Deno J. Andrews wrote...
> If we "fix" their votes, there is no democracy as I have stated,
> because there WAS a vote, and whether or not their vote was
> "wrong," it was a vote nonetheless...and changing that for
> anything hurts democracy.

There's something about this attitude - that it's the vote itself, not the accuracy of the vote that's important - that's been bothering me since last week. To me, the physical act of voting is nothing more than the means by which the voters express their preference. If it fails to provide for an accurate expression, yet is allowed to stand anyway, IMO that is what can hurt Democracy.

> [...]
> Our democracy calls for a vote ON election day. That happened
> and the votes are in. As I stated already, if there were mistakes
> in the vote, too bad. The people had their chance to fix their
> mistakes, and they did not. To vote again goes against us, thus
> killing what we know of our democracy.

The same attitude re-stated, but this time warning of killing Democracy instead of just hurting it. I really fail to see how a wrong, yet timely, vote can be preferred over an accurate, yet delayed one. This attitude is one I'll probably never fully understand.

This election has been a wake-up call for Americans, and I know that we all hope that everyone does indeed wake up. I expect some serious voting reform actions the next few years, but that doesn't really help us right now. I'd like to see a national re-vote, but since I fear that it would be subject to the same sloppiness as this one displayed it would be pointless. My next choice would be complete and accurate re-counts of all close states, but I don't think this can be done without partisan finger pointing from both sides, and this could further divide us.

So what do I think should be done? I don't know, this whole thing is a mess. What I do know however, is that the anti-recount and anti-revote people should adopt different slogans than "if there were mistakes in the vote, too bad" and "whether or not the vote was wrong, it was a vote nonetheless." I don't think this attutide is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.