by Robert Scheer - TruthDig
It's time to gush! Later for the analysis of all the hard choices faced by our next president, Barack Obama, but for now, let's just thrill, unabashedly, to the sound of those words. Heck, both he and we deserve a honeymoon, at least for a few paragraphs of this column.
It is "Morning Again in America," to reclaim and revise the slogan from the 1984 campaign of President Ronald Reagan, only this time the promise of an American renewal is in the hands of a moderate post-Cold War leader who embraces, rather than denies, the diversity and complexity of the modern world. It is difficult to imagine Obama ever asserting the arrogant jingoism that has come to mark Republican stewardship of this nation in the eyes of the world.
How refreshing for Americans to have elected a leader who was among the first to reject the imperial hubris that led this nation to invade Iraq over the objection of most of our allies. A leader who had the courage in the midst of a hotly contested primary election campaign to refuse to play the inveterate hawk in order to qualify as commander in chief, and instead had the audacity to advocate efforts at dialogue even with those we despise. The dead hand of Joe Lieberman has been lifted from the party that he betrayed. It is hoped it is also the end of the road for the neoconservatives who had rallied around John McCain as their last best hope for establishing a Pax Americana.
On the all-important domestic front, with our economy crumbling, it is reassuring that the man whom what's-her-name from Alaska derided as a "community organizer" does indeed have that background. It is not a guarantee that he will be mindful of those suffering most in this economic downturn as he turns to deal with the banking mess, but it is a start.
The Reagan Revolution of rampant deregulation of the economy in the interest of big business is over. Not because Obama has anything to do with the "socialist" label that the Republicans attempted to stick on him, but rather because a decisive role for the federal government is at the heart of the Bush bailout and the vastly expanded military economy a President Obama will inherit.
Big government is now officially a partial owner of big banks, and although we might bemoan that state of affairs, our collective credit card has already been swiped. The pressing issue is: What do we taxpayers get in return for bailing out Wall Street? Will the goal be to make the financial swindlers whole at the expense of ordinary homeowners? Or will it be the reverse of what the Bush administration has been doing? What is not in doubt, after the banking meltdown, is that the state will play a decisive role in the economy; what must be decided is: Whose interests will it serve?
If Obama turns to the Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin, the Clinton-era treasury secretary who led the crusade for deregulation, then he will betray his own fervently expressed concern for the fate of ordinary folks. The change we need is a divorce from the financial moguls who have dominated both parties. That's what progressive politics is all about.
We have a chance to move in that direction, thanks to the election of Obama. Not because the man himself is the second comingche, like all politicians, will have to be watched—but because of the movement he created around his candidacy, which I believe will hold him accountable.
The word of his victory came as I was making a brave effort to try to teach my large class at the University of Southern California, and from the cheering of students throughout our building as Obama reached the Electoral College delegate number needed to become president, you would have thought USC was just picked No. 1 in the BCS poll. Make no mistake about it, this is a victory of these students' generation—a generation that is no longer mired in the divisiveness and arrogance that had come to dominate the lives of their elders.
Politics will never be the same. The fat cats and back-office politicos are out, and grass roots—youthful and Internet-connected—will dominate in the future, as they did on Tuesday. President-elect Obama knows that, and, at least on this night, I fully expect him to be true to those who took him on this journey.
It is a night also to remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the man who did so much to make that journey possible, along with the other heroes of the civil rights movement like John Lewis and Jesse Jackson, who did so much to keep hope alive.
REUTERS/Amr Dalsh
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor - The Independent (UK)
Home Office says all data from web could be stored in giant government database
Internet "black boxes" will be used to collect every email and web visit in the UK under the Government's plans for a giant "big brother" database, The Independent has learnt.
Home Office officials have told senior figures from the internet and telecommunications industries that the "black box" technology could automatically retain and store raw data from the web before transferring it to a giant central database controlled by the Government.
Plans to create a database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK have provoked a huge public outcry. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, described it as "step too far" and the Government's own terrorism watchdog said that as a "raw idea" it was "awful".
Nevertheless, ministers have said they are committed to consulting on the new Communications Data Bill early in the new year. News that the Government is already preparing the ground by trying to allay the concerns of the internet industry is bound to raise suspicions about ministers' true intentions. Further details of the database emerged on Monday at a meeting of internet service providers (ISPs) in London where representatives from BT, AOL Europe, O2 and BSkyB were given a PowerPoint presentation of the issues and the technology surrounding the Government's Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), the name given by the Home Office to the database proposal.
