A Small Comfort

 I have noticed that when I make a purchase, I start seeing ads online for items similar to my purchase. I think it's funny that after I bought a stethoscope I started seeing ads for medical devices, along with constant emails from the company I bought from. I am unlikely to buy another stethoscope, as my first one lasted more than two decades, so the new one should be around for some time. I may, one of these days, unsubscribe from the emails, but that isn't always easy.

Yesterday, I mailed in my ballot for November's election. It seems the algorithms aren't aware of that. I take some comfort in that fact. It may be that, in fact, the algorithms are aware that I have already voted, but I keep seeing ads for various candidates anyway. I know some kind of algorithm is responsible for the political ads I'm seeing because they are for candidates for my city's council and my school district's school board. I know that the social media I use, and the browsers and search engines, and all the other techy things that make up such a big part of our lives have access to a lot of information about me. I'm sure my address is somewhere in the records in Facebook, and even though I don't publish it, the algorithms know. But they are not all-knowing. Unless they are playing a deeper game, and letting me think they don't know the current status of my ballot.

I haven't yet received notice that my ballot has arrived at the Board of Election. Once it arrives, it has to be verified. Then it will be held until election day, when it will be counted. I know about these steps, and they allow me to have confidence that my ballot will be counted and our elections are secure enough for us to accept the results as legitimate.

It seems a lot of people in America don't understand these things. Traitors and insurrectionists tried to stop the official process of acknowledgment of the outcome of the 2020 election, resorting to threats and violence to try to challenge a result they didn't like. That is scary. I hope investigations continue and everyone even remotely connected to those actions are prosecuted for every possible charge and given maximum sentences for each. I don't care if they argue that they were just caught up in the moment, and didn't intend to break the law. I am quite comfortable with sending them all to prison for as long as the law will tolerate and imposing all penalties and suffering associated with felony criminal conviction on all of them in defense of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. Our system of government and peace in our country depend on those.

So I voted. And I will vote again next time. I will follow events and learn what I can about candidates, and I won't care much if the algorithms get better and I see even more targeted political ads. For now, I feel smarter than the algorithms, and I don't expect that to change very quickly.