So, apparently some absentee ballots were printed and distributed in Ohio that actually left Kerry off the ballot. Even though the number is small, the next section of the article is most interesting to me:
Earlier this month, officials scrapped 17,500 absentee ballots after Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell ordered presidential candidate Ralph Nader off the ballot because of invalid signatures on his candidacy petitions. Those ballots also had been tainted by the elections board’s discovery that the punch positions of Hamilton County Engineer Bill Brayshaw and one of the candidates for Ohio Supreme Court had been switched.
They nixed Nader on the ballot, who knows why, and switched two local candidates?! The issue of the local candidates bothers me most. However, I find a sad and amusing irony that if the democrats actually screwed themselves while trying to get rid of Nader “by any means nessescary.”
Regardless, John Williams director of elections in the area says: “Mistakes happen in every election,” Williams said. “I’m not happy about it, but we’re trying to do what we can to correct it. This time, you’re under their magnifying glass, so it gets more attention.”
Under the magnifying glass indeed. Yeah, those election magnifying glasses should be abolished as soon as possible. Election mistakes happen, people are human, the system is imperfect… We heard that in Florida in 2000… “This happens all over the country, you just don’t hear about it” My god, what good is democracy if we are so imcompetent and lazy that we can’t execute it properly or, that a particular group can exploit the process for their own gain?
Wait for the suits. What happens if a presidental election is contested in all 50 states in court?