The Bet

My parents have a bet with their live-in home health aide. My parents are betting that Barack Obama will win the election for president. Their aide is betting that John McCain will win. It is a two-dollar bet - my father is very careful with money. It's not that Mary--their aide--doesn't want to see Obama as president. She does. It's just that she is from Lithuania and she is accustomed to seeing elections get stolen. "I hope it is not true", she says, in an accent to which I could not possibly do justice, "But I think they will not let him be president". Yesterday, the New York Times had a front page feature about African-American voters in the south strategizing how to cast their votes. Some think that if they vote early, by absentee ballot, that they will have time to fix it if their vote is discounted. Others are counting on going to the polls on Election Day because an early ballot can be lost. Like Mary, they don't believe that this election is going to be fair.

How is it that we can use computers to do banking, buy airline tickets, donate to charity and trace the shpping on our merchandise orders, but we can't use them as a secure voting system? Why can authorities find out who is qualified to serve jury duty or whose driver's license is up for renewal with remarkable accuracy, but a person's right to vote can always be questioned? How is it, that after two presidential elections in which gross electoral fraud was discovered, the system has not been overhauled?

Mary said she hopes she's wrong and I hope she is, too. We need to watch the voting in this election very closely.