Secretary of Whuck?

I will always be indebted to 30 Rock for dissseminating the word Whuck, which is how one pronounces WTF.  Anyhow, this is relevant right now as people noticed this weekend (and before) that many states seem to be confused about how to administer an election.  It is kind of like when the Montreal train system had problems dealing with snow and cold--as if winter was something new to Montreal.  By this point in time, US elections should be pretty damned efficient--every 2 years for more than two centuries.  But as the long lines indicated, we still don't do it well.

Why not? There may be many reasons, including the reality that something done every two years is not frequent enough for people to remember the lessons learned from the last time.  But I think reason number one is that most people have no clue who is responsible in their state and thus just vote party line for the Secretary of State.  Hilary Clinton is not in charge of elections, and the name of her office may confuse people when they see it on the ballot--that their state's Secretary of State is its head diplomat???  So, party line voting on "minor" offices may be the case (I speak from complete ignorance as I do not study this stuff) when it comes to this office that determines electoral outcomes. 

What does this remind me of?  When Lenin and the other big thinkers in the Bolsheviks thought they should give the personnel job to Stalin since that was beneath them.  Good times.  Or not.

So, if you have not voted yet, vote for the incumbent Secretary of State if the voting process is going well and if you do not see much effort to suppress the vote.  If the voting process is going poorly, if your effort to vote was made more difficult by how it was administered, for goodness sake, VOTE AGAINST THE INCUMBENT SECRETARY OF STATE.  Oh, and also vote against the governors/mayors/representatives/senators in your state that seek to suppress the vote.  Denying the right to vote means many things, but for certain it means that the folks engaged in such efforts think that they cannot win on the basis of the soundness of their programs.   They must resort to selecting out of the voting pool those who would vote against them.  That makes such folks unworthy... unworthy of your vote and unworthy to govern.