Ballots taken out with trash

If you had any faith at all in the accuracy of American voting systems, it'll swirl clean down the johnnypot once you read this story.

Recently there was an election for a judicial post in Palm Beach County, Florida - a county known for its confusing ballots in the 2000 recount scandal. When the votes in the recent judicial contest were being subjected to a recount, about 3,500 ballots mysteriously vanished. The disappearance of these votes actually decided who won the election.

Although this was a judicial election (and was probably a nonpartisan ballot), some speculated that this was a practice run for the Republicans to rig another presidential election. With the Republicans' record, I couldn't help but suspecting this myself. But this story gets so weird that it's probably more of an indicator of unchecked incompetence than of partisan shenanigans.

It now appears that the 3,500 ballots were mistakenly taken out with the trash. Now they're either in a landfill somewhere or have been turned into fertilizer by Oscar the Grouch.

The ballots were supposed to be secured in bank-style bags. But the county wouldn't even provide enough bags, so poll workers used garbage bags instead. You can guess what happened then: Someone thought the ballots were garbage, and they got taken out with the trash.

Talk about a complete lack of election security!

With utterly mind-numbing breakdowns like this, who can trust that their vote is even going to be counted?

This is as bad as the 2000 story in which half-burned bags of ballots kept turning up in hotel rooms.

(Source: http://www.wptv.com/content/breakingnews/story.aspx?content_id=71e2d137-1c23-4be3-aa89-cdef86f326b4)