Whitehall experts working on the IMP unit told the meeting the security and intelligence agencies wanted to use the stored data to help fight serious crime and terrorism, and said the technology would allow them to create greater "capacity" to monitor all communication traffic on the internet. The "black boxes" are an attractive option for the internet industry because they would be secure and not require any direct input from the ISPs.
During the meeting Whitehall officials also tried to reassure the industry by suggesting that many smaller ISPs would be unaffected by the "black boxes" as these would be installed upstream on the network and hinted that all costs would be met by the Government.
"It was clear the 'back box' is the technology the Government will use to hold all the data. But what isn't clear is what the Home Secretary, GCHQ and the security services intend to do with all this information in the future," said a source close to the meeting.
He added: "They said they only wanted to return to a position they were in before the emergence of internet communication, when they were able to monitor all correspondence with a police suspect. The difference here is they will be in a much better position to spy on many more people on the basis of their internet behaviour. Also there's a grey area between what is content and what is traffic. Is what is said in a chat room content or just traffic?"
Ministers say plans for the database have not been confirmed, and that it is not their intention to introduce monitoring or storage equipment that will check or hold the content of emails or phonecalls on the traffic.
A spokesman for the Home Office said that Monday's meeting provided a "chance to engage with small communication service providers" ahead of the formal public consultation next year. He added: "We need to work closely with the internet service providers and the communication service providers. The meeting was to show the top-line challenges faced in the future. We are public about the IMP, but we are still working out the detail. There will a consultation on the Communications Data Bill early next year."
A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association said the organisation was pleased the Home Office had addressed its members and was keen to continue dialogue while awaiting a formal consultation.
Database plans were first announced by the Prime Minister in February. It is not clear where the records will be held but GCHQ may eventually be the project's home.
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Istanbul, Turkey -- The U.S. military said today it was investigating a report that an American airstrike hit a wedding party, killing dozens of civilians and prompting new pleas from President Hamid Karzai that foreign forces try harder to avoid hurting and killing noncombatants.
"We cannot win the fight against terrorism with airstrikes," Karzai told reporters at the presidential palace, speaking hours after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election.
"This is my first demand of the new president of the United States -- to put an end to civilian casualties," the Afghan leader said.
The latest report of civilian fatalities in connection with Western military operations came from Kandahar province, which is the scene of near-constant fighting between foreign forces and the Taliban.
Western news agencies quoted people from the remote village of Wech Bagtu as saying that an airstrike on Monday destroyed a residential compound where a wedding was being celebrated, killing about three dozen people, most of them women and children. The bride was said to be among the injured.
Civilian casualties have become an inflammatory issue in Afghanistan, particularly after a sharp dispute between Western military commanders and Afghan officials over an American airstrike in the western province of Herat on Aug. 22.
Afghan authorities, backed by the United Nations, said about 90 civilians died in that strike, many of them women and children. U.S. officials initially said five civilians had been killed. But after reinvestigating the incident, the American military acknowledged that 33 civilians were believed to have died in the raid.
The initial U.S. denials infuriated many Afghans.
Karzai has made a number of highly emotional public appeals for coalition troops to take greater care to avoid civilian casualties. After the Herat incident, the NATO-led force instituted new procedures meant to provide greater protection to civilians.
The U.S. military said the reports of the latest deaths in Kandahar province were being investigated.
"Though facts are unclear at this point, we take very seriously our responsibility to protect the people of Afghanistan and to avoid circumstances where noncombatant civilians are placed at risk," Cmdr. Jeff Bender, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
"If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences to the families and the people Afghanistan," the statement added.
Afghan officials said they were not entirely sure what had happened but that civilian fatalities had definitely occurred.
"I can confirm that civilians have been killed," Kandahar Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi said, according to the Reuters news agency.
Karzai, at his news conference, said civilian deaths had become "a matter of tension" between the Afghan government and its Western allies, primarily the United States.
American special forces carry out many of the counterinsurgency operations in which airstrikes are called in.
More than 1,200 Afghan civilians have died violently so far this year, according to Afghan officials and human rights groups. Most were killed in insurgent attacks including suicide bombings, but accidental strikes by foreign forces account for hundreds of the deaths, Afghan authorities assert.
