All Intensive Purposes

In the race to fill Katherine Harris' former seat in Florida, it appears that irregularities with electronic voting machines may have cost the Democratic candidate the seat. The Republican candidate is leading in the tally by 368 votes, but in Sarasota County there appear to have been huge problems, with the machines having failed to record votes from 13 percent of the voters. If those votes were cast in proportion to the recorded votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won by ~600 votes. And -- of course -- the Florida Secretary of State's office does not want to investigate. Katherine Harris may be elsewhere, but her spirit continues to animate the office.