JAMES K. “JAMIE” GALBRAITH HAS A LEVEL-HEADED REVIEW of the ongoing debate about voting machines, spoiled ballots, and provisional ballots.
He works through the numbers on voter turn-out and rejects most of the claims of those who believe that Kerry won the election after all. What he does focus on is exactly the right issue: getting the election system itself right before the next election.
Shocked by the several hours long wait that many elders had to stand in line to vote, Galbraith writes:
. . .it is an injustice, an outrage and a scandal — a crime, really — that American citizens should have to wait for hours in the November rain in order to exercise the simple right to vote.
Galbraith suggests that we do away with the election day machinery and long lines and transition to a vote-by-mail system. I agree with him that there must be a better way to engage the nation’s voters in elections than the system we use.
We need to do something that works and which seeks to try to bring as many voters as possible into the system rather than spending so much time and effort — from felon lists to poll challengers — that seek to intimidate or stop a free and fair election.
— Steve Clemons