Faiez is a Times special correspondent.
King is a Times staff writer.
laura.king@latimes.com
Around midnight, when the election outcome was clear, thousands of young people walked and skipped and ran to the north gates of the White House, celebrating not just the election of Barack Obama but the repudiation of George W. Bush.
Amid a cacophony of car horns honking and chants of “Yes We Can” and “O-ba-ma,” there were taunts directed at the current occupant of the White House, chants of “No More Bush” and “Nah-nah, Good-bye.”
For all the historic significance of Obama’s victory – the first African-American elected U.S. President and the nation finally choosing hope over fear – there was another part of the story: a public repudiation of George W. Bush and what he stands for.
George W. Bush will not get the impeachment that he has so thoroughly earned, but at least there will be the scene of ecstatic young Americans wishing him to be gone from the White House that he illegitimately claimed in the stolen election of 2000.
As I walked among the young crowd that packed into Pennsylvania Avenue and reveled in the area around Lafayette Park, I was reminded of a very different moment nearly eight years earlier when I went with two of my sons, Sam and Nat, to a spot a few blocks away.
We stood in the chilly rain on Jan. 20, 2001, as protesters chanted angrily against Bush’s ascension to the presidency, a position he claimed with the unprecedented help of five Republican allies on the U.S. Supreme Court.
That day was a dark and ominous beginning to what has proven to be a catastrophic eight years.
In memory of that grim day – the start of a painful era that didn’t end until the cool, misty night of Nov. 4, 2008 – I’m publishing below excerpts from the opening chapter of Neck Deep, a book about the disastrous Bush presidency that I co-wrote with Sam and Nat:
The rain pelted down in icy-cold droplets, chilling both the protesters in soaked parkas and the well-dressed celebrants bent behind umbrellas to shield their furs and cashmere overcoats.
Drawn to this historic moment – a time of triumph for some and fury for others – the two opposing groups jostled and pushed their way through security checkpoints, joining the tens of thousands pressing against rows of riot police lining Pennsylvania Avenue.
After taking the subway from Arlington, Virginia, the three of us joined the crowd crammed into a block of 13th Street, on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, near the point where Inaugural parades bend intheir grand procession from the U.S. Capitol, turn right at the foot of the U.S. Treasury and then veer left before passing in front of the White House.
To our right was a stone expanse called Freedom Plaza, where temporary viewing stands had been erected for invited guests. That corner is marked by a statue of Brigadier General Casimir Pulaski, a Polish cavalryman and freedom fighter who joined the American Revolution and died at the battle of Savannah in 1779.
To our left stood a twelve-story building, with the red awnings of a CVS pharmacy on the ground level and rounded balconies of corporate offices on the floors above.
The elegantly attired Republicans squeezed their way through the angry crowd of drenched protesters to the VIP stands or to those rounded balconies, which offered protection from the rain and an unobstructed view of Pennsylvania Avenue below.
The Republicans had come to cheer the new U.S. President, George W. Bush, privileged scion of a powerful political family who nonetheless ended his gerunds by dropping the “g” to convey the populist image of a Texas wildcatter.
Bush was replacing President Bill Clinton, a Democrat who had survived an impeachment battle over a sexual dalliance with a former White House intern. To Bush supporters, the new President would bring back the warmly remembered propriety of his father, President George H.W. Bush.
One of George W. Bush’s biggest applause lines of Campaign 2000 was his vow to restore “honor and dignity” to the Oval Office.
Day of Infamy
But other Americans believed January 20, 2001, was a day of infamy for the American Republic. It was the first time in 112 years that a popular-vote loser was to be installed as President of the United States – and then only after he engineered an unprecedented intervention by political allies on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Five Republican justices had stopped the vote count in the swing state of Florida, where Bush’s brother, Jeb, was governor and other Bush loyalists oversaw the election, which then was awarded to Bush by 537 votes out of six million ballots cast.
So, on that cold January day, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Washington, D.C., shouting angry slogans and waving handwritten anti-Bush signs.
The protesters were convinced that Bush had stolen the presidential election and, in so doing, had disenfranchised the plurality of citizens who had cast their ballots for Democrat Al Gore.
Some signs were addressed directly to Bush. “You’re not my President,” read one. “I know you lost,” said another. One sign had just two large letters, “NO.” To these Americans, Bush’s ascension to the nation’s highest office was a travesty of democracy.
