IF the Maryland machines had been tampered with, the tamperers would NOT have been so obvious as to program "Republician victory, no matter what"....IF there were tampering, it would have to be subtle, to 'tweak' close races one way or another....or to 'invalidate' a certain number of voting attempts.

You see, no one has proven absolutely that tampering HAS been done, only that it is possible and hard to prevent the way it is currently set up. And, since Diebold IS on record as being very much to the right, it is not hard to imagine which way any tampering would go.

If exit polls showed a nice Democratic victory and the machines said something else, it WOULD be cause for concern. You know & I know that IF the potential for cheating is there and no safeguards are in place, eventually someone will exploit those flaws.

It may be that no Diebold machines were 'adjusted'....or it may be that the margins were not within the parameters of adjustment.

We DO know that a number of other 'dirty tricks' were attempted to trick, discourage or prevent Democratic voting in a number of places...(phone calls telling them to go to the wrong polls...etc.)

What we see is Rove's plan to ensure Republican victory for the forseeable future is beginning to unravel a bit, but we STILL need to design the voting procedures so that **NO ONE** can manipulate elections directly!!