What They Did Last Fall

Paul Krugman editorialized in NYT By running for the U.S. Senate, Katherine Harris, Florida's former secretary of state, has stirred up some ugly memories. And that's a good thing, because those memories remain relevant. There was at least as much electoral malfeasance in 2004 as there was in 2000, even if it didn't change the outcome.

The Democrats certainly tried to steal the 2004 election, just as they tried to steal the 2000 election, but Krugman is right. They were not successful.

What, you mean Krugman was accusing the Republicans? I am shocked. And nothing the Republicans did could ever come anywhere near to the efforts of the Dems ot steal elections. It is not the Republicans that push for people to be able to signup and vote in one day, and to vote without providing any ID, much less one with a photo.

And the next election may be worse. In his recent book "Steal This Vote" - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I've seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election." Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.

But a complete recount is not what Gore asked for. He just wanted recounts in areas he thought might result in more Democratic votes. And those independent reviews only came out on Gore's side in very limited interpretations of which "hanging chad" votes to count, and which to throw out. In other words, if you let them redefine the rules after the election, AND after they have looked at the ballots, AND then made up the rules of which ones to count, and which ones to reject, they could twist the results their way.

This was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris's "felon purge," which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters.

Maybe if the voters had had photo IDs they could have proven they were not the felons.