Where we stood, the protesters, many in dark-colored parkas and ski or baseball caps, outnumbered the elegantly attired Republicans.
Some Republicans in the balconies shouted “Sore Loserman!” down at the crowd, reprising a taunt that right-wing activists had coined to bait supporters of the Democratic ticket of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman during the Florida recount battle.
But the bullying tone, which had characterized the Republicans during those bitter days of November and December, was gone. They seemed taken aback by the size and ferocity of the anti-Bush crowd. Some protesters shouted back up to the balconies, “Jump! Jump!”
The anti-Bush protesters pulsated with the fury of a people who had been robbed of something irreplaceable, like some precious heirloom handed down reverentially through generations and which was now gone.
It was as if the protesters sensed they represented the “posterity” that the Founders had envisioned when they laid the cornerstones of a democratic Republic almost 225 years earlier.
Many in the crowd – like the three of us – had gone into the streets that rainy day to bear witness against a violation of the most basic covenant of democracy, that the choice of leaders must be left in the hands of the voters, even when the margins are as narrow as they were in Election 2000.
Wise Heads
Though few protesters could have seriously thought they had any chance of reclaiming the nation’s democratic legacy that day, they acted as if their presence could at least negate the nodding capitulation of the wise heads of Washington.
That acquiescence to a Bush restoration had crossed party lines to include senior Democrats in Congress and extended into the editorial offices of major American news organizations. Many pundits and politicians acted as if it were a quaint notion that the candidate with the most votes was the one who was supposed to win.
That bemused complacency of the elites contrasted with an uncompromising anger in the streets. As Bush took the oath of office, becoming the 43rd President and completing his extraordinary power grab, the growing fury of the crowd built toward a crescendo.
Rather than cheers for the new President, the capital echoed with resounding chants of “Hail to the Thief!”
As Bush’s limousine began the traditional slow-moving ride down Pennsylvania Avenue, some protesters mocked Bush with a chant of, “Oh, no! Gore’s ahead, I better call my brother Jeb,” and the more succinct slogan, “Gore got more!”
Though the size and intensity of this protest against an incoming President were unprecedented at least since the Vietnam War, little of the chaos and drama along Pennsylvania Avenue found its way into the mainstream coverage of Bush’s inauguration.
The major news media approached the event mostly with the hackneyed template of a new President taking office amid a celebration of democracy.
There was little said about Bush losing the national popular vote by more than a half million ballots or how he had clung to his narrow victory in Florida only by the grace of tortured legal logic from five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nor was there much commentary about how the anti-democratic election outcome – and the heavy police presence to prevent anti-Bush rioting in Washington – gave the inauguration the feel of an American state of siege.
Instead, Washington’s “conventional wisdom” was all about the need for healing, for rallying around the new President and for putting the national bitterness – of both Election 2000 and the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency – in the past.
Private Satisfaction
Many Washington insiders felt private satisfaction with the outcome. They had despised Clinton and were pleased by the defeat of his sidekick Gore.
Clinton was admired for his speaking skills and political acumen, but was hated for his slick style and boorish conduct in the White House; Gore became the whipping boy who suffered for Clinton’s sins and for Clinton’s survival to the end of his term.
At pre-Inaugural dinner parties around Washington, there was open nostalgia for the “good ol’ days” of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, when integrity and honesty supposedly ruled. A favorite Washington comment in anticipation of George W. Bush’s inauguration was that it would “put the adults back in charge.”
So, there was little tolerance for the full-throated complaints of the thousands of demonstrators waving protest signs and shaking their fists at the Inaugural parade. TV anchors and political commentators treated the protests as a tasteless nuisance, when the demonstrations were mentioned at all.
It would take more than three years for the fuller historic picture to be put into focus by Michael Moore’s documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Moore highlighted dramatic Inauguration Day scenes of protesters surging through the streets, scuffling with police and egging Bush’s limousine as it descended from Capitol Hill toward the White House.
“The plan to have Bush get out of the limo for the traditional walk to the White House was scrapped,” Moore said in narrating the footage of masses of Americans decrying Bush’s tainted victory. “Bush’s limo hit the gas to prevent an even larger riot. No President had ever witnessed such a thing on his Inauguration Day.”
