The Party That Can't Vote Straight

Paul Krugman relives his party's electoral ineptitude:

Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's [2000] ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.

Krugman's source for that claim is a book, "Steal This Vote", by Andrew Gumbel. But whether or not Gumbel is correct, is irrelevant. The Democrats didn't ask for a 'full manual recount'. They asked for, and were granted by four members of Florida's Supreme Court, a targeted recount. And one in which there most certainly would not have been enough time to complete and certify before the date in December scheduled for the Electoral College to cast its ballots.

Which means that the Florida legislature would have cast its electoral votes for George W. Bush.

Even more amusing is Krugman's not mentioning the one certain voting scandal of 2004; the Washington state gubernatorial election.

Of course, that's where Democrats in King County managed to create more than enough illegal votes to give that election to Christine Gregoire. A judge ruled that while there were 1,678 illegal votes cast in that county--which went overwhelmingly (78%) for the Democrat Gregoire--but he couldn't tell what effect that would have had on the 129 vote margin of victory!

It doesn't seem to phase the Princeton economist that all the voting problems occur in areas controlled by Democrats for a very good reason:

...votes were suppressed by long lines at polling places - lines caused by inadequate numbers of voting machines - and that these lines occurred disproportionately in areas likely to vote Democratic.

Which would be the fault of the Democrats administering the elections, one would think.