Whoa! don't count 'um before they are reported!

StevenD at Booman apparently feels a lot like I do. Hopeful, but aware of the nest of snakes we find ourselves in.

I know we all want to see the GOP lose at least one house of Congress next Tuesday, so George, Dick, Karl and the gang have to face the prospect of subpoenas issued by House Committees chaired by John Conyers, Charlie Rangel and Henry Waxman. Trust me, no one wants that more than I do. But it's time to do a quick reality check and consider the following. No election since 1998 has gone smoothly, and in each one legitimate concerns about the validity of the voting process has raised the real possibility (some would say certainty) that those elections were stolen by the party in power. So, in lieu of playing the “Let’s predict how many House and Senate seats Dems will pick up” game let me throw some cold water on all that enthusiasm.

TIME Magazine's Cover Story on Electronic Voting

No. 1, our mainstream media is beginning to talk about the possibility that those electronic voting machines just might screw up the election this year. As proof, I offer you this story from TIME magazine's latest issue:

In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them--90%--will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. When that many people collide with that many high-tech devices, there are going to be problems. Some will be machine malfunctions. Some could come from sabotage by poll workers or voters themselves. But in a venture this large, trouble is most likely to come from just plain human error, a fact often overlooked in an environment as charged and conspiratorial as America is in today.

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