Stop the madness - 2 points of view

My Purple Finger:

Most believe that one of the best days of the Iraq war was the day that Iraqi citizens gave us the purple finger. Here we are several years later, and it seems our own voting circumstances are looking more like Tikrit every day. The special election that just passed is a sad reminder of how the pursuit of power has become a corrupt and disgusting business instead of a chance to serve the interest of the public.

Bomb threats during an election are not something we as Americans are used to. The sad part of this is that Armando Ramirez, John Cortes, and the rest of the group fighting for their own personal slice of the power pie believe in putting more energy into the fact that some voters may have been scared at the polls because of bomb threats instead of the fact that bomb threats are something our children, and our parents, have to deal with on a seemingly regular basis.

Nine bomb threats in a two week period. Domestic terror has hit the home front and all these individuals care about is how they can take a seat of political power. You get elected to serve the public, not yourself. We understand that the example set by most of our local elected officials is just as power hungry as your own ambitions, but this is not what the process is about. The process is about more than you seem to be able to understand. If you are only going to fight for your own personal agendas, then you have become what you have tried to defeat. You are now part of the problem. To you, and those already sitting in power and working to protect their own seats, we salute you with our purple fingers.

Bombs or no bombs, we will vote.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A threat is a threat:

Nine bomb threats in a two-week period. Bomb threats are hardly new as a method for disrupting society, but the local elections, end of the school year, and the "copycat" potential of the Virginia Tech tragedy have brought all of the schemers out of the woodwork. At the same time, we must realize that a large portion of the world has lived under daily threat of violence for decades, and yet they continue to function as a society, attending school, voting, shopping, and going on with their daily lives. As we used to say after the September 11th attacks, "if we stop doing (fill in the blank), then the terrorists win."

We share the frustration of local law enforcement, whose resources are stretched ever thinner by cowards who phone in threats for their own gain, or simply for their own amusement. Hopefully, our various government bodies are working not only on additional funding for public safety, but structures for our public programs so that an anonymous bomb threat becomes less of a threat to our daily routine. In the case of voting, it would seem that some sort of absentee/advance/remote voting goes a long way towards reducing the threat, and voters may self-select this option in the future.

At the same time, we are disappointed by the group who appears to be using the bomb threats at two polls during last week's special election as an attempt to have the election results thrown out. Several have suggested, based on the final voter tally, that it was virtually impossible for the vote outcome to be impacted by the 35 minutes that those two polls were closed, especially since all of the polls were held open for an additional 60 minutes of voting. But we fear that these protests have less to do with election procedures, and more to do with the belief that "their candidate should have won." In this great country of ours, those protests will receive their judicial review. But a threat of a lawsuit is still a threat, just one on paper.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

***Special secret message to Armando: We have no idea who the name was that you placed in your email to us lastnight, nor did we understand the rest of the email (our secret decoder rings are still on special order). Have a nice day :) ***