This early AM, on November 4, 2008, my family again participated in what we all believe to be the magic of America. We voted as a family. My wife was number 32 in line, I was number 33, and my daughter number 34. It was a long line with many voters behind us, but the line was moving along nicely due to the good organization of the polling place. It was indeed a pleasant experience because I still get that sense of doing something profound and meaningful when I walk into the voting booth.

That sense and sentiment is shared amongst all family members. I watched my youngest daughter walk away from the polls with renewed bounce in her step, and a subtle flush to her face. She too felt the magic. The magic that we feel as blood-connected voters is that of the significance of the process, the value of average people having real influence over their governing bodies. At least that is the idea in its purest sense. Now comes reality…yeah, you knew it had to come.

As someone aware of our modern voting integrity reality, I live day to day with the knowledge that voting outcomes are suspect at best due to innocent machine error, and corrupt at their worst due to intentional intervention. Clearly, as it relates to voting, computers/machines are the problem, and everything other than a solution.

On all points of the American compass, the system by which we choose our elected representatives is in chaos and only the tiniest fraction of the American population are aware, with a smaller fraction of those even concerned, and fewer still involved in policing or corrective efforts. Like all modern American problems, the voting crisis is massive. In scale, the voting integrity dilemma is a biblical condition, a true David v. Goliath circumstance.

It will not be spun that way by the media or the “winning” side, but the reality is that as conditions stand, the outcome of the presidential election in the United States of America has as much believability as monetary values on Wall Street.

And, while the aforementioned magic experienced during the voting process is emotion-based, intellectually I fully understand that modern American elections are the magic of David Copperfield and his inscrutable machines. Inscrutable is the problem. They are not understandable to the average voter. If you see an outcome but do not understand how it took place, then it is by definition an act of magic.

But magic will take place today, even if delivered by a mysterious and convoluted method. Who’d a thunk it…forty-one years after the death of Martin Luther King, and a mere eighty-eight years after female suffrage, by reason of race and/or gender today’s election outcome will set a historic precedent…that is a good thing. See, I can end a thought stream on a positive note!

Oh, piffle on that…Why is it that virtually all of the worlds’ significant democracies, other than America, utilize paper ballots and the ink pen as their primary means of voting? Why does modern America outsmart itself at literally every turn?