I am always amazed that Mudcatters can manage to disagree so completely about practically anything, and yet hardly anyone flames or resorts to name-calling.

Well, unless you call using the term "liberal" as name-calling. Some conservatives like to think of it as an insult :)

You're right, Pooka, it's not bad, bad Florida. But we learned a couple of important things in 2000. When push comes to shove, we really don't have a solid, consistent plan for dealing with election difficulties -- mostly because we rarely have them. There WAS a plan in Florida, sort of, and it wasn't followed. There was a national plan, sort of, and that REALLY wasn't followed. And we got the real proof that had been lacking up 'til then that certain groups ARE being systematically disenfranchised by the process.

The 2000 election made me angry, but I think too much focus has been put on whether or not TweedleDee or TweedleDum was the legitimate winner, when we've got stuff to fix with the election system. It's great that it works most of the time, but shouldn't we be trying to reduce that margin of error and fix the process so that it works even more of the time?

I know the elections folks try and fix stuff, but they can't do it alone. Practically the whole nation was experts for a few weeks in what can go wrong -- and with the exception of a few places that have been updating equipment and so forth, not a whole heck of a lot has been done to prevent it from happening again. There's a reason why no one keeps important data on punch cards anymore, for heaven's sake!

Hey, *I* know how to improve voter turnout and accuracy. Make the voting machines look like ATMs and stick 'em outside banks. :-D (As long as it's not the new BofA ones that play you a commercial before they'll give you your money!)