Posted by goatgrrl at November 7, 2001 06:49 PM

My favorite part of the story is this paragraph: "Proponents argue that Congress must do what it can to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election, ultimately decided in favor of Republican George W. Bush . . ."

Do they just want to make sure we don't hold the 2000 election again . . . or make sure we don't elect Bush again? :-)

Posted by ThePup at November 7, 2001 07:12 PM

What is REALLY sad is that.....

....the Consortium report on the disputed ballots and...

...the Toobin book "Too Close to Call" and....

..the Kaplan book "Accidental President"....

were all coming out the third week of September, 2001. The Newsweek cover story was even about "how Dubya won," discussing the near-unbelievable shenanigans at the U.S. Supreme Court (amongst the right-wing justices, surprise surprise). The Consortium report was not only going to note that Gore WON Florida, but that he won it by something like 20,000 or so votes.

Whatever hope there MIGHT have been to displace the illegitimate Election Thief, and correct this insult to the Republic, perished along with the World Trade Center and 5,000+ lives. Thus, just when the nation MOST needs a competent, legitimately elected leader, we instead have a person who stole the election, who has -zilch- competence in military and foreign affairs, and who is an affront to the most essential of our democratic processes.

Those who sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. The Republicans were willing to subvert the Constitution and various facets of our democratic processes to steal the presidency. Since that act, the economy has gone completely down the tubes.....

(a process WELL underway before September 11, by the way.....in fact, pretty much dating from the day Dub's gigantic war chest starting getting heavy media play, around Jan. 2000)

....we have suffered an unspeakable attack on our own soil (due largely to the Reagan and Bush #1 Administration[s] incompetent policies towards Afghanistan in the late '80's), and the nation is in its worst ennui in over a generation.

Gee, be nice to go back 18 months, where all people had to worry about was whether their 401(k)'s were gonna get 14% or 20% this year, and who Clinton was diddling with in the Oval Office. ..............

Posted by ThePup at November 7, 2001 07:20 PM

I've always really disliked the "local control" bias of government......"gee, ain't it kewl to have 51 separate entities each create their own version of basic services, instead os one streamlined, uniform way of doing things! Yeah, let's invent the wheel in every damn state!"

It works ok, assuming that if one gets crummy services in Mississippi, that one has the luxury to uproot "just like that" and move to Massachusetts or Wisconsin. Some people have that luxury...but the people who DON'T have that ability (in other words, the vast majority of citizens) shouldn't get screwed merely because they are unable to exercise such mobility.

If there was "uniform policy" nationwide, then if something was screwed up in Mississippi, it would be echoed in California, Massachusetts, and Michigan...everywhere, thus there would be a nationwide impetus to change it. When lame policies are of a local nature, the inbred flaws of "localism" usually serve as a gigantic impediment to get any change accomplished.

The 2000 election was a horrendous example of this. It is bad enough to allow each damn state to cosntruct its own method to conduct local elections (geez, haven't there been enough voting rights cases over the years to show the folly of THAT approach???, but it is obvious beyond reason that when it is a NATIONAL issue and election under consideration, that each damnstaet should be held to extremely strict (and UNIFORM! Same for each state!) criteria to ensure consistent and valid reliability of the voting process.

Posted by goatgrrl at November 12, 2001 02:29 PM

Check out eBay's auction for Official Palm Beach County Voting Machines -- there's only 3055 of them (but who's counting?), so you'll have to act fast!