From our cramped vantage point on 13th Street, we couldn’t see the egg-throwing incident which occurred several blocks to our left. But we did notice the presidential limousine and security vehicles speed up, hurrying past both those Americans who came to honor Bush and those who stood in the rain to heckle him.
After the limousine rushed past, the crowd experienced a few moments of confusion as the facts of Bush’s hasty passage rippled back through the protesters.
Soon, the reality of Bush’s presidency began to sink in bringing with it a pang of disappointment to many demonstrators. What many of them saw as an American coup d’etat was a fait accompli. The bedraggled protesters shouted a few more choruses of “Hail to the Thief!” and slowly began to disperse.
Shaken President
As a shaken George W. Bush slipped into the White House on that cold gray day, a divided America was already rushing down two separate paths. The press and the pundits – along with a majority of Americans, as measured by polls – hoped that the second Bush administration would succeed for the good of the country.
But a significant percentage of the population was furious that the institutions of American democracy had performed so badly during the campaign and then during the drawn-out recount battle.
This group felt deep animosity toward the Supreme Court’s partisan majority and toward the press corps’ sudden eagerness to show deference to a new President.
The anti-Bush Americans recalled the relentless attacks on Clinton – from both the Republicans and the news media – during his eight years in the White House, beginning before he took the oath. Where was the deference then? Where was the demand for unity?
Clinton was denied even the semblance of a “honeymoon” from a press corps sensitive to longtime criticism of its supposed “liberal” bias and determined to show that it would be tougher on a Democrat than any Republican.
Plus, Washington’s insider community judged the Arkansas-born Clinton an interloper, a pretender, a hick who had gotten too big for his britches, an unwelcome guest who quickly overstayed what little welcome he had.
In 1998, after the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal broke, Washington Post society columnist (and Georgetown doyenne) Sally Quinn explained this hostility in a column that traced the contempt for Clinton back to his Inaugural Address in 1993.
Quinn wrote that Clinton had insulted the Washington Establishment when he described the capital as “a place of intrigue and calculation [where] powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.”
This perceived slight to the Establishment deepened into a burning contempt over the next several years as Republicans and the media kept up a steady drumbeat of accusations challenging the ethics of the Clintons and their associates.
When Clinton’s sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky surfaced in 1998, Quinn wrote that the insider community wanted Clinton to pack up immediately and leave town.
“Privately, many in Establishment Washington would like to see Bill Clinton resign and spare the country, the Presidency and the city any more humiliation,” Quinn wrote.
Turning on Gore
When Clinton survived the Republican impeachment effort in 1999, the Washington press corps and the capital’s insiders transferred their unrequited anti-Clinton hostility onto Gore. As the new presidential campaign began, journalists acted as if they had carte blanche to misquote Gore or otherwise distort his positions.
For instance, the media eagerly adopted a Republican-invented quote for Gore about him claiming that he “invented the Internet,” an apocryphal phrase that became a running punch line used both to deny Gore credit for his farsighted early work as an Internet champion in Congress and to portray Gore as a delusional braggart.
At times, the media jettisoned any pretext of objectivity. At a Democratic debate in New Hampshire between Gore and a Democratic rival, Senator Bill Bradley, reporters mocked Gore as they sat in a nearby press room and watched the debate on television.
“Whenever Gore came on too strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd,” observed Time’s Eric Pooley.
The press corps’ contempt for Gore carried over into the general election. Any verbal misstep by Gore became an example of his dishonesty, as happened when he misremembered visiting a disaster with the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency when it was really a FEMA deputy director.
During the bitter Florida recount, the anti-Gore bias stayed strong with a widespread media acceptance that Bush was the rightful winner of the presidency even though Gore outpolled Bush by more than a half million votes nationwide.
The simple fact was that the Bush family had long been a pillar of the Washington Establishment, surrounded by other revered figures.
Some of the Bush entourage, such as James A. Baker III, were admired for their smooth political savvy. Others, such as retired Gen. Colin Powell, were beloved as national security “wise men.” Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney had a positive reputation as a tough-minded, no-nonsense leader.
While some Washington insiders doubted that George W. Bush possessed the skill package to make a great President, they were sure that his father’s battle-tested team would step in whenever the son needed guidance.
So, there wasn’t much worry that the United States was under the control of a relative novice. The thinking was that the American people would get what many of them wanted, a leader they liked, and the government would get what it needed, the experienced hands of George H.W. Bush’s old guard.
