Election conspiracies

Being as this is a quiet time (for ten minutes), and I had a brainstorm on a blog to post today, I might as well get to it.

The election is in a little less than 3 weeks, and while I have been back and forth since my last post (on who I was voting for), I am pretty sure that I am going to stick with my decision to vote for Obama. I am going to hold my nose, since while I do see some possibly redeeming features in Obama, in the end he's just another politician being backed by suspect interests, to say the least. But I'm following Noam Chomsky's logic in "endorsing" Kerry in 2004. While there might be little meaningful difference between McCain and Obama (like there was between Bush and Kerry), that little difference can make a big difference to at least a few people, not only here but around the world. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I feel that it's important to vote for Obama, even if you are in a non-battleground state like New York. Part of what dissaudes me in a general election (and why the college needed to be abolished eons ago) is the fact that in the bulk of states, your vote really doesn't count. It's a foregone conclusion in New York, for example, that Obama will win and NY's electoral votes will go to him, just as, say, Georgia will go for McCain (although that even might be in question, since I heard that McCain is struggling to hold onto red states as a result of the certain groundswell of black voters who will be coming out for Obama). The only people whose votes really count are in the "battleground" states. But this year, I still think voting for Obama is important, even in a state like NY, since a decisive win in the popular vote would make it easier for him to implement his agenda, for better or worse.

And, to me, that's where I feel an election conspiracy might come in. I don't have a doubt that electoral fraud takes place in this country, and quite regularly. In 2000, it was Florida, in 2004, it was Ohio, who knows what it'll be this year? And, although the Democrats certainly are guilty of this too, the Republicans have especially been involved in this in a big way, at least lately. And if they try it again this year, I don't think their goal will be to fix it so that McCain gets elected. Obama has too big a lead; a CBS poll broadcasted yesterday had him up by 11points, I think. But I do think their intent behind their fixing the election and throwing out votes (if there is a cabal intending to do that), would be to lower the margin of victory enough so that Obama just squeaks by in a tight race, and can't claim a mandate.

Well, this isn't absolute, Dubya stole the election but that didn't stop him from instituting a far-right agenda as soon as he got into the White House. Just giving my thoughts on a slow night.