My heart is heavy.

I am a practical person. Like so many of us here, I'm an American with no axe to grind. I just feel I have a stake in what's happening, and all of a sudden it's not enough just to cast my vote. Who knows if it's anything at all to cast my vote anymore. I'm new to paying close attention to the news of the day. The news of the day, my friends, is not good. We all know this.

There aren't many candidates making public their concerns about election integrity. It's hard to believe, though, that there aren't a number of candidates with worries about the validity of a narrow loss. With anecdotal and theoretical evidence building of the ease of hackability of electronic voting machines, the subject may not warrant hysteria, but certainly there is room for serious questions. I believe the evidence is clear that we should be dumping electronic voting overboard in favor of old-fashioned paper ballots. Here in California, our Secretary of State has certified Diebold touchscreen, paperless machines for use in all polling places in November. Yikes.

I used to look with a little bit of disdain on people who have their cars plastered with bumper stickers. Especially people with "W" stickers, or "Sierra Club, Kiss My Axle," or "Insured by Smith and Wesson." But I also felt a little superior to people with liberal messages on their bumpers--"Imagine World Peace" (or "Imagine Whirled Peas"), "Somewhere in Texas a Village Has Lost Its Idiot." Granted, I laughed, I felt that I had company in the world, but I thought bumper-sticker people were just a little kooky.

Make the jump and see where I'm going with this.