Bush himself passed a law in Texas 3 years ago that explicitly says that hand counts are preferential to machine counts. The issue has nothing to do with (while that questionnaire would try to make us think that it does) who does the counting. You look at where the hole is, and you write that down. It's not so hard. Is it a bit hard for machines to do if you don't punch perfectly though, and that's where people can do a better job. Bush knows that perfectly well, and he signed a law in Texas that says that outright. But he wants to hold on to his current numbers, so he's stalling the recount process that he himself has called better than machines, and painting the non-partisan recounters as somehow allowing an underlying bias (which he assumes is for Gore) to sneak its way in to their saying "That's a hole. That's not." It's not some mystical process that one's own political opinions can change. Is it a hole or not? And even if somehow political opinion could enter into it, we don't know anything about the recounters. Maybe they're mostly Bush supporters. It does seem odd that they're only recounting in certain counties and not others. That's why Gore's proposal to recount in all counties made so much sense. Gore and Bush (though Bush keeps denying what he said just 3 years ago... god forbid someone should actually bring up his past) both agree that hand recounts are more accurate. So let's do them everywhere. Heck, why just Florida? As long as we're going to have to wait a while, let's do them everywhere that's close, instead of Bush denying his own assertion (and what seems like an obvious truth) that they're more accurate. But that won't happen, because Bush is too busy demonizing Gore so that if Gore wins (which, if we count all voters equally, he will), Bush can take the moral high ground and say that Gore was conniving and unethical. So which party were you calling tricky?

-Scott