Elections

Found an interesting Flash animation on the New York times website showing the current distribution of Kerry/Bush support across the country. [NYTimes Link](http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/politics/2004_ELECTIONGUIDE_GRAPHIC/) One interesting thing is Kerry seems to have 10 states under the bag while Bush has ~19. BUT, look at the states Bush has: Alabama, Montana, Kansas, Utah - i.e. who cares. Small in terms of electoral votes. Bush has 227, Kerry has 225, thanks to states that matter like California, New York, and Hawaii (just kidding). Michigan (where I am from) is considered a swing state. I won’t say who I voted for (that is, if my ballot braved its way through the Chinese postal mail system), but I can tell you my vote effectively cancled out my mother’s. I was assured by her that someone else close to us voted the same as she did, so this canidate is already one up. Go figure. Of course, that is all fine and dandy IF our vote actually counted - let’s not forget the whole B.S. with the [Electoral College](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Electoral_College), but I won’t get into that.