If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Sue ‘Em.

The Ohio Secretary of State is expected to certify his state’s election results. Immediately thereafter, two groups are expected to sue for immediate recounts in the whole state.

Why? Well, the problems noted were “…documented cases of long lines, a shortage of machines and a pattern of problems in predominantly black neighborhoods”. Sure, that’s good enough.

It might not have anything to do with how many Electoral College votes Ohio carries. Nope, not at all. After all, two of the groups involved in the suits are the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. I honestly can’t come up with an intelligent reason either of these groups are involved in this beyond getting their names in the national media. And at a cost of about $113,600, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than taking out full page ads or running commercials that people won’t likely see.

Here’s where I stand. In a high-turnout election you need to expect to stand in a line. That’s doubly true when, nationwide, we were about 500,000 election workers short of what we really needed to handle the demands at polling places. The problem is that, instead of pitching in to help, most folks were more sharpening their knives to take a slice at the election itself. Instead of making the process better, they chose to wait to damage it some more.

Were there long lines at some places? Yes. Too bad. At least you didn’t have to travel a couple days on donkeyback to vote like they did in Afghanistan. Were some polling places short some machines? Yes, of course they were. After all, one of the big changes from the 2000 election was to move to electronic voting, then hailed as the Savior of Our Democracy. But those things cost money, and that cost is borne by the states (and in a lot of cases, counties) which were already having problems paying their bills. Were there problems in black neighborhoods. I’m sure there were. There were also problems in white neighborhoods and in hispanic neighborhoods and in asian neighborhoods and in neighborhoods populated by aliens from the planet Greedle. So what?

“Problems” do not equate to fraud, nor do they require a recount.

The question I have is why Ohio is a particular target here. The President won by a relatively small margin – 116,000 votes or so – but that was a larger margin than in other states.

Why not bring challenges in every state where the margin was less than 116,000 votes, which, by my quick and dirty estimation, includes Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, or Wyoming. Why aren’t we seeing challenges in any of those states? If the people bringing these challenges were truly interested in “fairness”, they would certainly investigate voting irregularities that cropped up in any of those states as well. And I’ll guarantee you there were irregularities.

How can I say that? Because the voting process involves humans, and humans make mistakes. They do things that deviate, if for no other reason than the completely accidental, from the plan. And if you deviate from the plan, you have an “irregularity”.

But in those states, such odd occurrences don’t rise to the level of “problem”.

So why Ohio? I’d hate to ascribe a sinister motive, but the evil nature inside me is sure screaming a couple right now.