Reply #71: If the problem was 2002, why is Kerry mostly to blame

[karynnj]

No one here asks where Al Gore or Bill Clinton were - they were the big name Democrats then. Kerry, like Edwards, Gepheart, Dean, etc were preparing Presidential runs.

Elections are run at the state level. A popular governor could have more successfully addressed this than a US Senator. For example,the Governor of a small state in the NE could have pushed through a landmark Honest Elections bill in 2001, 2002 and then lobbied in the media that all states needed to do this to preserve Democracy. At least it could have been a Governor's conference issue. So if the Senators are quilty of not understanding the full ramifications and working on this, the governors deserve more blame - Dean included.

In fairness to all, I think most politicians saw 2000 as an aberration. Because Gore focused his case on the 3 counties (Palm Beach, Broward and ?) the other issues of the felon list, the suppresion of black vote in various ways and other illegalities were ignored. The easy solution was federal money to buy modern machines to replace the punch machines that caused the problem in 2000.

Only in hindsight do we see the many ways they cheated. A measure of how well Kerry was doing - is the diversity of ways they siphoned off votes. They did stop some, but they didn't catch all of them. The question now is what is being done at all levels to fix the problem. This is not a problem that can be fixed by the JR Senator from Massachusetts alone.