There was a fascinating blog last week written by Weldon Berger. In "Republican's Set To Cry Foul in November Elections" (http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/1409#more-1409), Berger suggested that should Republicans lose some close races in November 2006, they may try to blame the losses on inaccurate Diebold voting machines. Some on the left are incensed by this idea. "It's bad enough they stole the 2000 and 2004 elections" a friend told me, "now they want to steal our main election issue too?" But in a strange way, this may be a sign of progress. If both Republicans and Democrats can agree that Diebold voting machines produce dubious results, certainly our dear leaders can do away with the lot of the damned things, and demand a return to verifiable, hand-counted ballots.

Let's face it. It's embarrassing that a country so determined to spread democracy around the globe can't even trust its own electoral system. So it might be a good idea to put some integrity back into our own voting before we sack North Korea and Iran. After all, the last thing we want is to have international election monitors say we didn't allow some people of these nations to get blue ink on their thumbs when exercising one of their new found freedoms. Besides, it's very rare that Democrats and Republicans can reach a consensus on anything. The last time was way back in May, when both sides took the Justice Department to task for raiding a Congressman's office with a valid search warrant.

And who knows, maybe this can be the start of a long list of things our dear leaders can agree upon. Gosh, after the contentious midterm elections of 2006, maybe Democrats and Republicans will actually agree 100,000 more civilian deaths and 2500 more US military casualties in Iraq is a good indicator that we need to pull our troops the hell out of there. Or maybe they'll subscribe to the notion that a senior living on a fixed income having to choose between buying food or medication is not a good thing. Or that comprehensive nationalized health care will make American workers more productive. Or tax breaks for the wealthy don't stimulate the economy, but gradual increases to the minimum wage do.

Of course, you'd be living in a dream world to believe the major parties would actually comply with each other and take action on any of those things. And believe me; they won't take action on the elections integrity issue either. They'll just keep bouncing the elections fraud ball between them as long as it's politically advantageous to do so. In the meantime, if you want real electoral change, quit expecting a bunch of self-absorbed millionaires on both sides of the political aisle to do anything for you and start doing it for yourself. The real political sheep among us are the ones supposedly representing our interests, and so far their fealty to a 21st Century American sovereign has been remarkably consistent.

Whether or not Republicans actually use Diebold as an excuse to victimize themselves in the upcoming midterms remains to be seen. However, one thing is for sure. If we allow these weasels another chance to tinker with the electoral process, any vote you cast in the future will become more meaningless than it already is.