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Dick et. al.<BR>
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One of the tricks to "stealing" an election is to have the votes you don't want not happen in the first place. Regardless of what any recount in Ohio may reveal, there is no way to get back the lost votes for people who gave up due to long lines at the polls due to a planned shortage of voting machines in some areas voting democratic, carried out by republicans in Ohio, or the poll observers sent out by republicans to "monitor" voters, intimidating some voters and creating more delays at the polls. Republicans had control of many aspects of the voting systems in Ohio, due to their political power in that state, and they used this control in a partisan manner to tilt the vote their way.<BR>
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The recount in Ohio, if it occurs, will not reveal how many votes never happened in the first place due to inadequacies in the voting system, and deliberate stymieing of voters who wanted to vote.<BR>
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It is a no-brainer that we should turn all election activities to nonpartisan groups, or at least mandate an equal power sharing nationally for all voting systems among the major political parties.<BR>
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When a state holds an election and the state's election system has critical political positions of power held by very partisan players, we have the proverbial fox guarding the hen house scenario.<BR>
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As far as the Ukraine election, it is interesting to see the Bush administration in some respects backing the challenge to this election, but then the politician making the challenge in the Ukraine is more pro-west. If the challenge was from someone unfriendly to US interests, would we see an argument from the Bush administration and republicans that the election challenge in the Ukraine is an attempt to disrupt the democratic process using lawyers and the courts, like they said about Gore in 2000, and now about the demands for recounts here in the US in Ohio, and in Washington in the governors race, which is going to a full state recount? <BR>
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Ted Moffett</FONT></HTML>