The next time you encounter politicians raving about their love of democracy you might consider raving is pretty much all they're doing any more.

"Democracy" doesn't have much to do with Palm Beach County in Florida for example, not much at all if this Black Box Voting audit of the voting machines they used in 2004 means anything at all.

After investing over
$7,000 and waiting nine months for the records, Black Box Voting
discovered that the voting machine logs contained approximately 100,000
errors. According to voting machine assignment logs, Palm Beach County
used 4,313 machines in the Nov. 2004 election. During election day,
1,475 voting system calibrations were performed while the polls were
open, providing documentation to substantiate reports from citizens
indicating the wrong candidate was selected when they tried to vote.

Bev Harris at Black Box Voting is a true American hero. She's been on the voting machine case pretty much continuously since 2000. And what she's uncovered is an electoral system suffering from criminal neglect or worse, much worse.

Next time you have a few spare bucks in your jeans log on to Black Box Voting and send one or two of them to Bev. The politicians aren't going to do anything to clean this mess up; it's time we do.
Black Box Voting : 2-23-06: Someone accessed 40 Palm Beach County voting machines Nov 2004

(Aha. Two strikes on "Performancing.")