Flipping through the channels on my
TV, I passed one of the news stations covering the whole
BushGore election
fiasco (
MSNBC I think) and heard the anchor say "
Democrats don't trust machines". I've gotten to the point on this issue that I just don't care anymore, but this was enough for me to stop and listen.
Apparently, the Democratic party is requesting that some counties in Florida hand count the ballots. What? Excuse me? I lost respect for this whole political pissing match at about 4am after election day. The request to hand count ballots just made me lose all respect for the Democratic Party.
Requesting a method of counting that is slow and extremely prone to error is irresponsible, wasteful, and shows just plain stupidity. We live in an era where machines run everything we do. We trust them to manage our money, control our environment, and keep us safe. The ballots are designed such that they can be quickly and accurately machine counted. But, I guess those machines can't be trusted... ARG! Technophobia even rears its ugly head in a Presidential election.
(fade from black. show Jane Doe one of the people responsible for counting ballots.)
Jane Doe: "76, 77, 78,..."
(John Doe enters, slams a box of more ballots on the table next to Jane Doe)
John Doe: "Here ya go"
Jane Doe: (Looks at the box) "Thanks. 72, 73, 74..."
You know it will happen.
This is the first time I've ever felt the need to respond to any of my writeups.
Shylock you attack me without even
knowing the rules yourself. Florida does automatially force a
machine recount if the difference between the two candidates is less than 0.5%. The hand count is a specific request from the
Democrats to recount the ballots a third time. This is where I have my problem. It's a waste of taxpayer money. They are now saying that it will cost upwards of $20 million, just to do manual recounts in a few counties.
As for the machines having a 16,000 vote discrepancy? Sure it happens, but its much easier and faster to catch machine errors (they reproduce) than human errors. Hal 9000? Jesus H. Christ, Hal is ficticious. It never existed!