Nearly four years after George Bush was installed in the White House after questionable results in a state run by his brother the Wall Street Journal and other conservatives have finally decided that some elections need to be questioned.
Not of course the US 2000 Presidential election where Bush "won" by 537 votes after tens of thousands of democratic votes were not excluded but hundreds of GOP votes were included.
No, the WSJ is concerned that the election in Venezuela where Hugo Chávez won a recall vote by 58%-42% should be questioned, claiming "widespread allegations of fraud are casting serious doubt on the results."
One could only imagine what the WSJ would have said if, oh say Chavez's brother ran the election and had his cohorts decide which ballots to count. No the Journal repeats a claim that "evidence is growing that the software of the touch-screen voting machines had been tampered with." [Exactly the concerns Democrats have on Florida this year.]
President Jimmy Carter said his own quick counts coincided with the electoral council's figures in Venezuela. Compare that to what he said in 2001 about Florida.
I was really taken aback and embarrassed by what happened in Florida. If we were invited to go into a foreign country to monitor the election, and they had similar election standards and procedures, we would refuse to participate at all.
The idea that conservatives are concerned over the fairness of elections is laughable. Their concerns only arise when the results don't go their way. From the 2000 US election to redistricting Texas which allow them to choose many of the states representatives, conservatives believe in elections to extent that they like the results. Why else would elected officials try to place limits on voters and draw boundaries based on politics rather than community?
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