Went to see Trippi and EJ Dionne and a Princeton professor chat about various things. The subject was ostensibly "does your vote matter?" but of course the conversation wandered around quite a bit.
There's one point Trippi made which I want to expand upon. And, hey, since I have a blog I can do that. The point Trippi made was that even if all the electronic voting machines are 100% accurate and 100% fraud-free, the fact that the like a verifiable paper trail is going to cast a cloud over the legitimacy of the election.
I want to add that the sad thing is both sides (or at least, I hope both sides) are of course gearing up to fight the post-election battle, both the legal one and the publicc relations battle. No matter what happens, if the election is anything approaching "close," both sides are going to cast a cloud of illegitimacy over the other person's victory. Whether or not any side can try to use the legal system to yank back a victory is one question, but the noise machine will be cranked up high. The Right will scream "voter fraud" everytime a Hispanic person votes, and the Left will be screaming about voter intimidation and voting machines. Aside from the individual merits of any of those claims, both sides will inevitably be making them in order to control the post-election day spin.
