My parents are Dems and did not vote - because their primary vote wasn't going to count. I voted and the GOP credited half. All of us would like a different choice, since it's Florida (or Michigan's) right to hold their primaries any darn time they want. State's Rights, baby!

We all wonder what would have been the outcome IF all knew the vote would count. However, both parents feel that the vote should be counted as it stands because that's what Florida voted for - even though they did not vote for SWMNBN.

Florida gets a tremendous amount of grief for 2000. HOWEVER (yep, I'm screaming), the counties where the problems occurred were run by DEMOCRATS - especially the supervisors of elections. My county had the fill-in-the bubble computer forms and Bush still won. Florida was where the vote was so close as to require recount...the problems that existed in Florida existed nationwide in other states. The mistakes that Florida is held SOLEY accountable for were not limited to Florida alone and all the mistakes in all of the states contributed to the final numbers and outcome.

Oh, I don't mean to slight Florida. I'm well aware that Gore hand-picked four Democrat controlled countries in order to create votes out of wholecloth (by counting, re-counting and constantly changing the criteria for what was a valid vote).

But the fact that Gore took this route infuriated Republicans because it threw the jurisdiction over elections to the judiciary and away from the Legislature where it belonged.

We've seen some shady practices from Dems in the past - people voting multiple times, dead people voting, homeless people bribed with smokes - but this was unprecedented.

And now that the precedent exists, I'm tickled that it may well cause Democrats grief for the Pandora's box that was opened.

They deserve what they get.

Understand to a point. But. The problem with the Pandora box is that once it's opened, someone else wants to look and you can't control what's coming out of the box.

The same is with our current system of government: one with supposed checks and balances. Comomon sense, to me at least, has been tied up and gagged while precedents are used to benefit a specific person or group without benefit to society as a whole. With a courtesy tip of the hat to lawyers and how they make their income, our society is less functional, perhaps more unfunctional, because of it.

So while I see your point and can agree with it to a great degree, the process just makes the overall outcome even cheesier. And yet we do get what we deserve if we can't or won't get our leaders whom we are electing to get the point we try to make each election: enough is enough.