World-News

In The Columbus Dispatch, Mark Niquette writes: "The touch-screen voting setup used in half of Ohio's 88 counties doesn't work properly, and the former Diebold Election Systems should pay as a result, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said in a court filing yesterday. The move comes fewer than 90 days before Ohio voters go to the polls in an election that could decide the presidential race, but Brunner says safeguards will be in place by then in the affected counties to mitigate any risks. 'We will make the equipment work, but this is not something that Ohio should be satisfied with for the long term,' Brunner said. 'Our goal is to have Ohio taxpayers compensated for this equipment that doesn't function properly.'"

http://www.truthout.org/article/missing-ohio-votes-spark-lawsuit



2008 Election Forecast: All Eyes on Florida, Again

Rachel Kapochunas writes for Congressional Quarterly: "Florida has been hotly contested in each of the past four elections. Bill Clinton finished 100,000 votes behind President George Bush in 1992, but four years later he carried the state by 303,000 votes. George W. Bush , after his virtual tie - just 537 votes - with Al Gore in 2000, won the most decisive victory of the four in 2004 - by 381,000 votes over John Kerry. John McCain got off to something of a head start this year in Florida as a result of the asymmetrical ways in which the parties handled the state’s decision to hold a Jan. 29 presidential primary that violated both national parties’ scheduling rules. The Democratic National Committee prevailed upon its candidates to not campaign for primary votes and initially stripped the state of all its Democratic convention delegates (waiting until nearly the end of the nominating process to restore half of the delegate votes). The Republican National Committee, by contrast, took just half the state’s convention delegates away at the start and did not dissuade GOP candidates from campaigning for Florida primary votes. As a result, McCain had a high profile en route to his pivotal primary victory by 5 percentage points over Mitt Romney. 'Under normal circumstances John McCain - with his background, with his persona, his high level of public and generally positive awareness - would carry Florida,' Bob Graham, the former Democratic senator and 2004 presidential hopeful, says. 'But 2008 is not going to be an average year.'"

http://www.truthout.org/article/2008-election-forecast-all-eyes-florida-again



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