No brainer.............................

 

                more fun here

I unplugged...........................

 

...................................a long time ago.

If only it was that simple..............

 

via

No worries......................

 To worry that the American electorate will be mislead by AI in any way that worsens political outcomes is akin to worrying that a man drowning in the Pacific ocean will be made worse off by the sudden appearance of a small rain shower off the coast of California.

-Don Boudreaux, from here  

Early voting has started........................

They make it really easy.   Visited the Board of Elections in downtown Newark this afternoon and cast my votes. Took less than five minutes; ends up with an actual paper ballot, printed out with your votes, that you get to post. Contests on the ballot include two constitutional amendments, school board seats, and the City Council-At-Large positions.  About twenty fellow citizens were participating at the same time I was there.  That is about 19 more than usual for this time of year.  Hmmm..............

Ohio is voting on......................

 

............a proposed amendment to our State's constitution.  The question being asked in this special election (it is the only issue on the ballot) is should we make it more difficult to amend the constitution.  The amendment would raise the threshold for passage of a constitutional amendment from 50.01% to 60%.   Reasonable people might conclude that it should be difficult to amend a constitution.  Reasonable people might also conclude that the Ohio legislature has a history of embarrassing itself, and we the people deserve the right to pull on their chain from time to time.  My recommendation would be, if you are eligible, vote.  The process, at least in Licking County, is painless and easy.  Vote.

an intensifying reaction.............

   It was not the same Paris that he had known in the crowd-ruled days of '92 and '93.  Ever since the fall of Robespierre in '94 the capital had followed the countryside in an intensifying reaction—religious and political—against the Revolution.  Catholicism, led by nonjuring priests, was regaining its hold upon a people that had lost belief in an earthly substitute for supernatural hopes and consolations, for sacraments, ceremonies, and processional holydays.  The decadi, or decimal day of rest, was increasingly ignored; the Christian Sunday was flagrantly respected and enjoyed.  France was voting for God.

-Will & Ariel Durant, The Age of Napoleon, describing Paris in 1797

Licking County makes it........................

...........ridiculously easy to vote early.  Go vote.

An early disbelief in democracy..........

      The word "aristocracy" tends to be used rather loosely.  In the modern world, it is calculated by multiplying wealth by snobbery.  During the early republic, on the other hand, it reflected the division of society into distinct ranks.  Until the Revolution, wrote historian Bernard Bailyn, Americans had assumed "that a healthy society was a hierarchical society in which it was natural for some to be rich and some poor, some honored and some obscure, some powerful and some weak."  Perhaps most important, "it was believed that superiority was unitary, that the attributes of the favored—wealth, wisdom, power—had a natural affinity to each other, and hence that political leadership would naturally rest in the hands of social leaders."  In New York in particular, these natural leaders came from a closed set of families distinguished by an inherited prestige. . . .

     Property requirements for suffrage under New York's constitution of 1777 hardened the culture of rank into law.  Two distinct levels of wealth were required to vote: one for the state assembly, and a second and higher level for the state senators and governor—establishing a "three-tiered scaffolding of society," as Bruegel writes.  In 1790, four of ten adult white men could not cast a ballot of any kind, in some places only one out of four could vote for the assembly, and one out of five for governor.

-T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Licking County, Ohio sure makes it easy.........

 ............................to vote early.  No line, no waiting.  Plus, a paper ballot is created!

Election fraud......................

 I am certain that voting shenanigans went on in the most recent election.  Did it determine the outcome?  Maybe, maybe not.  Regardless, students of America will know that what occurred in 2020 was child's play in the context of our history.  To wit:

Already, some two generations out of slavery, when statistically they had been three-fifths of a person, "Negroes" conducted an unrequited love affair with the republic that had, reluctantly at best, freed them in 1863.  They fought in U.S. wars and paid taxes.  They rendered cheap labor on railroads and docks, in factories, private kitchens, and cotton fields.  Although fulfilling the obligations of citizenship, Negroes were systematically denied the benefits.  White supremacy was certified and enforced as national policy by the full force of the Supreme Court, Congress, and the executive branch of the federal government, although in wholly different ways.  The Court's 1896  Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" ruling was a sham decision that froze in place an impregnable caste structure under legalized segregation.  Negroes were repressed as a permanent underclass and were flagrantly denied equal access to housing, jobs, education, public accommodations, due process in the courts, and despite, the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, the guaranteed right to vote.  Even when American women were granted the vote in 1920, Negroes across gender lines were largely denied the franchise, especially in the South, where some 80 percent of them lived.

-Les Payne, The Dead Are Arising:  The Life of Malcolm X

Civic duty...........................

Almost did not vote in the primary election today.  Only one contested race.  But, duty called.  Ohio (at least Licking County) has new voting machines.  They are high tech but seem very cool, and they create a piece of paper, which I like.  Still, not sure it is an improvement over the old punch card system.  Regardless, duty performed.