... and no, I'm not going to make any predictions about the US national football championship against the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears. (That in itself is a reason to not watch the game -- just a few hours drive between the two cities and in the same time zone.) Besides, ticket brokers were selling even end zone tickets in the thousands of dollars. End zone, nosebleed. Come on.
So instead, I'm going to ease up a bit and going to mention something that happened the other day that could be a huge shot in the arm in a country where it's been in serious threat -- the USA. The other day, the new Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, signed a law that bans touch-screen voting machines; the kind that is prone to switching votes and can even be hacked into. Instead, the state will now use scan sheets. While there is evidence the "smart card" that counts the votes can still be tampered with to produced a desired result the fact that the very state that made democracy a joke in America finally realizes just how serious this is can only be seen as a positive step.
Note that this happened after Jeb Bush left office after serving his two term limit. He had a vested interest in tilting things the GOP way as long as his brother was a candidate for President or one for re-election. Crist is a Republican too but he must have seen how some people don't even want to visit Florida anymore because of the perceived corruption and decided the $23.5 million dollar cost of deep-sixing touch screens is far outweighed by the benefit the tourist industry provides to the state.
On top of that, Congress this week fast-tracked legislation that will essentially require any balloting method to generate some kind of auditable paper trail in case of a judicial recount. President Bush has indicated he will sign it -- of course it doesn't concern him since he can't run again; but at least he gets it albeit belatedly.
Democracy is a funny thing at times ... sometimes we don't get the results that the Exempt Media has conditioned us to anticipate. That can be a good thing at times, though. The will of the people needs to reflected in the ballot box and it must always be counted accurately. Frankly, I still prefer the good old paper ballot you mark with an "X" or check mark; but with multiple offices I suppose scan sheets will have to do.
P.S. Okay, you want a prediction: Colts 26, Bears 17.
UPDATE (10:25 PM EST, 0325 Monday GMT): Whaddya know? 29-17 Colts.
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