The Second Storm: Election Day

It's less than a week now until election day dawns.

It may be a long day from that dawn until the election process ends.  There may be places still without electricity on November 6, and voting there will have to be postponed.  Or there may be lots of challenges and lots of "provisional ballots".  (That's a fancy word for "You really think your vote is going to count?")  By law in some states the provisional ballots and some absentee ballots can't be counted for a while.  Quite a while.

Or it may be really close in some states, and we will have lots of recounts, with the GOP bringing in buses of Congressional staffers to pound on the doors and demand the vote counting stop, as they did in 2000.  Do you remember that?  I'll never forget it.  It was America gone to the brown shirts.

Or maybe there will be hanging chads?  Or butterfly ballots?  Remember those?

Well, you say, surely no chads.  They use electronic machines now.  Yeah.  And no paper trail in some jurisdictions.  As for butterfly ballots, the same Florida jurisdiction that created the butterfly nightmare in 2000 through the incompetence of a locally-elected amateur has now produced a misprinted ballot wherein the stuff doesn't line up.

To paraphrase Robert Frost, the old darling, "Something there is in Florida that doesn't love an election."  Or doesn't love a fair one.

There will be self-appointed "monitors" sent by the GOP to challenge voters at the polls.  "Vigilantes" is what the New York Times is calling them.

There will also be 10,000 attorneys ready for action.  Unsurprisingly half will be in Florida.  I think they should be in Ohio.

Ohio.  Ohio.  Ohio.  It's all in Ohio.  He who takes Ohio wins, especially if he is Obama.  (But I'm not explaining that again.)

And my hunch is that the GOP will pull every outrageous trick in the book to keep Obama from winning Ohio.  Romney will not go lightly into that dark night.

So, brace yourselves, folks.  The storm of October 29 may be nothing as compared to the one on November 6.

Gosh, I hope I'm wrong.

                                                               *****************

Hey, Mitt!  You've hung on to those tax returns.  But it's never too late, old boy.  No. I take that back.  It is too late.  For all intents and purposes, the cake is baked.  The goose is cooked.  And I truly believe that the goose that's cooked is you.  And you cooked the goose yourself with those tax returns.  Plus 47 other stupid, smarmy things you said and did.  SO LONG, MITT!  And  -  no!  -  it has not been good to know you.  Not..... at...... all.