During my daily look around the Internet for news and happenings I came upon this story at the BBC.

Are you an American living abroad? If so… you are probably relying pretty heavily on the Internet to keep up with news from home.

And in the process of your research you’d probably like to be able to go to John Kerrys’ or George W. Bushs’ official websites.

The BBC found this out from Netcraft.com an independant organization that monitors traffic patterns on the Internet.

From Netcraft:

Netcraft monitors web site response times from seven locations, including four within the United States and three in other countries. Since Monday morning, requests to GeorgeWBush.com from stations in London, Amsterdam and Sydney, Australia have failed, while the four U.S. monitoring stations show no performance problems. Web users in Canada report they are able to visit the site.

This does not appear to be done in response to an attack on their site by foreigners… but rather a precautionary measure to ensure that any attacks on the website are limited in scope. Why an attackers wouldn’t simply “spoof” their internet address so that it appears to eminate from the US is my question… but I guess they feel this will limit their vulnerability to an attack.

Ironically, this probably means that some Embassies, or Republican offices outside the US will be unable to access the site as well. Certainly it means that if you are a non-military American living abroad (and there are a few million of you), you are out of luck if you want to see George W. Bushs’ website from your home away from home.

This has got to be the strangest election ever.

Last Weeked was, of course another busy one as I’ve already written.

I currently don’t have my regular laptop that I use to update photos. Its’ AC Adapter died so I’m waiting for a replacement to come in the mail. Until then I will humour you with more pictures courtesy of my mom.

There is one week to go before the US election. No matter what poll you use the race is a statistical dead heat. Electoral Vote.com is now showing Bush as leading in enough states that he would win the election… however he points out some interesting irregularities in polling.

Six new polls in Florida show Kerry leading in 1 poll, Bush leading in 3 polls, and two being exact ties. Excluding the Gallup poll for the moment, the average of the other five polls (Insider Advantage, Rasmussen, Strategic Vision, Survey USA, and Zogby) is Kerry 47% and Bush 48%, a statistical tie. The Gallup poll shows Bush ahead 51% to 42%, giving Bush a lead far outside the margin of error. Could Gallup be right and everyone else wrong?

It really doesn’t matter if Gallop is right or wrong. Even though they show Bush as being solidly ahead in that crucial state… the discrepancy with all the other polls calls their poll into question. How can we know what the real answer is? Well, I’ll give you the real answer.

No one can predict what will happen next Tuesday. No one.

There are simply too many variables.

What if all the newly registered voters decide not to vote after all? What if they do?
What impact will the ex-pat vote have on the election? What about the military?
Will the effort to get out the poor and black/minority vote succeed? This was a huge controversy in Florida in 2000.
What will happen with voting machines? Will there be more hanging chads? Will paperless voting be deemed illegal because there is no way to do a recount?

And finally… the point that I’m sure every pundit out there has in their back of the mind but which has been studiously avoided as a topic of conversation.

What if there is a terrorist attack on or just before the Election?

There was some talk of this back in July. What would the government do. Delay voting day? Who knows.

I’d rather not speculate on whether an attack is imminent or not… but should it happen I think the reaction from the public would be clear and decisive. They would vote in record numbers, and they would vote for Bush.

If you were an Islamic extremist looking for a way to ensure that you have plenty of recruits over the coming years, who would you rather have in the White House?

I know my answer.. what’s yours?

Hello Again.

As you may have noticed I am fairly opinionated when it comes to the political scene and I like to express my views online. To that end, I have created a new blog called Murky View.com.

I’m going to be posting all of my political, environmental and social stuff on that page from now on.

Please feel free to come and check it out.

If you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see covered on the site, feel free to email me or leave a comment. I’d like to create a place where people feel welcome to come and chat about life, the world and how we live in it.

Cheers.

Chris

One of the few things that I have been happy to see come out of our current “Liberal” (actually totally Conservative) government has been the Citizens Assembly.

This is a group that was created by random selection to address the question of electoral reform in our province. A few other provinces in Canada are looking at changing their current “First Past the Post” systems as well and it is starting to take hold as an issue at the Federal level as well.

I believe our current system is out of date. In BC especially, where two completely opposing parties (Liberal and NDP) dominate the political scene, elections too often lead to dramatic shifts from right to left and back again, leading to turmoil in the workings of government itself, as well as uncertainty from business, and investors who see the situation as potentially volatile and uncertain.

This Assembly was created to look at alternative systems and, if they deem the alternatives worthy, to put the proposal to the BC public through a referendum at the next election (in May 2005).

As I have linked above, on Saturday they voted in favour of a form of Proportional Representation. Their proposal which can still be modified but likely will not, is that we move to a system where voters “rate” their choices for the candidate in their riding.

There is one major flaw to this system, but, as I think about it more and more, I think I would vote FOR this change.

First, the flaw.

Our current system is very simple. You vote for one candidate in each riding/constituency and the one with the most votes wins. X in the box… that’s it.

This new system would add a ton of complexity and really gives me nightmares of hanging chads and spoiled ballots and confused voters.

But.. I think I’m not giving the Electorate the credit it deserves. When people choose something out of a range of possibility they instinctively rate each choice in their head. They might do it without even knowing it. I just did it today when I decided on the look/layout of this site.

So really, if you’re faced with a bunch of choices, you will automatically rate each one anyway, so this is simply a way of recording that natural event.

Another big advantage that this system might have is that it rewards people (like me?) who take any interest at all in the differences between candidates. If you don’t know anything about the candidate except that he’s for the political party that you support, then you can still put him as “#1″ and nothing has really changed.

But if, like me in the last federal election, you are split between supporting the candidate you’d really like… or the party you know will win overall… then what do you do? You don’t want to throw away your vote right!? If we had this system I could have voted for NDP as “#1″ and Liberal as “3″ and the Conservatives as either not even on the list, or right down on the bottom.

This would clearly show my preference, I think if we had had this system in the last federal election, many voters would not have been scared way from voting for the NDP because of Liberal scare tactics. Instead, they could have simply vote for NDP #1, and Liberal #2… and we would have gotten the candidate that the majority of voters selected as their first, second, or third option.

There is a lot of time between now and May when this question goes for to a referendum. But as of right now I think tentatively support it. What I know I *do* agree on with the Citizens Assembly is that there needs to be change to our current system. I don’t ever want to see another election where 77 of 79 seats go to one party. It is bad for the province, and bad for democracy in general.