Where we are now

The seeming irregularities in heavily Democratic counties in Florida having voted for Bush has been explained. Or, if you will, debunked. Dixiecrats.

The glitches and irregularities in Broward County, Florida, and Ohio have not been sufficiently explained. Voting machines shouldn't count backwards. Voting machines shouldn't add votes for a candidate.

The allocation of smaller numbers of voting machines for largely Democratic precincts -- the Kenyon College situation -- has not been explained. Nor has there been a proper explanation for why, in the greatest nation on Earth, citizens had to stand eight hours in line to vote.

It should be noted that there have not been stories of people standing in line for four or five or eight hours in largely Republican precincts/counties. But if you have news stories about this, please, post a link in the comments box.

Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb and Ralph Nader are both pushing for recounts in both Ohio and New Hampshire, respectively. Both cite the problems with electronic voting machines and, in the case of Opti-Scan paper ballots, the machines manufactured by Diebold and similar companies to collate and count the paper ballots.

There can be recounts, but recounts do cost money, but MoveOn and other organizations seem to now be looking into joining the fray.

Kerry lawyers are going to Ohio to investigate.

The County Commissioners in Warren County, Ohio, claim that they closed off the vote tabulation in their county on Election Night due to reports from FBI men that the county was, on a scale of 1 to 10, at a 10 in terms of risk of a terror attack. The FBI contradicts tihs story. The County was one of the last ones of the evening to report their totals, and they reported them when it was clear that Ohio was going down to the wire.

There is still no explanation for the voting machine in Franklin County, near Columbus, which added on 4,000 votes to Bush's totals.

Six Democratic Congressmen -- and ranking member, extremely respected congressmen, not of the loony Cynthia McKinney/Bob Barr school -- are pushing for an investigation by the General Accounting Office of Congress, citing a long list of reports of malfunctioning voting equipment, long lines, tabulation irregularities, and other strange phenomena.

My take on the situation right now: Electronic Voting was disastrously implemented. It's criminal that machines leaving no paper trail were brought into the process. Worse, any time you have people waiting in line for over an hour to vote, that's a catastrophe that must be explained. I'm right now doubting any large scale election fraud, but I do think that the glitches and situations merit and warrant a recount in Ohio to see if there were additional discrepancies between the paper trail and the computer collated totals.

It's simple: do the recount in Ohio. Do further investigation of the remaining problems and reports from Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and other loccations. Put any theories, tin-foil or otherwise, to rest by proving that these machines did an accurate job -- not just the Touchscreen machines, but also the machines which read/scanned the optical scan ballots and the computers which then tabulated/maintained the totals from everywhere. The voters' confidence in the sanctity and security of our voting process depends on it.