The first deception of the second Bush administration would be the public illusion of George W. Bush as the Texas everyman clearing brush in blue jeans and cowboy boots, when he was in reality a plutocrat in plebian clothes.
He was the rich kid whose family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, sits on a rocky point reaching out into the Atlantic Ocean and bearing Bush’s middle name, Walker.
Those family connections, more than anything else, explained Bush’s rise to the highest office in the land.
An Arizona jogger ran a mile with a rabid fox clamped to her arm and then drove herself to a hospital, local news outlets report.
The unidentified runner told Yavapai County Sheriff's deputies she was on a trail near Prescott on Monday when the animal attacked her foot. She grabbed the fox by the neck but it bit her arm and clamped down. Wanting the animal tested for rabies, she ran a mile back to her car, pried the fox loose, wrapped in a sweatshirt and tossed it into her truck before driving to a hospital.
The fox bit an animal-control officer removing it from the trunk. The animal tested positive for rabies.
The jogger and the officer are receiving a series of vaccinations.
By DEBORAH HASTINGS - Excite News
After all that fuss, the system worked. There was no meltdown, no flurry of lawsuits, no statewide demands for a presidential recount.
So does that mean America's voting machinery is finally fixed? And why did it work so well under record-setting turnout?
"Panic," said Doug Lewis, who heads Election Center, a nonprofit that works with voting officials across the country. "Everyone involved in conducting elections was just on pins and needles the entire year. Over-planning really helped."
There were extra precautions in nearly every precinct. In some areas, helicopters stood by to deliver touch-screen machines if extras were needed. Ballot orders were also increased.
The Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that oversees voting systems and distributes money to improve them, recommended that local jurisdictions recruit twice as many poll workers as in previous elections.
"Election officials went to extraordinary lengths to have not only a Plan A, but a Plan B and a Plan C," Lewis said.
In the end, there were a few hiccups - some machines were slow to start up, and voter rolls were missing some names. But for the most part, the system functioned well.
It worked even under the onslaught of more than 133 million voters, the largest number in at least 40 years. Many of them waited for hours to choose between John McCain and Barack Obama, the first African-American elected president.
"The voters were enthusiastic and just glad to be in the process," Lewis said. "That attitude really helps. The day goes by much better."
All of which is good news, but no reason to get complacent, voting activists said.
"America had its game face on," said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org at the Pew Center for the States. "Election officials and poll workers and voters were laser-focused on what they needed to do. They were willing to stand in line. They knew about early voting. They were vigilant about hiring extra poll workers."
Yet, Chapin said, "we need to do more. We didn't have a close election, and that took some of the pressure off."
Also alleviating pressure on Tuesday was newly popular early voting, which allowed people to mail in ballots or vote in person days before the election. At least one-third of the nation's general-election ballots were cast that way, according to early estimates.
But the process had its downside. Because so many voters wanted to cast early ballots, many people stood or sat or played cards in lines that lasted hours. In Florida, the governor ordered early polling places to stay open 12 hours a day instead of eight.
But Ion Sancho, elections director for Florida's Leon County, said early voting is the answer to overhauling the nation's varied, and sometimes confounding, voting system.
"When you can remove one out of three people from the lines on Election Day, that means there won't be two-hour waits at the polls. Fewer voters are going to be inconvenienced."
In 2000, confusing ballots and mismarked ballots enraged Florida voters. And in 2004, touch-screen machines refused to boot up, and Ohioans seethed while standing in line for as long as 14 hours.
Things have changed since then. Electronic machines are no longer the darling of voting officials. In big electoral states such as California, Florida and Ohio, many precincts have junked them in favor of old-fashioned paper ballots read by optical scanners.
Statewide voter registration databases, which are now required by law to help prevent a repeat of 2000, provide what are supposed to be comprehensive lists of eligible voters.
The lists are not without problems, either. On Tuesday, in states including New York, Georgia, California and Pennsylvania, people at the polls complained they were dropped from the rolls. Their only option was to cast a provisional ballot, which is not recorded if poll workers cannot find a voter-registration record for each ballot.
Voting advocates said Wednesday those omissions still constitute a serious failure in the voting system.
Sancho said such problems take years to correct.
"We are inching our way toward a better electoral system," he said. "A lot of work remains. But we handled more than 130 million voters in this country yesterday. We were able to accommodate more people than ever before and do it more smoothly. So we have to be doing something better."
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