According to Gallup polls taken yearly since 2000, roughly 50 percent
of Americans believe that the election of George W. Bush was either "won on a
technicality" or "stolen." Only 34 percent are "very confident" that the vote
will be counted accurately in November.

But rather than allay those doubts by selecting an election supervisor
of unimpeachable integrity, Gov. Bush seems to have found an equal to Katherine
Harris in Glenda Hood, the former Republican mayor of Orlando. True, Hood
is not juggling Harris' other job—state chairman for George W. Bush's
campaign—but she has done little to assure Floridians that all the votes will be
counted this time around.

For one, Hood and Jeb Bush have strongly endorsed the
state's Republican-controlled legislature's new rule that outlaws manual
recounts. This means that if any of the new optical-scan or
touch-screen machines fail—as they did in the 2002 elections; and the recent
March primaries; and just last week, when a backup system failed in a test run
in Miami-Dade—there will be no recourse for counting votes. A coalition of
election-reform groups has challenged this rule, and Rep. Robert
Wexler of Palm Beach sued in federal court after a state appeals court
dismissed the matter, ruling that while the right to vote is
guaranteed, a perfect voting system is not. Unlike the recent elections in
Venezuela, where the new touch-screen voting machine provided every voter with a
receipt, Floridians will have to take the word of Hood and Bush that their vote
was counted.

To the embarrassment of Hood and Jeb Bush, even the state's Republican
Party has voiced its doubts about the electronic voting system. A flier
disseminated last month by the party, featuring a picture of a smiling
President Bush striking a thumbs-up sign, urged Republicans living in
Miami-Dade County to vote by absentee ballot even if they will be home on
Election Day. "Make sure your vote counts," read the flier. "Order
your absentee ballot today.'' Now many Democrats also believe that the only
safe vote is an absentee ballot vote.

But it is in the "low-tech area" of absentee ballots, as Miami
Herald columnist Jim DeFede puts it, "that things get really funky." Most
critically, Hood and Gov. Bush have championed a new state law that abolishes
Florida's longtime requirement that absentee ballots be witnessed. While
some other states, like California, do not require witnesses, no state has
Florida's history of institutional vote fraud.

Following the contentious 2000 recount, e-mails on former Sec. of State
Katherine Harris' computer revealed that she had been in contact with Jeb Bush
during the recount, contrary to both their claims. Miami Herald reporter
Meg Laughlin discovered that e-mail messages sent to Jeb Bush from Harris had
been deleted after the recount. Harris then had the operating system
of her computer changed, a procedure that erased all its data. "What was
odd about what she did," said Mark Seibel, an editor at the Herald, "was
that they installed an old operating system—not a new one—which makes you
wonder why they did it."