Bill Bumgarner

Kerry conceded and the press, the president, and everyone else I know of are all acting like the election is over and done with.

The reality is that Ohio won't call the official results for another 7 days.

Now, I doubt if there will be a reversal of the called decision. There is little chance that Kerry could pull out a surprise victory.

There is something far, far more important at stake.

There have been a disturbingly large number of reports of serious problems during the Ohio voting process. The same goes for the rest of the nation, but Ohio is obviously a focal point.

These problems range from potentially illegal actions on the part of "challengers" to lost ballots to mishandling of ballots to reports of voting machines reporting thousands of extra votes for one Bush (site requires registration. Bugmenot.com can help. I have summarized the story below).

By rolling over and playing dead, Kerry & the democrats are sending a clear message that the way this election was run is A-OK. The reports coming in from the field indicate that this election was not run smoothly. These problems need to be trumpeted from the rooftops to ensure that they do not happen again.

To my layman's eyes, it would seem that the very tenets of our democratic process are at risk. If we cannot hold an election without some assurance that all votes will be counted, then what the hell is the point? How the hell can we continue to call our solves a model democracy whose role it is to spread democracy and freedom throughout the world?

This would seem to be a pretty big and scary story to me. The kind that draws eyeballs to TVs and newspapers quite effectively. Why isn't it even being mentioned in any mainstream press?

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An excerpt from the aforementioned news story.

Computer error at voting machine gives Bush 3,893 extra votes

Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A computer error with a voting machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct.

Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Wait. 4,258 votes recorded in a district that only had 638 people cast ballots? Shouldn't that, alone, be enough to raise a huge warning flag and be something that should be caught immediately? Apparently not. The error wouldn't have otherwise been caught until later in the month, well after the 10 day window until Ohio casts its final decision.

Computer error? There are hundreds or thousands of the same damned computers deployed throughout the state. All identical. If the error happened to one machine, chances are it happened elsewhere.

Is this the future of our "democracy"?