How did the atmosphere get so poisonous? Most of the answer to that question is WAY beyond the scope of this discussion and certainly the subject of even more vitriol. The basic answer is, however, that WE LET IT HAPPEN BECAUSE WE CAN"T BE BOTHERED TO PERFORM OUR CIVIC DUTIES.

Now, before folks fill my mailbox with traditional Anglo-Saxon expressions of my character, let me clarify that by "we" I mean ALL of us as American citizens, INCLUDING the 80+ million of people who couldn't be bothered to go to the polls. We seem proud of the almost 60% turnout we managed this year (the highest since 1968), but it is pretty damn pathetic compared to Australia which averages about 95%. Of course, some people argue that our "broken" election system is what leads to apathy, and they may be right. This is all the more reason for us to fix the existing system, but that is going to be hard to do when one side is determined to fix it by taking it out of the opposition's hide and the opposition is equally determined to decline the honor.

Netaloid would point out that Australians are required by law to vote and thus their voter turnout is always going to be high. But otherwise, Allen is right on the money.

There were plenty of serious voting irregularities in Ohio alone in November, and they all deserve an investigation to assure citizens that their election process is honest. But it's just as important to assure the citizenry in states using touch-screen and other computerized machines that their votes count. The problem continues to be that there is no mechanism to prove that even a recount is accurate. A recount merely amounts to having the machine regurgitate the numbers stored in memory. What if those numbers were wrong in the first place? There's no verifyable receipt to prove or disprove results.

And that's not acceptable. It's a case of technology providing a worse problem than the one it set out to solve.