The entire electronic voting system will always have problems, human or otherwise. Nothing can be done which  will be a certain fix, there is no way under current electronic systems to forever protect the votes or ensure that they are counted, or can be re-counted correctly.

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion: GIVE UP electronic voting and return to paper ballots, it's turning out to be the only trustworthy way until really, truly fool-proof, tamper-proof, moron-proof electronic machines can be devised. The present machines one and all are unreliable, to say the least, trying to "fix" them is lipstick on the pig. Get rid of those pesky hanging chad paper systems, too, or tinker with that system if necessary--- the more primitive paper systems are, frankly, more fixable than any electronic machine could ever be--- and more reliable in a re-count.

Every poll worker or election official I've talked to cringes when I say these things: they cannot find enough workers as it is to run each polling place for the long day, much less do the tedious work of supervised counting at the end. This is a problem, I agree, but the answer lies not in machines for voting but in changing the way we go to the polls: consider two days of balloting, early voting, vote by mail, national holiday on election day, and so on. Merchants manage to run cash registers for long days with cashiers in shifts, and atill manage responsible records. Why can't we do it with voting?

I love the Comptroller results: 32% for Owens and Franchot, 31% for Schaefer

Fenty 52%  Cropp 28%

For all the Md voters out there, the general election may be worse than the primary as far as getting the Deibold macines working.  I mailed my ballot yesterday. Get your Absentee ballot now! 

I share a border, Beltway, and the Chespeake Bay with Tom Davis.  I am stuck in the same traffic. I drink the same water. I visit the same parks (where crime is at an all-time high and the last [appointed Parks] commissioner was fired for saying so). I help my nephew with his homework in this District twice a week.
I work for and with Federal agencies - the FDA - that are ruled by corrupt officials that he has declined to investigate.  The Data Quality Act has been used to keep the government from implementing safety regulations, without investigation.  I depend on those agencies to execute laws to keep my friends and family safe.

I have family in the military asked to fight in an Iraq war that has escaped scrutiny of his reform committee.  I have paid toward $600 billion in taxes toward Katrina, whose inept contractors have likewise escaped accountability by the reform committee.  My own Representative, Chris Van Hollen, said his amendment to toughen the lobbying reform bill that passed this committee was mysteriously removed when the bill was passed on to the rules committee. Davis, the chair, refused to put it back in.

I am as close to his district as he is to DC, and he's meddled in DC for years.  Furthermore, I'm a lot closer than Terri Schiavo in Florida, and Davis signed the Subpeona for Schaivo that he announced with Tom DeLay.  And I'm closer than Utah, which he's determined to give an "extra" undeserved Republican vote to.

So I'm pro-honest government wherever it may be, and especially when it's so close to home and has so much power over my purse. I'm proud to pay taxes when they are for the common good - but I'll be damned to pay them to line the pockets of corrupt corporations to raise terrorists in Iraq.

See the list of PACs that fund Davis here (note: 173-pages).

You know you wanna.  Contribute $11 to turn the 11th CD Blue. www.hurstforcongress.com

I remember when moderate REpublican Connie Morella lost in 2002 right across the river in Maryland (Chris Van Hollen's seat.  I have a desire to see democrats gain control, but the loss of moderates is tragic and indicative of the sad state of American politics

"Neither candidate went after the other, and it was a very civil campaign so far." 

Don't know about the rest of you on RK, but, for me, *THAT* is *the first and most important* thing about any Dem primaries... Don't, DO NOT, throw dirt on your opponent *within the party*; it'll come back and haunt you.

Even if you win, your opponent might not endorse you and might take the votes needed in the *general* (much more important) election with him/her. And the *real* opposition -- the Repubs -- will be spared the effort and the expense of trying to dig up dirt on you; your primary opponent will have done all their work for them.

Me, I threw in my lot/vote with Webb when Miller sent me a flier about Webb being an antisemite. Being half-Jewish and endowed with a large nose of my own, I looked at the cartoon (which I hadn't seen before) and decided Webb's campaign was not antisemtic at all; it was Miller's campaign that was whining about phantasms. In contrast, all I got from Webb was *positive*, with no smears thrown at his opponent in the primary (I sure hope he'll throw the whole sewer line at Allen )

But, do any of you want to take odds on *Allen* accusing Webb of being an antisemite? And quoting Miller's flier as evidence? My only hope is they'll be to dumb to do it, but it's not much of a hope; their record shows that they can turn *anything* into a pretzel.

Regarding the Montgomery County primaries screw-up: it *does* sound weird, and it certainly will cut the voter participation -- not everyone who'd been turned down at 7AM can come back, *again*, even with the voting time extended by an hour. OTOH... People at both ends of the political spectrum had been equally inconvenienced...

Yeah, I know... Dems are more likely to be the working grunts trying to fit in a few minutes on their way to work and more likely to be inconvenienced than the SUV-moms. Still... It doesn't smell like a deliberate effort at voter disenfranchisement. More like a SNAFU, a la VA "mislaying" heaps of data when someone's laptop got nicked.

Re Rhode Island primaries: Sorry as I'll be to lose Chaffey (one of the -- count-'em-on-the-fingers-of-one-hand -- semi-decent Repubs in the Senate), I couldn't help but giggle at the contortions that some of the Dems went to, to ensure that Laffey won... They registered as Repubs, so they could vote in Repub primaries. Un-registered on their way out, but say it'll be 90 days (3 months) before they're shot of the stigma :) Thankfully, Repub registration doesn't stop them from voting the way they want to (Dem) in general; and Laffey's win in primaries is an assured seat for a Dem in generals (while with Chaffey as the Rep candidate, all bets were off)

Aaah.. The freedom and the irony of the American system :)

This, of course, delighted the Republicans to no end.  They could now trot out the usual "liberal" label to motivate their people.  What a great distraction from the GOP incompetence message - "We may suck but liberals suck worse, you must get out and vote Republican".  Ok, I know, it's a crappy message but it's all they got.

So is this latest primary going to change the MSM message again destroy one of the few threads the Republicans cling to? 

This time it's clear the moderate won.  The voters aren't as extreme as we were led to believe.

Thanks for pointing it out - Mfume's been put back in his party.