I hope they go with a statewide manual recount, even if it slow. But I expect the whole thing to get hung up in the courts, and who knows how they will rule.

I hope you guys don't take this the wrong way, but the fact that a manual recount of votes in the case of a close call could be something that ends up in court is a sad testament to the state of your democracy.

Simply put, it's never wrong to recount the votes... hell, here in Canada it's required whenever there's a close vote (ie- within a certain percentage point); the ballot boxes come out, people sit down (with scrutineers from each candidate... or at least each candidate that bothers to send one: usually the two front-runners) and they go through 'em one at a time.

You know, with the new <koff koff> «paperless» ballot system some people are vending down there, the simple expedient of sitting five or six people in a room to "go over the receipts" (as it were) to verify that the books are consistent with reality strikes me as absolute madness. The more I think about the election game in the US as it has been played so far this century, the more I think you folks really need to take a hard look at the state of your republic and the place of democracy within it. It could be in real danger.

Speaking of the whole issue of democratic procedures, we had an [link|http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?current_row=3&tf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.html&cf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&encoded_keywords=election+of+committee+chairs&option=&start_row=3&start_row_offset1=&num_rows=1&search_results_start=1&query=election+of+committee+chairs|interesting outbreak of real democracy] up here this past week. Here's the story in a nutshell (esp. for those not so familiar with parliamentary systems):

In general, most of the productive work of the House of Commons (Lower House in the Canadian Parliament... think Congress for you Yanks;) is done in committee. Committee chairs have traditionally been appointed by the PM. There was a vote in the House of Commons to change that procedural rule (part of the organic law of the Constitution... and an unwritten one to boot) to require that the chairs be elected by secret ballot in the House. This is significant because \r\n\r\n

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1. The chairs control the agenda for the committees, so they get to decide what gets discussed.
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2. The chairs will be picked democratically instead of by executive fiat.
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3. Members of Parliament and esp. back benchers (MPs who are low in seniority) will not be punishable for voting against the party line.
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A lot of people haven't really understood the ramifications of all this... most of the commentary is about the particulars of why it happened, which is mostly about the PM, the former Minister of Finance, and his aspirations to be Canada's next PM.

However, this is going to be a Big Deal... the chairs of the Commons committees get to decide who is going to yap... and if MPs are able to vote for the chairs on conscience without fear, that means that the variety of viewpoints presented to lawmakers is probably going to expand considerably. It also cuts way back on the power of the PMO (Prime Minister's Office) which is a good thing as its been sucking up power into itself out of the Commons for a very long time now.

And now for the obligatory anti-US Canuck stab;) while up here we (through an unlikely confluence of events, mostly related to the unbounded hubris of our current PM) are seeing our institutions become more democratic, and you down there are seeing your democratic processes being reformed in such a manner as to invite subornation to achieve the (imo mistaken) goal of greater efficiency at election time... the extreme right wing in the US (for the lack of anything better to do with their time I guess) seems to be [link|http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/TGAM/20021109/UREVUN/national/national/national_temp/4/4/19/|criticising Canada] because we're not a powerful nation.

I guess it shows where their priorities are... power or democracy. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader ;) to figure out which one has the priority.