What will Florida do for an encore? (BBV)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04088/292043.stm

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"In our elections, we don't count everything well," he told me on the phone last week. "We have a lot of error. We've tried to fix it with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which created a deadline and put a lot of pressure on state Secretaries of State and state election commissions.

"They liked touch-screen voting because people were already using it on automatic teller machines. Since you don't have to handle a lot of different forms, they looked at the machines and said, 'Oh, great stuff.' "

And, of course, they were wrong.

"Diebold obviously rushed the machines through," Valelly said. "Just put together poorly designed machines, and that's typical when anyone's under pressure, particularly when there are something like $3 billion worth of government contracts available. They were moving fast to make sales."

Diebold did not manufacture all the machines in play for this election, but more than enough to make paranoids on the left point out that it's curious there's no paper trail associated with Diebold's voting machines, even as just about every other machine Diebold makes -- mostly ATMs and ticket-dispensing machines -- has its transactions verified on paper. They also like to make the point that Diebold's CEO, Wally O'Dell, is one of George Bush's most decorated political operatives, having attended an exclusive Crawford ranch confab for "pioneers and rangers," people who have raised at least $100,000 for Bush's campaign.