So Trump prevailed! I wasn’t planning on staying up for the
results, and I didn’t. However, my wife did and I was woke up at around 3am to
be told that Trump had won and Hillary conceded. My reaction can be summed up
in one word – relieved. Relieved
that the corrupt Clintons wouldn’t be in the White House. I’m not sure I could
take another 4 – 8 years of a president I could never trust or respect. So good
for Trump!
Now I’m not usually a cup half full kind of guy. However,
there are things that really bother me about this election. The simple fact is
that nearly half or more of the ballots cast were for an incredibly corrupt
individual. That means that
statistically, about every other people that you see today thought that was a
good idea. But perhaps am I overstating it. Let’s be rational and do some math.
According to Google, there are about 319 million people in
the US. 24% of them are under 18, so that leaves about 243 million voting age
adults. About 0.7% are in jail, leaving 241 million or so eligible to vote. There
are 11 million illegal immigrants, and assuming 24% of them are not of voting
age that leaves another 8 million you can subtract from the voting public, so
you would have around 233 million voters. Round that down by 3 million to take
off people who are dying, have Alzheimer’s, or are otherwise understandably not
going to the polls and you have around 230 million people. However, only about
118 million votes were cast last night. That means only 51% of the people
voted, leaving 24.5% voting for each candidate.
Give4n that, out of the four people you wait in line with at
the coffee shop, two of them are yawning and wondering what all the fuss is about
because, for whatever reason, they didn’t bother voting yesterday. My guess is
they looked up from their lives just in time to realize that once again they
had forgotten to register to vote. I’m like that too, so I can kind of
understand the mentality. You can probably pick them out because they will be
the ones saying ‘Aw, both of the candidates were crap! I’m wasn’t going to vote
for either one of them’. Only one of the four people standing in that line with
you voted for the Hidabeast. They are probably the one being real quiet and
they probably has a big frown on their face.
For those reading this that were paying attention, up
there at the beginning of this I said ‘votes cast’. I didn’t say 'voters'. Yes,
that was purposeful. You see, this election, like the last two, was frightening
for me. Suppose for a second that there are say nine people in that line, five of them didn’t vote, and there is one old sourpuss and four of you foolishly
grinning at each other. We would then have to wonder where all those extra
votes came from, and why those other guys in line are grinning thinking they
helped their guy win? It’s a little scary, no?
So that’s where I am this morning. I am happy that Trump
won. I really hope that with a majority in the house and senate, he can undo a
lot of the mess that Obama will leave behind. However, there is still those two
other grinning guys and one old sourpuss to worry about, because there is a
real problem when the numbers don’t make sense and reality doesn’t match the mathematical
facts.
Now is the time for us to really take a good hard look at
our election system. Notice I didn’t say process. Process is set down by laws
and the constitution, and seems to be pretty reasonable and fair. No, I am speaking
about the system that we use to cast,
collect, and tally our votes – the machinery of the voting. My belief is that
it, like much of our nation’s infrastructure it is falling apart. It is on the
very brink of crumbling at our feet and demonstrably open to compromise. I
suspect, given the almost even outcome and the dreadful Democratic candidate,
that much of it is already compromised. We are poised on an abyss here. We can
pretend the problem doesn’t exist and in the next, or the next election, we
will fall headlong into a benevolent dictatorship where all the votes are
counted and always come out the way that our government wants. That, or we can
do something about it. Something to think very seriously about on the day after
the Election Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment