It is more than a tad suspect. It is the usual: self interest ruling reason and principle.
Re the absentee vote:
New Dispute Over Florida Applications For Ballots
[Today's NYT, Excerpts (because it won't paste. Anybody know why that is?)]
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.
An election official in Seminole County, Florida allowed Republican Party operatives to correct errors on thousands of applications for absentee ballots for Republicans, a Democratic lawyer said tongiht.
[He] said the applications were missing required information and would otherwise have been invalid. But... the election official allowed Republican campaign workers to set up shop in her office and work for several days to complete the forms...
Democratic campaign officials... complained that their local officials had not been offered a similar opprtunity to correct errors in applications for absentee ballots for Democrats...
The effect... was to provide thousands of absentee ballots to Republican voters whose applications should have been rejected....
(What happened is that the Republicans left off voter id numbers from the ballot applications they sent out and the Dems didn't, so the Repubs "corrected" the ballot applications when they got them, instead of tossing them out as would be usual.
I can see why the Republicans felt it to be fair to "correct" the faulty applications; one does feel it to be SO unfair if a foolish lapse by functionaries disenfranchises thousands of voters!!! Doesn't one? <g>
Unfortunately, the Democrats weren't offered the opportunity privately to review their ballot applications for correctness; and it can hardly not raise the question of whether other omissions besides the id number were remedied. After all, the application requests were handled, and corrected, not out in the open by a bi-partisan group of the sort that his doing the Florida hand-counting of ballots, but in a private room containing only Republican operatives. So I can see how the Democrats might feel a bit miffed, can't you, gao seng?)
nytimes.com |
