When (not if) Bush loses, he can blame whoever he wants -- the credit will lie with the American people, who are standing for hours in the rain and other bad weather to vote him out of office.

In truth, he has no one to blame but Karl Rove, but that won't happen.

One good thing about this election that just may cancel out the Diebold effect, which has been worrying me: a large percentage of people vote ahead of election day: the military, absentee voters, those who won't be able to vote on the actual day, handicapped voters, etc. They all use paper ballots, so their votes will be validated by a count, and a recount will be possible if necessary.

Most of the Diebold machines infamously don't leave a paper trail, so verification isn't possible, and as blackboxvoting.org has stated, the software can be manipulated to change the vote.

But if all voting by non-electronic methods show a trend toward Kerry, and ONLY the electronic votes show Bush as the winner, I think that provides sufficient grounds to challenge.