SPREADING THROUGH MANY PROGRESSIVE BLOGS AND COMMENTARY are a number of articles, including one by Greg Palast, that the election was actually won by John Kerry.
It’s very hard for me to get excited about these efforts to revise the electoral outcome by complaining about voting machine errors, spoiled ballot conspiracies, and other democratic vote-suppressing strategies when John Kerry has conceded the race. Kerry will never get to kick his feet up on the president’s desk in the oval office. It’s over for him as far as the White House goes.
However, this Associated Press article documents a serious and relative-to-the-votes-processed HUGE error of a single voting machine.
This sounds like the type of error that might occur in Afghanistan or Indonesia, but this is America. In fact, Afghanistan and Indonesia have paper trails for their votes, and probably spend a lot of time counting by hand and human calculation.
These doubts about computerized voting machines have to be resolved one way or another before any more major elections — and the people who want paper trails are absolutely right. It is clear that some of the computers that are being employed to manage these votes are unable to handle with care and certainty each precious and important vote.
Note to both parties — don’t procrastinate. Fix these voting problems now.
— Steve Clemons
(Thanks to TK for sending the AP story my way.)
