I know this is an elections blog, and that I should, in theory, be excited by the prospect of a longer campaign season. But the news that South Carolina will move its Republican primary up to January 19 so as to become the state "first in the South" to start the voting ball rolling is unwelcome, to say the least. But I don't solely blame South Carolinians. After all, they're just following the lead of states like Florida and California, who are attempting to wield greater influence in the electoral process. The problem is that such repositioning causes a domino effect:

Under some scenarios, the decision could lead Iowa to hold its caucuses in mid-December, creating an unprecedented situation in which convention delegates are selected in the calendar year before a presidential election.

Where will this madness end? Ohio in October? South Carolina in September? Alabama in August? Hell, why not have the presidential primaries during the mid-term election? We clearly need to have a national consensus. As Chris Weber pointed out yesterday, our failure to agree on national standards is an invitation for politicians from both parties to play dirty. The way a state awards its delegates, the huge discrepancies as to what kinds of voting machines different counties use, the varying laws on how different states certify election results: all of these are examples of a system in need of a drastic overhaul. We should insist that in national races (president, House and Senate) that one national standard should apply. If states want to tinker with local elections whose outcomes won't effect their cross-the-border neighbors, fine. The argument that "we've always done it the old way" is no longer valid. We've witnessed too many screw-ups, and endured too much partisan rancor in recent cycles.

So as to the question of a primary calendar, how best to go about deciding the national order? Perhaps we should have a single primary day, and a shorter campaign in which the debates were actually followed by the population. I've never been entirely comfortable with the weight that small states like Iowa and New Hampshire wield so much power in the process. Then again, front-loading the calendar with powerhouse states like Florida and California doesn't seem fair to the more rural parts of the country, either. What is clear, however, is that our current poker game approach to national elections is a recipe for even further election fatigue.

In the New York Times today, we find that another promise by the Democrats, to revamp the nation's voting system, is not going to take place until 2012 at the earliest, not 2008 as previously indicated.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are slowing their drive to revamp the nation's voting systems, aides said yesterday. Under pressure from state and local officials, as well as from lobbyists for the disabled, House leaders now advocate putting off the most sweeping changes until 2012, four years later than planned.

Actually, this development is not surprising, since the framework for overhauling the election process hasn't even been agreed to yet. It's another example of Democrats promising the electorate something that they knew they couldn't accomplish. The NYT tries to spin this as Democrats being compassionate to the local governments and the disabled (huh?), but the Dems were never willing to deal with the real issues underlying election reform. If they had lost in 2006 they would be screaming about this now, but they won so they feel they can wait.

The Post and Courier of Charleston South Carolina is reporting (Double voting possibility looms for 2008 primaries) that there might be a few problems come primary election day in South Carolina. It seems that South Carolina law does not stipulate that voters should register with a particular political party before voting in that party's primary. Hence, you could have a voter show up and vote in the Democrat primary (Jan 29), then show up four days later and vote in the Republican primary (Feb 2) and there's apparently no way to either track it or prevent it.

The people in charge of South Carolina's presidential primaries say they don't yet have a way to ensure voters won't cast ballots in both the Democratic and Republican contests, something that has the potential to skew the nation's first Southern primaries.

Primaries in the state are run by the two political parties and don't require people first to register with one or the other to vote. The 2008 White House race marks the first times since 1992 when both parties will hold primary votes in the same election cycle - balloting slated to take place four days apart.

Last year, Republicans and Democrats talked about quickly sharing voter lists to bar people from voting in both primaries. But the leaders of both state organizations now say they're not certain that will happen.

Admittedly, when one speaks of voter fraud, it's usually about the general election -- not the primaries. But this situation just begs for foul play. The sad thing is that it looks as if this problem was identified with plenty of time to resolve it, but no one on the local level bothered to fix it. Shared computer databases anyone?

Democrats around the nation have been seething since Al Gore lost in 2000. Now, thanks to a governor in the bluest of blue states, they have found a way to possibly help their fellow donks and destroy the intent of the our forefathers who wrote the Constitution:

Maryland officially became the first state on Tuesday to approve a plan to give its electoral votes for president to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the candidate chosen by state voters.

Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, signed the measure into law, one day after the state's General Assembly adjourned.

The measure would award Maryland's 10 electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The plan would only take effect if states representing a majority of the nation's 538 electoral votes decided to make the same change.

Which means it will probably never take effect but the intent of Governor O'Mally is clear. Democrats have a hard time winning legally so they'll just push through legislation that would allow them to subvert the intent of those who created a document as great as the Constitution. It's kind of like passing a non-binding resolution against our troops funding during wartime, but what party in it's right mind would possible do that?

Not every U.S. citizen 21 years old and over can vote. Last Monday, the New York Times reported:

"Florida is the most populous of three states whose constitutions require withdrawal of voting rights from all convicted felons, and it has the nation's largest number of disenfranchised former offenders. The other two states are Kentucky and Virginia."

That's why it's encouraging that, last Thursday, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist restored voting rights to many felons in his state.

