Poll Madness and Vote Counting

On this, the day before the US elections, the overwhelming focus is on the trends in the polls.

There's the Gallup poll which has the Dems up by 7%.

There's the Pew poll (.pdf) which shows a squeaker as well.

There's the Washington Post - ABC News poll with the Dems up by 10%.

Meanwhile, Ken Mehlman is breaking out the champagne as he predicts 'major gains' for his GOP.

But, no matter what the polls say, what really matters are these two things: voter turnout and the reliability of those flawed voting machines. As The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel points out the solutions to those problems are fairly simple. The political will to enact them, however, is missing.

Beyond all of the corrupt politicians, the sleazy attack ads, the lies told by the candidates, the endless talking points that make your eyes glaze over, the hypocrisy, the endless, pointless arguments, the focus on minutae, the mindless cheerleading the most vital concern of all Americans ought to be that their votes are correctly counted. Yet, that is often the thread that plays very quietly in the background while politicians pound their chests about how great America's democratic system supposedly is. If they actually had faith in the people, they would make damn sure that every one of their constituents votes is recorded properly, with paper copies available for review. Even voters in banana republics have that option. Yet the most powerful country in the world fails continually to be accountable to all of its voters and the majority of those voters continue to put up with it.

Why?

It doesn't matter what today's polls say about tomorrow's election. If the US government cannot guarantee that votes will be counted as entered, all the polls in the world that place one party's chances ahead of another's mean nothing.