WARNING: DANGEROUSLY SUBVERSIVE THINKING FOLLOWS!

Elections are supposed to be a governmental function. So why are they run by a very, very, very small handful of government employees (The Supervisor of Elections and his/her miniscule staff) and a great big huge lot of unpaid volunteers? The powers that be say that they have to depend on volunteers because elections just don't happen frequently enough to merit the staffing that would be required. Bullshit! There are tons of people already working for the government that do no meaningful work anyway! Why not assign a few non-essential federal, state and local government employees to election-day-duty instead of their regular paper-shuffling jobs for one or two days out of the year? We're already paying their salaries, so let's put 'em to work doing something useful. That way there could be A) some genuine training and B) some genuine accountability. People seem to do a better job if they know they can get fired for screw-ups. You can't fire or otherwise discipline volunteers, so keep 'em away from anything having to do with the actual vote-taking procees. Let'em drive old women to the polling places instead. God knows there are plenty of old women in Florida.

END OF RANT

Bruce