No more electoral votes!

So if you have ever watched the Presidential election or will be in 2012, or whatever year there is an election after you read this, why is there still an electoral voting system. Really who cares which state has a larger population, that only really proves that if you are part of a bigger gang that you can override the majority.

There is a popular vote and that is the actual number of votes tallied from all the voters. This seems to be the best way of picking the President. Think about it, if 160 million people vote for nominee A and 165 people vote for nominee B, then nominee B should win, even if the electoral has nominee A ahead.

Yes, based on statistics, the winner of the popular vote also wins the election through the electoral sytem, but the margins of victory are much slimmer by the popular vote and not the electoral vote system. Although recent history does have an exception to this. In 2000, Gore won the popular vote, but lost the election. No matter which way you feel about this, it is an example of a possible major error in the voting system.

Another example of the difference in perceived margins of victory is in 1968, Nixon beat Humphrey 301 to 191 in the electoral system, but only won the popular vote by about 500,000 votes out of approximately 63 million votes. While 500,000 is a lot of votes, not by percentage.

Why the popular vote, I feel that the popular vote gives Americans in every state the feeling that their vote counts. If you live in Oregon, California, or any of the other states that always seem to vote Democrat, then you do not feel like your vote matters, and that to me is the most important part of voting. Everyone should feel their vote counts and I think we would have a better voter turn out by giving the popular vote the final say.

People Issues on Computers

People are the leading cause for computer issues. I can not tell you how tired I am of people complaining about their computers acting up. A computer is a machine, you are the variable and the one who causes the problems with your machine.

Please quit blaming your innocent computer.

Website Search Engine Ranking

Google has been an awesome tool for finding many things, but it seems local businesses still need help to use this tool to grow their business.

Living in Oregon seems to mean not finding local businesses as easily as national or companies in other locations. I do not know why search engine ranking and internet marketing are so foreign. Actually I should back up a little, it seems having a website is even a challenge for many of these businesses.

There are many companies throughout the state that offer services to make this easier. If you learn about search engine optimization and link building to go along with having your website, your business will be more successful.

Even if you are a local service company and do not need an online store, having a quality website that appears in the search engines, especially Google, is increasingly important.

What is with the public school system?

Why is it that every election seems to have ballot measures to increase tax so that schools can have more money, but no matter what gets voted in, schools never have enough money? I think it is because of the wasteful spending by schools and their administrators. Administrators are the highest paid and the least needed, at least at the local level. I think that money could be better spent on another teacher or two.

In recent years, I have seen my kids school days cut, but as soon as a measure passes, they put days back on the calendar. This does not make sense to me because if they are short money and project that they will lack even more funds the following year, then save the money from the days cut and roll it into the next year. That seems to be common sense, but not to the school systems.

There is a school system where I live that has such a confusing budget, that most accountants don't understand it. Well, they might, but they do not want to lose money with clients to figure it out. There is no reason that a school budget should be complicated. A budget can be simple and should be simple, unless something is trying to be hidden. In this case it is administrator salaries and "consulting" costs. I will not go into detail as to not be sued by this school district.

Regardless of the general opinion of myself, the easy to spot problem is that our kids are coming out of these schools with very little education. While I do want the level of education to increase, I do not think that throwing money at it will work. At least not based on the way that money is getting spent. Is technology and infrastructure really so hard to implement into schools? Why do we need to buy over priced books for each student when a book can be put into a digital format for a fraction of the cost?

I think the number of schools is also too much. Recently I lived in a part of town that had 4 elementary schools within 2 square miles. Two of these schools also were middle schools, but the high school in the area is the smallest of the 5 high schools in the city. This seems excessive for the area and being that I am from a much larger area than the one I currently reside, I have seen this congestion not be necessary. If you think about it in regards to maintenance alone, it would seem that larger schools, while they would have more overall students, would allow that a more consolidated maintenance staff and resources needed to provide better facilities to students.

Another issue for me is that while we have an obesity problem in this country, we seem to have to problem cutting out PE. My kids only have PE once per week, which is not nearly enough. While we try to have the kids be active after school, it is very difficult during winter months to get them outside when it is already dark out.

I could go on and on about the public school system, but I won't.