Florida is reverting to type; we fought this kind of crap back in the 60's. Nobody is arguing for dimples here.

The whole thing would be irrelevant in a normal election, because the anomalies would not be meaningful if the state had been carried by a preference, say, of 10 per cent. But in a population of 6,000,000 to "win" under problematic circumstances by a margin of 300 is so thin a margin that all the votes become meaningful.

Under those circumstances to do anything that looks like partisan manipulation is very unwise policy because well-intended or not it smells like corruption. Personally, given the significance of the very small margins involved, I would have preferred a state-wide revote or recount in the first 7 days.

Instead, Bush's campaign is in a position where they can win by dragging their feet, and being the slightly stupid people they are, this will appear to them as an acceptable option. The fact that it creates an international impression of underhandedness and lack of principle is secondary to the realpolitik benefits they believe they will gain from it.

As far as I am concerned this is a very dark day for the Great Experiment; it has been subverted by small-minded manipulations. Fortunately margins as narrow as these don't come around very often.

The really dumb thing is that there is so much technology out there to make this sort of thing absolutely unnecessary -- for example, large-scale displays, touch screens, unique biological ID sensors (fingerprinting the vote entry as a way of ensuring uniqueness and confirmation of intent, with no link to registration ID, would be a clear solution)...it is a pathetic organizational swamp, as well as a moral embarassment to us all, IMNSHO.

A