Primary Day

Well, it's Super Tuesday and I voted this morning. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the new electronic touch-screen voting machines here in Maryland, although I hear that there may be some technical glitches with them now. They were easy to use and it shows you what you've selected before you cast your final vote, avoiding a Palm Beach County repeat.

The one thing I was curious about, and didn't get a chance to ask about because I needed to head to work, was whether or not there was a paper backup made of each vote. These machines, as reports in Georgia have shown, can be easily hacked and misused for partisan purposes, and the CEO of main producer of these machines wrote, in a fundraising letter, that he would do everything he can to deliver Ohio to Bush.

The one question, I suspect, that will remain after today is whether or not a Kerry/Edwards ticket will become a reality. (The proportional system of awarding delegates just makes it too hard for an underdog to come from behind unless the frontrunner does something absolutely outrageous. Even if Edwards wins 45-30, Kerry still gets 30% of the delegates.) An article in today's New York Times seems to suggest not, although the headline and opening paragraphs set a more pessimistic tone than the article as a whole. I heard Kerry on Imus this morning talk about their relationship and he claimed that it was a good relationship and he noted that he and his wife were also fond of Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, something I had heard before.

Personally, I'm not so fond of someone like Gephardt being the Veep in a plan to get Missouri or Ohio, because I think such strategic thinking focuses too much on picking up one state and not on the multi-state benefits that Edwards could bring to the ticket. I think the party may need to lean on Kerry a bit and force him to make a decision like Kennedy in 1960 -- certainly that JFK's relationship with LBJ was no better than Kerry's with Edwards, even if you believe all of the press.
- posted by Joshua @ 1:54 PM