Umm. Whoa.WTF?
I want a paper ballot, too, with traceable identifiers.
The bar of alarm being raised shouldn't be "actual evidence of mistabulation" but whether procedures were properly followed, and access to ballots secured. If not, shouldn't we be freaking out? Because if there are any irregularities at all, when something like wild deviations from exit polls and actual tabulations occur, you leave the room for serious doubt. This is not saying that black helicopters came and agents from a nefarious shadow group came and changed ballots, to those defenders of the status quo who love to paint any critic as a "conspiracy theorist," but my point is can you say they didn't?
All you have to do is secure the ballots as per procedure, make the process transparent, and you leave no room for any doubt. And doubt, fellow Americans, isn't what we want to have in our election process, is it? Doesn't that undermine the very fabric of democracy?
Doubt is the difference between our election process and any one of the sham elections we tsk tsk at on CNN. And lack of doubt strengthens the mandates of those who govern, and helps bolster the power of the rule of law.
Which is, in the end, the only thing that separates American society from any other. Besides Britney Spears records and $6 lattes, of course.
