taking a stand

hello all

i have been pretty quiet this week (getting some work done), but also mulling over the arguments being made, quite vociferously, by different camps of progressives about the election 'glitches.' some think that there are too many "anomalies" to be truly anomalous, and that we need to have a recount in ohio, at least, to find out the integrity of the election. others are saying "whoa! you are just in denial! we need to fix the party! there was no fraud." examples of both of these can be found at:
www.gregpalast.com and www.thomhartmann.com on the 'check the vote' side; david corn on www.thenation.com and farhad manjoo on www.salon.com on the 'get over it' side.

but, i guess i'm going to throw my hat in the ring after reading YET ANOTHER 'anomaly' story today. in this tale, the optical scan machines read the democratic column as liberatarian votes. that's right, and you know how we know? there is a paper trail with optical scans, so when they did the handcount, the local race changed from being won by a republican to being won by a democrat. that's right. and note, the machine was manufactured by... (drum roll)...diebold.

now, it's a local race. but we know that this happened here, and that mysteriously, thousands of votes got added for bush in a county in ohio, and that, mysteriously, the machines started counting backwards in florida, and that many, many people reported (in texas, ohio, florida and more) that when they pressed the touch-screen for kerry, their vote was recorded for bush.

i say, let's have a recount. and while we're doing that, could someone please, please, please fix the damn system! let's have a uniform ballot, non partisan election officials, and verifiable paper trails. let's pour just one-one hundredth of the money we are squandering in Iraq into our own democracy. let's have full public funding of election campaigns, with spending caps, and free airtime equally allocated to all candidates. let's get it right, for once.