waiting blanks. Was the Iraq War an exercise in enforcing the UN’s resolutions, disarming terrorist sympathizers, shoring up oil supply for economic gain, controlling the spread of nuclear/biological/chemical weapons, liberating an enslaved population, or throwing down the gauntlet in front of other terrorist states? If you have a clear and consistent vision, one explanation should present itself most readily. Pick that explanation, learn to state it in simple yet elegant terms, and then stump on that every time you’re asked. Inconsistency seems too much like changing your story when convenient, and dodging questions from reporters seems too much like you have something to hide.

I’m sick unto death of hearing this constant diatribe about “Red and Blue states”. George W. Bush led the campaign trail and started his presidency with a claim that he would be a uniter and not a divider. In this regard, he has no better teacher than Reagan’s mannerisms and legacy. If he is truly intent on donning the Reagan mantle, then he still has a lot of convincing to do amongst the Reagan Democrats and the Clinton Republicans and a whole slew of lessons to apply in his own political life.