I requested and received my absentee ballot in the mail this weekend. As a US citizen I feel it's my duty (more now than ever before) to vote in the coming presidential election. I've used absentee ballots in the past ,even though I lived a few blocks away from the voting station, because my county had switched to electronic voting and I didn't trust the machines as they were designed. This was the same county that had the butterfly ballot incident of 2000 so my fears in the electoral board weren't unfounded.
The absentee ballot I filled in 2004 was vastly different than the one I have today. First it came in a thick manila envelope with detailed instructions, some legal speak about who could vote, a short statement on each candidates views, and it was translated in the three popular languages of the area; English, Spanish, Creole.
Not long after that, I moved to Miami and had a new voting station to register at. I mailed my ballot request lastweek and updated my details. I also received my ballot by email. I thought that was sorta cool. This one has just one card, the presidential candidates. No sheriff, senators, judges, state legislators, or house representatives. it's a disappointment because I was going to call my friends and ask them who I should vote for.
But the title of this entry is "This vote won't count" and the reason for that is absentee ballots are only counted when there is a very small margin between candidates (49%/50%). This is why news stations can predict the winner even though votes from abroad or military bases haven't reached their destinations yet. Even though I hope my vote will count I have a feeling that John McCain will ultimately win this election. Not because he would make a great president, but because there is a slight undertone of racism in this presidential race. It comes in disguise as talking points that don't hit on any issues. Obama has been "mistakenly" rewritten as Osama. They'll purposefully pronounce his middle name "Hussein" with a lot of vitriole. He's been mistaken for Muslim and then they'll hit on his association with a church pastor (the irony) who had some unkind words about the USA.
I've heard things like this many times, the "I'm not racist, one of my best friends is black" bullshit. This person most likely wouldn't help their "black friend" if they needed it, wouldn't invite them over for dinner or party, and the only time they would even talk to them is if they needed something illegal. I've met girls in college like that. Southern belles who wouldn't give me the time of day, but all of a sudden show interest in my, perceived, abilities to acquire weed due to the fact I'm Jamaican. Not everyone from the islands smokes!
Finally, a lot of things can happen once the curtain closes in that booth. While quite a few people have publicly supported Obama and will speak on how the US will finally lose the stigma of institutionalized racism. Deep inside there is that fear of do I really want this man, a black man, running this country. They'll pull the lever and their vote will disappear into a trapdoor with millions of other anonymous votes.
Last night I bit the bullet and downloaded the iPhone SDK to my Mac. It includes the new XCode 3.1 so that and all the files were updated as well. On a side note it reinstalled CHUD which was giving me errors since upgrading to 10.5.3. Now I can disable 3 of my cores and see how a single 2.4GHz Kentsfield really work. It was still very useful and quick running on just one core. I wouldn't try that with VMWare Fusion running.
After getting all my files installed and setting my IDE I went on the web and was looking through various tutorials. Here is one I liked but I'm sure there are many others. As soon as the NDA is lifted or defined about what can and can't be shared I will look at buying one of the programming books.