Buying the vote or at least the machines, the Romney plan

This week in my professional life, I learned that even for a small non-profit in the relatively sparsely populated state of Maine that the government cares about things like conflict of interest among the board of directors. See, my board chair got married a few months ago to a fellow board member, the same board member who owns a company that provides cleaning services to our small relatively unknown agency.  What this meant for yours truly is that reams and reams of paper were created this week by declaring that interest of conflict and making sure we were  transparent as hell since we are a publicly funded agency. Who would have thought?

That said, when you are running for president of these fractured states apparently you can have a “straight line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall’s election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help us decide who “owns” The White House” and no one seems to care, at least not the mainstream media.  Yesterday I came across this story, mentioning that the Romney family basically owns voting machines, no they didn’t exactly go out and buy up a slew of voting machines but thanks to their connection with Bain Capital which Papa Romney founded they have a connection.

Initially I thought this was a conspiracy type of story, but after some poking around, it seems this story is legitimate, or has enough legitimacy that frankly we should all be concerned, or scared.  In this fast paced world, our collective memories seem to be so short that it’s as if we have forgotten the hanging chads of 2000. Hell, just look at the recent attempts at voter suppression and the hullabaloo over identification.

I don’t know, but if my Pops were running for President, maybe I would rethink my decision to have anything to do with voting machines directly or indirectly. I would be scared of even having an appearance of there being a conflict of interest and sure as hell wouldn’t want anyone questioning the legitimacy of the results if my Dad actually won.

Then again, I am not Tagg Romney since the idea of uttering out loud that I want to punch out the sitting president wouldn’t be an action that I would choose. I am hardly one to jump on the conspiracy wagon but at this stage in the process, we should all be concerned about the integrity of the voting process in this country. We are moving closer and closer to being a world governed by the wealthy who in the end make decisions that affect the lives of the not so wealthy and really that is a scary thought. This election season both the Democratic and Republican candidates are approaching almost a billion dollars spent each trying to get a job that pays only $400,000 a year. Imagine what that damn near 2 billion dollars could do, if we didn’t have a process now guided by wealth and privilege.