Make our democracy a real democracy

Wow, the election is over, so what are we supposed to be talking about now? My idea: the election.

We were tired of hearing about the election even before Nov. 2, but perhaps more important than a lot of the pre-election coverage is the lack of post-election coverage.

The victorious Republicans don't feel any need to look back at the results; they won. It's just that simple. Democrats don't want to talk about it; they lost and they're pretty upset about it. But whether you're happy about this election outcome or not, you have to be a little concerned about the serious problems that aren't being covered in the mainstream media.

Out of 638 registered voters in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, an amazing 4,258 votes went for George W. Bush; electronic voting machines counted backwards in Broward Country, Florida; Exit polls were largely correct in areas where paper ballots were used, but not where Diebold voting machines were used. Counties that are 80 percent Democrat voted two to one in favor of Bush in swing states using the Diebold voting machines. And these are just the blatantly obvious problems.

The candidate that I voted for has no chance in the world of winning, no matter how messed up things get, but I am still really upset that there isn't serious coverage of this problem. We consider our democracy to be the "city on a hill," the light at the end of the tunnel of communism and oppressive regimes. People are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan so that they can have this democracy we are so proud of. You'd think we could do better than this.

Hearing about the CEO of Diebold leading campaign fundraisers for Bush and saying he'll do whatever it takes to get him elected sounds crazy. Most of us hear that and think to ourselves, "Conspiracy theory." But we're not talking about conspiracies here. I'm not trying to have Bush removed from office. I just want some simple things. I want every eligible voter who shows up and votes to have their vote count, and I want ... let's see ... that's it. That's all I want.

It seems like no matter how tired we may be of politics and election spin and how fragmented we are over the candidates, we shouldn't be too tired or fragmented to care about the basis of our entire democratic process.