Bev & Jerry, situtations like that in Liberty could be dealt with easily by a spot-check (sampled) hand recount of the paper ballots, and in some states, e.g., Ohio, that's pretty easy to come by. But Florida law doesn't allow for any sort of recount unless the vote is "close." Even if that standard were applied at the precinct or county level, the Liberty Co. vote count wasn't "close." And the statewide Bush v. Kerry count wasn't close enough, either.

This is why voting reform laws need not only to require a paper ballot trail but mandate that a certain percent of all votes be counted manually as a check on the accuracy of the voting machines. Otherwise, all a hacker or partisan programmer needs to do is steal BIG.

I hear, BTW, that Florida doesn't plan to EVER count its provisional ballots for the 2004 Presidential election, since the result wasn't within the margin of error. That means we'll never know how great Bush's actual margin of victory was in Florida, assuming he actually won at all.