Democracy, Republican Style

We're all pretty happy about the election results across the river in New Hampshire, but it's not that long ago that the Republicans in New Hampshire, with help from the RNC, were deep into election fraud by jamming the Democrats' GOTV effort with thousands of robo-calls. You'll recall that it was so bad that James Tobin of the national Republican Party was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison for the scheme.

Now the Democrats are suing the Republican Party for damages, arguing that the Republican phone-jamming effort trespassed on their personal property and deprived them of its value. There's only one thing: the two parties have different views of the value of the damages the Dems suffered. The Republicans claim that their efforts only cost the D's a few thousand dollars, about what it cost them to rent the phone service for the day. The D's, on the other hand, say, "He, the whole point of all the money we spend on setting up our GOTV campaign is so that we can make GOTV calls on Election Day. If we can't do that, we've wasted all of our investment in setting up the GOTV system. That'll be four mill, please."

It's too soon to tell what will happen, but we'll be following the story. Meanwhil, here's the link to the story in the Times Argus.

Meanwhile, down in the sunny South, remember Katherine Harris?

Yes, that's her, the Bush hatchet woman with the scary makeup who made a fool of herself in her Senate run.

Well, when she ran for Senate her House seat was open, and in a hotly contested race the Republican who was running to replace, Vern Buchanan, her won by 369 votes.

But wait, it is Florida, and Katherine Harris's home district, so it couldn't be as easy as that, could it? No, indeed. In Sarasota County, which the Democratic candidate Christine Jennings carried, there was an undervote of over 18,000 votes. Missing voting machines, people being told their votes didn't register, the whole litany of things that can go wrong with touch screen voting.

The recount's over, Buchanan is demanding that Jenings back off, but it ain't over yet, folks.

If this is what they call democracy here at home, what do the R's think qualifies as democracy in Iraq?