With so many different voting systems…
 With so many different secretary of states, governors, appointees responsible for the integrity of the vote who are too often beyond irresponsible…
 All this, and more, make presidential elections a mess, though if you have control of enough states and can implement election fraud tactics the popular vote may be lost, but not the College.
 Otherwise counting every vote is hard. So many fires to fight with those who don’t want some people to vote, don’t want every vote counted. If the midterm taught us anything; on a state by state basis, corruption is still a problem but fighting to get every vote counted has more of a chance.
 Not that it’s “easy.” Those who know if every vote is counted their side will lose will do all they can to get in the way, including demanding machines be confiscated, refuse to step down when they are in charge of election integrity when they’ve proven they’re actually there to skew the system their way anyway possible.
 I previously wrote that 2018 was no big blue wave, just a substantial ripple. One of those times I love being wrong. My only defense is that was with the vote as it stood just post election night. OK, yes, it was a wave. I still resist “big,” but we shall see, hopefully. More than “hopefully:” WE HAVE TO. Otherwise we will continue to be crushed by anti-representative appointees, secretaries, lawmakers, lawyers and activists like the attempt to repeat the Bush aide riot in Florida.
 These are fanatics; when it comes to the vote they are not unlike those who forced the unwilling to drink the Jimmy Jones Flavor Aid if they tend not to vote the politically correct way. Killing the vote that won’t go their way is more important to them than the freedoms they claim to cherish, the country I’m sure they’d claim to love.
 I never understood the supposed “embarrassment” of the 2000 recount. When I saw Democrats and Republicans working with monitors from both parties side by side trying to ascertain the true intent of the voter I felt proud. This is how it should work. Instead we have gone deeper and deeper into the Trek-like doomsday device of proprietary software electronic machines owned and programmed by politically connected companies, machines doled out on a “does your precinct tend to vote our way?”-basis. The deeper we went the more we focused on quick answers instead of the intent of the voter: as made evident by Gore taking it all the way to the Supremes to Kerry turning his not so Swift boat around and running away, despite his own VP choice saying we could wait for all the votes to be counted.
 Please don’t come back at me with: despite Ohio votes being siphoned off to Tennessee server to be “counted,” and other shenanigans, that Bush still would have won. That’s not the point: counting all the votes is. I would also add we at least need to know how many were denied the right to vote, or handed provisionals supposedly only to be counted if the election is close enough.
 And who makes THAT decision, I ask? How fairly is that decision made when, and if, it is made?
 Likewise challenging votes is fine as long as challengers challenge vote by vote, show proof, and the voter is openly welcome to challenge the challenge. No, not via some poorly written, confusing, card sent to an address that may not work because the voter is serving in the military. Multiple efforts need to be made, and as we all know the post office occasionally loses things. Funny how those who rant about how bad government is are willing to trust it when it serves their politically motivated vote denying purposes.
 I feel proud these challenges are being led by candidates all over the country who are demanding all the votes be counted. By the time we’re done we also need to know how many were denied the vote and what party they belonged to, what race they are, what community they belong to. In every election we must know this: it is at least as important as who won. We need to know who made the decisions that made any of these stats odd, like 90% were black, or white, or Democrats, or Republicans, or…
 But it’s not hard to guess who. You can tell by those who rage the most against counting all the votes, those who lie about these not being actual votes but “created” by one party or the other: without showing an ounce of proof. Their desperation has the stink of a demand for tyranny with a façade of representation, of more than one viable party.
 It’s kind of like another country where their multi-party system is similar to that fake village in Blazing Saddles; only ruled by the villains. You know: the country that is an oligarchy ruled by an oligarch where journalists are disappeared, where those who displease the head oligarch are murdered, or at least have all their property, all their riches, confiscated and stuffed in his pocket?
 Corruption, much?
 If those who claim there’s absolutely nothing behind the Russian investigation, claim it’s all some “witch hunt,” want to be believed maybe they should start pushing to have all the votes counted too? Stop pushing for NOT counting the votes? Stop pushing for results NOW instead of ascertaining the true intent of the voters? Speed of results should never be more important than counting all the votes. We can wait. True representation is that important.
 As I typed this an activist from Georgia said counting all the votes this past election is just the beginning. After almost 20 years of rage over this issue maybe the fact they are the rampage attempting to shoot anything that moves towards counting all the votes is a good sign? Maybe we are finally headed away from the fake village controlled by the villains; we might escape the doomsday machine they designed that devours the freedom necessary to a free society: the right to vote? By definition in any free society we must not just be free to vote, but our votes must be counted. ALL our votes.

                                       -30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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