Folkie folks, let's not allow our disagreements with the Bushies/Repubs (which I share) blind us to facts & cause us to blame everything on them. (1) Lyndon B. Johnson's landmark civil-rights legislation, the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 (and subsequent amendments thereto), *required* certain states, including Florida, to record race on voter-registration records---as a means of checking, statistically, on racial discrimination in registration practices. Such laws are still in effect. Nonwhite voting, virually nonexistent in much of the South through 1964 (thus did the White Man's Candidate, Barry Goldwater, win *87.5%* of the total vote in Mississippi! and 48% even in less-ante-bellum Florida), has skyrocketed in the decades since, and hundreds of black candidates have been elected: because the Feds can check the record in comparison to the census data. The Voting Rights Act has been called the most effective civil rights bill ever passed. (2) Party enrollment records are necessary for the many states where only party members may vote in the party's primary to nominate the party's candidates---a restriction which *parties* may impose, if they wish, pursuant to their constitutional rights re freedom of association, according to an ongoing line of court decisions. (3)I don't know about the all-Republican-votes screwup in that county cited; but remember, these were internal party *primaries*, not a D vs. R election. *Sounds* like maybe the computers were designating the D primary tallies as R --- a recoverable error as long as the candidates' names were correct. (??) (4) Look: Florida fouled up, at more than the minimum predictable level. Clearly more work is needed there. BUT, if we insist on a quick, massive changeover to a whole new voting & tallying system, as Florida did --- the good old American gnostic deus-ex-machina, modern-technology-is-salvation philosophy ---then there *IS* going to be a Baseline Unavoidable Screw-up Quotient, first time out. Inevitable. Get used to it. Elections administration & equipment---and voters' behavior---is no more *perfectable* than any other human activity or manmade device; e.g., automobiles, plumbing, policing, brain surgery, street-sweeping, airport security, folksinging, news reporting, website maintenance, war. Not everything is a deep dark conspiracy.