sisyphusshrugged | seems like Jeb can't catch a break these days

Mr. Carter, who is something of an expert on fair elections, isn't happy about Florida

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has said Florida lacks "some basic international requirements for a fair election" and a repeat of the 2000 election fiasco "seems likely".

Mr Carter said reforms recommended after the recount in Florida had still not been implemented "because of inadequate funding or political disputes".

Mr Carter, who runs an election and human rights centre in Atlanta, accused election officials working for Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, the president's brother, of being "highly partisan".

They were "brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process".

"The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair," Mr Carter writes in a commentary reprinted in today's Guardian.

...

In May this year, Florida's secretary of state, Glenda Hood (a Bush family partisan), distributed a secret list of 48,000 alleged former felons and instructed county election supervisors to remove them from the voter rolls. When a court ordered the list published, it was found that more than 20,000 people on the list were black (black Floridians vote Democratic by more than nine to one) and only 61 were Hispanics (who are much more likely to vote Republican). The Miami Herald newspaper found at least 2,000 people should not have been on the list, having regained their voting rights.

In his commentary, Mr Carter called the distribution of the list a "fumbling attempt" to disenfranchise black people. It was dropped after it became public, but by then 14 counties had sent letters to the residents named, informing them they would be ineligible to vote.

...

Mr Carter was a member of a commission that recommended modernising the state's voting equipment, but he says today those reforms have been patchy. The new computer voting machines have raised questions over the possibility of tampering, but there are no statewide regulations on the use of a paper backup record of the vote in the event of another recount.

Mr Carter argues the right to uniform, reliable voting procedures is a requirements for a fair election by international standards. However, he writes: "There are disturbing signs that once again ... some of the state's leading officials hold strong political biases that prevent necessary reforms."

Help may be on the way

Just five weeks before Election Day, a federal appeals court Monday revived a lawsuit demanding that all Florida voters who use touchscreen machines receive a paper receipt, in case a recount becomes necessary.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale to reopen the case, which could affect 15 Florida counties whose electronic voting terminals do not issue paper records.

It was not immediately clear if the case could be decided before the Nov. 2 presidential election.

The three-judge panel in Atlanta wrote that U.S. District Judge James Cohn misapplied a 35-year legal doctrine when he threw out the lawsuit filed by Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla.

``What's known for certain is we have won the battle in the long term,'' Wexler said. ``There will be a paper trail in Florida. The only question is when.''

Seems to me it's about time that a legal decision in Florida led to votes being counted accurately.

Precedentially, this time.