Florida, Really???

I am going to assume that most of you are like me and are ecstatic that the Presidential Election is over.  I had written an article a couple months back on how the election process has been ruined for me, because it had become too darn personal.  I will admit that the two guys I supported (Romney and Brown) did not win, but two of the three ballot questions went the way I voted.  Was I bitter that President Obama won re-election? Nope.  Will I respect him as Commander-in-Chief? Yep.  Will I voice my displeasure's with him or Senator-Prof. Warren if I feel they have made a mistake, ABSOLUTELY!  But this is not what this article is about.

Last Thursday during lunch I had turned on the news, I think it was CNN, and there was the story of how Florida had still not completed their counting.  For some reason that story just set me off, and I can't even explain why, but I will try.  The fact that Florida is once again a story at election time absolutely aggravates me. For twelve years there have been issues with this state come election time, and it does not look like it is going to get better.  We only know of twelve years of issues because that is when it finally became a national issue.  Seriously, what in the world is going on down there?  Why can't they get it right?  There are a lot of factors that are being blamed for it this time around and I say they are all hogwash.  There is no reason for it other than incompetence.

Courtesy of theweek.com

People blame that the ballot was too long.  Well boo-hoo.  Ballot measures and other elections are going on at that same time and if you didn't know that, that's your fault.  If you only went to vote for President then to be honest you shouldn't be voting anyway.  I was able to pull up the ballot on-line and look at and I am assuming your state department sent out mailers with what was on the ballot, and possibly what it looked like.  It wasn't too long, you just didn't care about the other voting measures.

People said the ballot was too confusing.  This one may have some legs but it’s not an excuse.  I am in the camp of if you can't read English you shouldn't be voting, but I was swayed when I talked to my mom (An Italian Immigrant like myself), and she said that she didn't vote on the ballot questions because when reading English she sometimes mixes up the words and she didn't want to vote against what she truly believed in.  But at least she tried.  But that is a different argument for a different day.  The Florida ballot had three languages, English, Spanish and French Creole'. So this goes back to my previous point, if you really care about the elections you would have found a way to get informed on the ballot.

No wonder it takes so long to count!

Lastly, was the early voting was too short, what???  I'm sorry that Election DAY is an inconvenience for you but you had an additional eight days prior to the election to vote, that's not enough???  I but if there was a 75% sale at Target those people would have made time in their day to get to it, or if the iPhone 14 was going on sale that day there would be no issues.  Are you kidding me, too short??? There is no Federal Law determining that Election Day has to be the first Tuesday after the First Monday in November.  In 1845, it was established to aid farmers and church goers and to avoid winter weather.  Now, early voting back then made sense because it would normally take a day for voters to get to the polls, but to say that you don't have enough time eight days out is just lazy.

So now comes the real issue, why does counting take so long?  If it's such an issue then they need to start planning now for 2016 on how to be more efficient in their counting.  Even the Supreme Court, in Gore v. Bush in 2000 did not have faith in their counting abilities.  The decision, which there were two of, and is usually misrepresented, stated that Florida should be able to continue the recount.  But the decision in which ended the election was that had to have it done by the deadline (essentially the next day).  All that decision said was "Sorry Florida, you ran out of time".

If any of you follow me on social media you may have seen me pop a brain vessel last week over this subject.  My true aggravation about this is really that the debacle in 2000 is true reason for the division in the United States.  It wasn't Pres. Bush, it wasn't Pres. Obama and it wasn't the Democrats or Republicans, they just added fuel to the fire.  It was the recount in Florida.  Thankfully this time, the results did not factor in the decision.  Florida, get cracking, you have four years to try to get it right.

3D

If you don't take it from me, ask my wife.