Voting: A Horror Story

Mark Crispin Miller scares the living daylights out of me.

He's not a scary man - well, he is a professor, so intimidation is in the genes, but he's no Hulk or Jigsaw. He's not saying things that are traditionally scary - voter suppression, voting fraud, a corrupt voting system from head to toe: whatever. He's not even revealing consequences that seem all that different from any other election, government, or country.

What scares me about Mark Cripsin Miller is that, while he and the voter integrity crowd, list out a variety of things we as citizens can do, each and every thing relies on an active public and a receptive government. Is that the reality? As a nation, I'm under the impression that we're sheeple . I am a sheeple. An annoyed yet aware sheeple, but a member of the species, nonetheless. There is a blind acceptance to our culture - information is not processed but stored, credibility is handed out to everyone like free condoms on prom night, and the neocortex is often bypassed for emotive and instinctual kicks to make us go all meg mal (Oh, Feed, your lexicon is all too convenient for this issue).

So I must ask: What is the point? Can this, in fact, be fixed? If Crispin Miller's presentation is to be believed, our nation loves any kind of fraud that has to do with voting. It's practically our foundation. Can that be removed? If the system is so far gone, what can be done short of a V for Vendetta like escapade?

I'm scared that the answer of that last question is nothing. And as a sheeple, I'm going to accept that and finish watching the election coverage of Palin and McCain talking to the President in the oval office-... oh, wait, that's SNL. My bad.