Representative John Conyers of Michigan plans to challenge the Ohio electors and is looking for at least one senator to join him. This is a disgrace. No matter how much he says otherwise, this is nothing more than a partisan attempt to damage the credibility of Bush's second term.

Yes, there have been minor problems in Ohio. The same is true for all states. The Democrats are more to blame than Republicans for this.

After Florida in 2000 it was obvious that newer voting machines were needed. Then the Democrats noticed that the manufacturers of all three voting machine companies were Republican donare. Suddenly the Dems. were convinced that voting machines would be programmed to assure a Bush victory unless special measures were taken. Never mind the numerous problems in setting up voting machines to cheat. So the voting machines on the market were suddenly unaceptable. They had to be redesgned to print a paper trail (I still don't understand how you can have an audit trail and a secret ballot). That stopped voting machine upgrades.

Now, remember that elections are only held once per year (plus primaries) but that most voters only turn out for governor and presidential races. So you have people who have not voted in 204 years. Some have not voted in a much longer time. Some have never voted before.

Then there are the officials. They are part time. Some are new or are only needed for big turn-out elections. Keith Olbermann once asked why so many Ohio election officials are also party officers. The obvious answer is that Ohio only has a few dozen full-time election people and the rest are part-time or volunteers. The people who care enough about the process to take these positions are party members.

So we have millions of voters and thousands of election officials who seldom get to practice. What a surprise that there are problems here and there.

Then there are special cases. I don't think that Ohio has done a presidential recount before so no one has experience.

Given all of this, there are going to be mistakes. It's just going to happen. There is no way to avoid it and no cause for making it into a federal case.

So why are they doing it? One reason is what I said before. The Democrats already descided that the voting machine companies were going to throw the election. All they needed was proof.

What proof do they have? A flawed exit poll and some minor complaints. Plus the surprise that, even when they do everything "right" they still lost.

Do these amount to anything? No. Ohio's election procedures are designed to stop fraud. It is truly bipartisan and ballots are never handled unless two Republicans and two Democrats are present. Throwing the election would require the assistance of thousands of Democrats.

But, every single mistake in Ohio is being magnified and pointed out as positive proof.

Last night I saw The Aviator. Near the end a senate panel was investigating Howard Hughes for war profiteering. Hughes was being questioned about two planes that had been commissioned but never delivered. He defended himself by pointing out how many other planes and other weapons had been commissioned but never delivered, amounting to $8 billion. But Hughes was the only manufacturer being investigated. Why? In this case it was because Pan Am wanted to keep the Hughes-owned TWA out of the international market.

In Ohio's case, it is to make Bush look bad.

Is it possible that Conyers isn't a party hack? That he is a public-spirited official who simply wants to be certain that elections are fair and honest?

If that is the case then why does he ignore problems occurring in his own state?

If Conyers was so concerned about voting problems, where was he in 1998 when election officials in his hometown of Detroit took a disgraceful two weeks to count ballots due to lost poll books and miscounting of precinct totals?

Where was he in 2001 when the counting of absentee ballots in Detroit had to be halted in midstream by state officials after it was discovered that the city clerk was simply ignoring state requirements for the use of software that would eject ballots that couldn't be read by machine?

And where was he when a memo allegedly drafted by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's aides in 2002 claimed that Detroit's voter rolls were overstated by about 150,000 people -- a strong hint that something may be seriously amiss in the Detroit election process, threatening the value of the ballot for people who are genuinely qualified to vote?

Over at Olbermann Watch, they have asked why so much attention has been paid to Ohio but none to Pennsylvania. There are a lot of similarities. Both states had a close vote and many pre-election polls showed Bush taking Pennsylvania. There would seem to be as much chance of fraud there as in Ohio... unless you start with the assumption that only Republicans cheat.

Regardless, I am against investigating further into either state unless a smoke gun shows up - a real one, not a statistical abnormality or a repairman who had to reconfigure a bios.

Democracy only works when people trust the process. Questioning the process without proof for political gain weakens our country.

Back when Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court, the Democrats mounted a major attack on him. It was unprecedented and uncalled for. The result was to turn most nomination hearings into major political fights. The country is worse off because of it.

The next time a Democrat wins the presidency the Republicans will undoubtedly do to him what they are doing to Bush right now. Short-term political interests will turn into long-term policies and the country will continue to polarize.

It would be nice if Conyers and the other Democrats just shut up and accept that they lost. The Republicans were in that position in 1992 and things changed. The Democrats will eventually come out on top again. They should take care not to poison the fields in the meantime.