John Kerry: Count Every Vote, As Long As It's For A Democrat

Everyone's favorite French-looking Democratic presidential candidate / has-been is back, and he's still whining about the 2004 election. Appearing before a League of Women Voters forum, Kerry mentioned, as examples of the rampant voter 'intimidation' that we've got to put a stop to, Democratic voters who were told that they voted on Wednesday, instead of Tuesday, and others who were told that they couldn't vote if they'd ever had a traffic violation.

Now, if true, this kind of stuff is pretty low. In all honesty, though, and at the risk of sounding pompous and arrogant (but this is a John Kerry story), how stupid do you have to be to fall for those two things? Shouldn't there be an expectation that you should be able to understand from the non-stop radio, television, newspaper, internet, and citizen forum coverage what day the election is on? And the traffic ticket thing - who could possibly believe that? I can't imagine, even if these violations occurred, that even .0000001% of the electorate could be fooled by them.

Of course, Kerry doesn't mention the two specific, well-proven, and quite reported on, instances of genuine attempts to disenfranchise Republican voters: (1) the unbelievably low attempt to throw out the ballots of military personnel in election 2000 on the well-founded grounds that they would support Bush in a higher proportion than Al Gore, and (2) the slashing and flattening of tires in Milwaukee in election 2004 on vehicles intended to transport Republican voters to the polls, carried out by Democratic activists who were charged with criminal offenses.

By all means, let's count every vote, and if foul play occurs on either side, it should be condemned and referred for prosecution. Let's quit pretending, though, that it is only Republicans who engage in dirty tricks. Bad electoral sportsmanship, I'm afraid, is a bipartisan affair.