Reply #55: USATODAY: Election Day leftovers [View All]

[dzika]

Posted 12/27/2004 10:16 PM

Election Day leftovers

Compared with the presidential election in Ukraine, this year's elections at home went off smoothly. Certainly no candidate here had to overcome massive fraud or a bizarre face-disfiguring poisoning. But eight weeks after Election Day, several U.S. races are still unresolved because of glaring human errors, machine malfunctions, disputes over vague or contradictory election laws and other echoes of the mess that tied up the presidential race four years ago.

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Ohio's votes for president are being recounted. And two court challenges, involving the presidential race and a major statewide race, seek to have the election thrown out altogether because of machine malfunctions, the double-counting of some ballots and a failure to provide adequate numbers of voting machines, particularly in predominantly minority precincts. The evidence, however, does not suggest that the discrepancies would give John Kerry enough votes to overtake President Bush in the state that decided the race.

Presidential recounts are also being sought in New Mexico and Nevada. A scattering of legislative races from Texas to New York are still in dispute. And one North Carolina county has to vote again next month because 5,000 votes were wiped out by a computer.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-12-27-edit_x.htm