"Under the new rules, the roughly 80 percent of ex-offenders whose crimes were not considered violent will win automatic rights restoration after the state makes sure they have paid any restitution to victims and have no pending criminal charges," the Times reported that day. "Convicted murderers, sexual predators and 'violent career criminals' will still need an investigation of their case and a hearing before the clemency board. Most will probably not regain the right to vote, serve on a jury or get jobs that require state licenses, like as a barber or nurse."

Denying felons the right to vote has been criticized on racial grounds. The Times noted that "the vast majority" of Florida's disenfranchised felons were black, and quoted the state ACLU executive director as saying, "This seriously addresses, finally, some of the wounds from the Civil War era." But the injustice of denying a felon the right to vote after the completion of a sentence is more basic than this. Once a sentence ends, why should disenfranchisement continue for anyone?

Finally, a reason to be proud of living in Florida:

Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida's counties installed after the disputed presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Props to Crist. Florida had come to be known as the laughing stock of the electoral process. From "hanging chads," to Katherine Harris justice, to the missing 18,000 votes in the ongoing Jennings/Buchanan contest, the Sunshine State was, as the Times put it, a "Bermuda Triangle" for voter intent. Let's hope that a bipartisan solution, led by the new governor, will signal an end to the madness.

The woman that liberals hate only slightly less than George W. Bush, Ann Coulter, has the Palm Beach, FL authorities a bit perplexed as to how they should handle her voting misdeeds:

When it comes to dealing with Palm Beach GOP vixen Ann Coulter - who, police now say, could end up facing two felonies and one misdemeanor - elections boss Arthur Anderson is starting to look like Don Quixote.

Nearly a year after Coulter allegedly voted in the wrong precinct in a town of Palm Beach municipal election, Anderson is looking desperately for a law enforcement agency willing to investigate.

Too funny. Palm Beach County is of course the place where the voters were too stupid confused to vote for Al Gore properly. Now they can't seem to figure out how to get the wily Ann. It doesn't matter. If they do indict Coulter, the good folks in Palm Beach will probably arrest Pat Buchanan by mistake.

Coulter surely does get the lefties riled up.

Previous AOL report on this case here.

Ah Florida, my home state. Land of alligators, strip malls, and recounts. Today, from the Sarasota Herald Tribune, comes an update on the contest between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan. You'll recall that Buchanan leads in their race to replace Katherine Harris by some 377 votes, but that more than 18,000 electronic votes have gone missing.

Why have they gone missing? For one thing, the machines in question do not leave a paper trail. But as today's Herald Tribune reports, something else is under suspicion: poor ballot design.

Nearly 13 percent of all ballots cast in Sarasota County did not have a vote in the District 13 [Jennings v. Buchannan] race compared to less than 5 percent in other counties in the district. "In engineering, when you have those kinds of results, you throw them out," said Ted Selker, director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. "This is a call to arms for ballot design."

This brings to mind another interesting study conducted by Ohio State University that suggests that a candidate whose name appears on the top of the ballot is likely to receive 2 to 6 percent more votes than if his or her name is listed lower down. Each state has it own rules on which candidate will appear first on ballots. In Florida the party of the sitting Governor gets top billing, which is illuminating, considering the closeness of the 2000 presidential election. Of course, in the race in question, it was Vern Buchanan's name on top.

Is it not more than a little troubling, given the closeness of our recent electoral contests, that we cannot, as a nation, set about standardizing our voting procedures? Why shouldn't we take national measures to insure that the process is uniform and fair?

The Florida election debacle of 2000 lives on. In the race to replace Rep. Katherine Harris in Florida's 13th district there is -- of all things -- an electoral snafu.

The 2006 election between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings will be long noted as a particularly dirty fight. One in which a record amount of money was spent distorting each other's positions.

The real story is the vote in the 13th district. Or, more to the point, the undervote. In Sarasota County, the coverage on the razor thin margin of Buchanan's lead (373 votes) over Jennings has been front page news since the election. More than 18,000 voters in Manatee County are presumed to have skipped the congressional race on their touch screen ballots. The Bradenton Herald and Sarasota Herald-Tribune have detailed the raging controversy and the likely litigation that will follow any recount.

The battle looming though is over the way America votes. The touch screen voting system which fails to provide a paper trail is at the center of the controversy. Sarasota supervisor of election Kathy Dent wrote a letter to the Sarasota County Commission stating in part, "...I am going to urge the county commission to find necessary funds to purchase voting equipment which will satisfy the expression of the voters and current federal and state law."

Whether the election in the 13th district to replace Harris is decided by a recount, a special election or by Congress itself, the irony remains. The taint of voting irregularities, if not outright fraud, will be once again carefully monitored nationwide. As for Katherine Harris, she leaves the national political scene haunting the integrity of the electoral process itself.

"It ain't over yet," said the South Carolina Strom Thurman leftovers. The S.C. Republican Party announced the creation of a "Voter Protection Task Force" of overseers to monitor the recount of votes in all S.C. counties.

Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, better known for his speeding tickets and recent private airplane crash than for his political contributions, led Democrat Robert Barber by 3,085 votes after Tuesday's balloting. Republican Karen Floyd, a proponent of private school vouchers and intrusion of religion practices in schools, trailed Democrat Jim Rex by 392 votes for state education superintendent, state Election Commission officials said.

The contentious issue of a recount began with Rex declaring himself the winner and earning the ire of the GOP.

The South Carolina Republican Party remains committed to ensuring the legitimacy of this election. It is unfortunate, premature, and irresponsible that Jim Rex has taken it upon himself to ignore the electoral process as outlined by state law ... The Voter Protection Task Force was assembled to combat Jim Rex and the Democrats' blatant attempt to diminish the integrity of this election by ensuring that all legal votes are accounted for," said Katon Dawson, South Carolina Republican Party Chairman.

According to the GOP press release last night:

The task force consists of local citizens who have volunteered their time and effort to protect the will of the voters and to defend the integrity of the democratic process.

Tomorrow morning, counties throughout the state will begin certifying votes and counting remaining provisional and challenged ballots. The South Carolina Republican Party will deploy members of the task force statewide to ensure every voter's voice is heard.

"There will be attorneys on the ground in all 46 counties," Joe Erwin, the ever-congenial Chairman of the SC Democratic Party said in response. A legal team, including former party chairman Dick Harpootlian, is being assembled, he said. "It's unprecedented, having two elections this close."

There will be a recount, after all. But not in Virginia. No, no, it's back to the place that practically made an art-form out of election snafus--The Sunshine State. Of course we Floridians don't use machines that leave a paper trail, so one wonders what a re-count even amounts to. We'll find out on Monday, when current Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb, Katherine Harris' successor, dispatches a team to Sarasota County, to decide Katherine Harris' successor to congress. Is your head spinning yet?

Republican Vernon Buchanan currently holds a 356 vote lead over Democrat Christine Jennings, but it turns out that some 18,000 people who bothered to turn up to the polls didn't indicate who they wanted to represent them in congress. Or, it might be that the voters thought that they'd used the ATM-style machines properly, but their votes didn't register. Who knows? Not us, that's for sure, because there's no paper trail!

A reader of my previous Virginia post brings up an interesting point: How does one conduct a recount of touch-screen machines that don't leave a paper trail? As is clear by now, we're most certainly heading toward recounts in Montana and Virginia. In the former, the electorate used paper ballots, having outlawed the touch-screen machines in 2005. This makes recounting easy enough. Hand count each one. But what of Virginia? Today's Washington Post doesn't say a word about the method that will be used in the recount. Several Virginia precincts use electronic machines that leave no paper trail. One assumes that they'll simply check the computer cards in those polling stations, and hope that the tallies reflect the will of the voters. This means that the only votes that will truly be scrutinized will be the provisional, absentee, and paper ballots. ABC has a good piece on what's next.

As expected, AP is advising that no final calls will be made in either the Montana or Virginia races until this morning (at the earliest).

Voting machine problems in Montana have delayed final reporting. And in Virginia the winner will not be determined until absentee ballots are counted.

So, if you're waiting around, it's time to hit the hay.

And there's a little more time to make final predictions: will the Dems manage to take control on both chambers? Leave your guesses in the comments below.

Over the course of the day, we'll keep adding stories that come in about voting problems, irregularities, and plain old dirty tricks. Also, please share your polling place experiences with us in the comments section.

8:25 Bomb threat at a polling place in Wisconsin.

7:58 New Mexico-Heather Wilson (R-NM) called for federal poll watchers to intervene as ballots ran out in a strong GOP district two hours after voting began..

7:45 The following states are extending voting due to irregularities such as crappy electronic machines not working: Georgia (Dekalb until 8), Illinois (Kane County until 9:30 EST, Cook Co. until 9pm), Indiana (Deleware Co. until 8:40), North Carolina (Durham Co. until 8:30), Ohio (Cuyahoga Co. until 9), Pennsylvania (Lebanon and Landcaster until 9), South Carolina (Landcaster until 8), Wisconsin (Madison 2nd Dist. until 10)

4:45: Busloads of homeless people from out of state distribute phony, misleading sample ballots in Maryland. Really, no kidding.

2:40: Paranoid Democrat smashes Pennsylvania electronic voting machine.

2:37PM: "Terrorist" squirrel causes havoc in Colorado. And why was was South Carolina's governor turned away from the polls? Find out.

As Michael mentions in his piece, some in Virginia are accused of suppressing the vote. 12:01PM UPDATE: The FBI has announced an investigation into the misleading phone calls.

House candidate Jean Schmidt had problems of her own this morning in Ohio. Watch the video:

And then follow the link below for more reports of voting woes.

As Michael O'McCarthy posted earlier today, the effort to disenfranchise Virginia Democrats may well represent the absolute low-point of the 2006 campaign. One can hope that the FBI and the Justice Department get to the bottom of the issue, but how many voters believed the automated calls and went to the wrong polling places? Quite clearly, we don't have do-overs in our democracy, so this stunt might just actually work and put Allen back in the Senate.