Marilyn's Photos - June 4 2026 - Voting in America
One of the significant differences between the U.S. and Canada is that the U.S. is involved in a constant cycle of voting. And in between that there are changes to how voting is done - the voting districts, voting rules... it seems unending. India turns out to have more frequent elections than the U.S. with the U.S. occurring 2nd on a list of 20 nations covered.
I notice this as I receive the New York Times New Summary every day and every day has some kind of election news. I also realized that there is a leaning in the U.S. towards all kind of voting.
This month's voting news is the New York Times Magazine votinng on the 30 greatest living songwriters. They took a poll with 25,000 readers responding, with a complicated set-up of experts involved in the nominations.
They published the names starting with what looks like an alphabetical order, and then veers off the cliff into a seeming random order. No listing by vote count.
Then the barrage of responses to the list came in.
Mostly, it is about who's missing. As for popular writers, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, Billy Joel, Tom Waits, David Byrne, Madonna, Steely Dan's living partner Donald Fagen, Jimmy Webb, James Taylor, Stevie Nicks, Patti Smith and so on.
No Broadway composers made the list. And no mention of classical composers like John Williams. These two categories were not mentioned as part of modern songwriting in the survey.
A discussion over the definition of being American. Joni Mitchell and Neil Young are American citizens but not born in the U.S. making that the seeming reason they aren't on the list. That's despite the Times defining American as "those residing in or culturally woven into America's musical fabric." So Bad Bunny not born in the U.S. was in and Joni Mitchell was out.
And what constitutes America - whether Canada being in North America makes it American so Canadians should have been included. Makes one cringe to realize there are many like Trump who think a country border is an idea. There was no definition of what is America in the survey.
With all this, you can gossip/fester/mock their choices - such as Carole King ranking above Bob Dylan, followed by Stevie Wonder, then Paul Simon. It can go on a long time and reap a lot of revenue for the Times, making it worth all the effort and cost.
So much voting and so much contention over the results - a very American voting story.
This is one of those flexify manipulations. I should go find the original. I wonder what discordance might be there.
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