I went in to vote this morning and when I got there, I chose to use the electronic machine because the line was much shorter than the paper ballot.  I wanted to vote before I went in to work, so waiting in line wasn't much of an option.  

I was issued a card and when I inserted it into the machine, the first thing that popped up was "Please contact a pollworker, Your card has been removed too quickly or inserted incorrectly".  At this point I contacted a poll worker who told me I was doing something wrong.  I made a fuss and finally another poll worker came over and realized that there was something wrong with the machine.  I asked for a paper ballot and was initially denied because they said there was no way of telling if I had already voted on the electronic machine or not.  I told them that it should have been obvious that I hadn't voted since I was talking to poll workers the whole time I was at the machine.  After about 10 minutes of arguing, I was allowed to cast a paper ballot.

I hope there aren't many problems going on with these machince since they are easily hacked, and obviously don't work very well.  I am encouraging as many people out there to vote with a paper ballot as possible or able to.  I don't want to see any more election fraud.

For everyone here who's tired of candidate/primary diaries and the like, I thought I would remind everyone how lucky we have it here.  At least we don't have fundies all over the place bringing down the IQ of all of us.

Here are a few examples of what I mean, I found a few posts on www.fstdt.com that if I had to see on a daily basis I would probably be drooling on my self by now.

I have been reading on Motherjones.com recently about mandatory binding arbitration clauses that many companies are currently using to prevent getting sued in civil court.  I have been looking around for some legal precedents about this, and I have been unable to find any.  (I am not an attorney, nor do I pretend to be)  My question to dkos is this:  Do these clauses violate the 7th Amendment, and if they do, what is the best action plan to put a stop to this practice?  

I constantly call and write my Senators and my Congressman.  I try to stay on top of what is happening in Congress and voice my opinion to my elected representatives.  Barack Obama happens to be one of my Senators, and I wanted to show dkos what Obama's staffers like to write to his constituents.  I have been on the fence for a while now, but Obama has officially fallen to my #2 choice.

Actual copies of his responses below the fold.