If you've been watching the electoral college numbers recently, you've seen Obama with a very large lead heading into the final weeks and days before the election. We're talking a potential 2-1 margin of victory when it comes down to the electoral votes.
What if it doesn't hold up? Will we attribute that to the Bradley effect, essentially that people in polls say they'll vote for Barack because they're ashamed to say otherwise? Will pundits say it was just a late surge of folks who really just liked Palin's down to earthiness and didn't mind the lack of experience, policy understanding and really any substance at all?
Will we ever ask the question, "Was this election legitimate?"
I'm not really a conspiracy theory type. I did think after the 2000 election, we would have people who were upset because our system does not necessarily equal 1 person 1 vote. I thought there would be outrage once people found out we weren't a true democracy. I was wrong. I think maybe it didn't upset people all that much because it was a close race, and people weren't really all that invested in Al Gore (I voted for Nader, so I really wasn't invested in him at all). This time though...
There's a lot to lose. People are already losing their houses, their jobs and their security. So if something fishy were to happen here and a 2-1 lead began to shrink, then all of the barely democrat states suddenly went republican, then some of the weak democrat states slid over that way, what would we do?
Would people in this country ever say, no, that can't be right. Are there enough people out there who would question their government strongly enough to do anything about it. I don't know if I ever want to find that out...and I certainly don't want to find out tonight.
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If, as the election proceeds, it appears there's some shady stuff going on, than may your religious figure of choice save us all. I don't know if enough people would throw enough of a fit to truly cause change in our election system. I would have thought after the debacle of 2000 it would have happened; nope. I do think that if we have another election that ends up being decided under a black cloud of irregularities we will no longer be considered a shining example of democracy by the rest of the world (that's assuming there's anyone in the world that thinks that right now). You possibly proclaim to have leadership elected by the people when a good portion of them don't believe their vote actually counted for anything. This election will see an unprecedented turnout, and it is a make or break opportunity with first time voters. They'll either be ingratiated to the process and vote in elections to come, or be bitter and turned off forever. And whichever it becomes hinges far less on who is elected and almost entirely on whether or not we can hold an election that appears to be just that, a unhindered and unmanipulated process of residents of a country casting votes and having those votes decide the outcome.
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