It's been such a long time. First I was tied up at work, and then it was the relocation. Unfortunately, the hiatus left the stupid post on a stupid video at the top of my blog for quite some time. Anyhow, the worst has passed. When my computer arrives in a couple weeks, everything will return to normal.

Here is an interesting article about the history of the voting process. Call me an idealist - I still don't understand how such a broken system is permitted to remain the sole channel for the people to express its intent, year after year. Sometimes I wonder if the American obsession with the "Founding Fathers" is also what causes its fervent disregard of reality in its adherence to impractical ideologies.

Rock, Paper, Scissors
How we used to vote
by Jill Lepore
New Yorker, October 13, 2008

On the morning of November 2, 1859—Election Day—George Kyle, a merchant with the Baltimore firm of Dinsmore & Kyle, left his house with a bundle of ballots tucked under his arm. Kyle was a Democrat. As he neared the polls in the city’s Fifteenth Ward, which was heavily dominated by the American Party, a ruffian tried to snatch his ballots. Kyle dodged and wheeled, and heard a cry: his brother, just behind him, had been struck. Next, someone clobbered Kyle, who drew a knife, but didn’t have a chance to use it. “I felt a pistol put to my head,” he said. Grazed by a bullet, he fell. When he rose, he drew his own pistol, hidden in his pocket. He spied his brother lying in the street. Someone else fired a shot, hitting Kyle in the arm. A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds. The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party’s Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose result Harrison contested, Davis’s victory was upheld on the ground that any “man of ordinary courage” could have made his way to the polls.

Full text

Follow up: 7 Things that can go wrong on Election Day at Time.