Dear Editors,
Instead of covering the numerous reports of bizarre voting irregularities--including an Ohio machine that allegedly registered negative 25 million votes at one point--most major media outlets have spent the last week telling us how the Democrats need to appeal to the anti-abortion vote. Finally, nine days after the election, the Post weighs in with "Latest Conspiracy Theory," an article which seems intent on marginalizing any discussion of the failures in our country's voting procedures.
I don't think there's anything conspiratorial about making sure that every American's vote counts. We have a choice: we can either work to improve our voting system now, or argue over election results every four years for the rest of our lives.
Thad Anderson
outragedmoderates.org
Article comments
1 - RJ
The fever-swamp lives!
2 - Thad Anderson
I don't see how anyone could think that voting machine malfunctions, and vote counts greater than the number of registered voters in a precinct, are irrelevant. These problems will be especially important in local elections, where 4,000 lost votes could make a huge difference.
3 - Eric Olsen
Thad, most of the numerical discrapancies are being cleared up and resolved: no fraud, no nefarious intent, just the usual mistakes, malfunctions, etc involved with ANY operation where tens of millions of "transactions" take place over the course of one 12-hour period. That's what the election officials are saying, the Democratic party is saying and all of the mainstream press, including those who openly favored Kerry.
Absolutely, as many of the difficulties and discrepancies should be cleared up as possible and steps taken to prevent them in the future, and I don't think it makes any sense to have electronic voting with no paper trail at all, but none of this is deliberate or out of the norm.
4 - Thad Anderson
As far as I'm concerned, Bush's campaign doing a better job than Kerry's is what decided the election. (As Jon Stewart said, "isn't 'mastermind behind the Dukakis campaign' a bit of an oxymoron?")
My problem is that the media didn't cover all of these malfunction stories for a week, and then, when it finally does, it lumps all voter irregularities together as "conspiracy theories." If the 2004 level of malfunction and mistake is normal, we need to do better.
After 2000, everyone said "well, the good thing about the voting controversy is that it will bring attention to the flaws in our election system." Four years later, nothing has changed.
5 - Eric Olsen
good points Thad, don't disagree, except that I would say some things have changed for the better, and the changes will continue, but remember how slow bureaucracy is