Vote today

I hope everyone reading this in the U.S. is able to go out and vote today. I've covered a couple of elections this year in a couple of desperately poor countries, Uganda and Congo. In both countries, turnout easily topped 50 percent. In Congo last month, some people walked miles barefoot in the rain to vote, babies strapped to their backs, having not eaten a decent meal in days or weeks. Maybe you can't compare. But Americans really have no excuse.

 

I say this, and yet I must admit - I didn't vote in this election. I kind of have an excuse, but basically I didn't get my act together in time and by the time I started hunting around online to get an absentee ballot mailed here, it was too late. I don't take much consolation in the fact that my Congressional district is "safe" (how many of them really aren't?). But I'm signing up now for 2008 - not gonna miss that one.

 

Dan Rather is apparently lending his election night wit and wisdom to Jon Stewart on Comedy Central - which is a great bit of casting and sounds like the most entertaining and informative way possible to ring in the new Congress.