Finally: Your vote actually counts

At long last, a vote where -- I can actually verify this -- what you do doesn't get swallowed by Diebolt or some other evil component of the Republican Party.

The other night, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert urged all fans to vote for him in an online election created by the Hungarian government to name a new bridge.

His provocation had been going on for a day or two, but at this point, it had gathered some traction: By the time I had been able to penetrate Hungarian bandwidth to cast my vote, Colbert's support had grown from a mere 1,400 or so to 43K. By the time I lost interest in guaging his fans' rabid support (a mere 10 minutes or so; I'm pretty easily bored), another 3,000 supporters had added their voices.

Tonight, Colbert's lunatic fringe expanded to 10 times that number. 438,000-plus have added their support to his efforts to name this bridge after he implored us to screw up the Internets. (Now, it's possible to cast your vote without having to wade through all that Hungarian language, which I had to do.)

Of course, at this point, Colbert has only garnered 3 percent of the vote, as opposed to 0 percent when I voted. But he's easily surpassed the votes cast for Chuck Norris and, dammit, we're Americans; we can impose our will anywhere on the planet!

Prior to this, of course, Colbert had implored viewers to muck up facts at wickipedia.com, and they complied. Clearly, there's no stopping this guy. He owns online truthiness, and the rest of the media are merely pretenders. Oppose this guy at your own danger.