75% Of The Country Disapproves Of The GOP Congress AND Will Send Them Back?!

One week out from the mid-term elections, I’m more than a little pre-occupied by signs that this election will go much the way of the last three, namely full of chaos, voter suppression, computer “glitches” and out and out fraud.

Ken Blackwell is at it again, making sure that as many Democratic votes as possible will never be counted. Not only is he administering the election in which he is running for Governor, he is also busy applying arbitrary rules for voters that are confusing, unnecessary and designed to disqualify as many votes as possible. Not only do Ohioans have to show photo ID at the polls, they are also required to include their driver’s license number on their absentee ballot in order for it to count. The problem is, there are two numbers on an Ohio license, use the wrong one and your vote is disqualified. Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis have been diligently covering Ohio’s voting problems for years, and they have a great article out today about the mess that has already started in Ohio and that could hand Ohio to just about every Republican candidate on the ballot, possibly even Ken Blackwell regardless of the fact that he is down 30 points in pre-election polls. It wouldn’t be the first (manufactured) political miracle to occur in Ohio.

Brad Friedman at The Brad Blog has also been busy uncovering voter suppression and questionable voting machines. With early voting underway, he is documenting reports of vote flipping on voting machines in Texas and South Florida, and that Diebold machines to be used in San Diego elections next week are currently being stored in the homes of poll workers! Yeah, nothing wrong with that.

Obviously, I have no idea what will happen next Tuesday, but I do know that I don’t have confidence in our elections, the partisans that run them or operatives like Karl Rove that will do anything to win. I’m a little concerned that The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Republicans are encouraged by early voting returns. This White House works off of its own set of facts, by its own rules and does so without apology. They know what is at stake here, and they know how to make sure that they are never held to account for what they have done to this country. I may not have faith in the security of our elections, but I do have faith that cheaters will cheat, liars will lie and wannabe fascists will subvert democracy if it serves their purposes.

Of course it’s possible that all the opinion polls are wrong and that the majority of voters in this country want to stay the course. Congress may have a 16% approval rating (yes, that’s right, 16% of voters approve of the job Congress is currently doing), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that voters don’t want to send them back to Washington DC to continue doing such a stellar job of representing us. This is exactly what Karl Rove and the GOP want us to believe. Are we really stupid enough to fall for it (again)?