John,

>Wrong. Tamar, you're falling victim to the "spin". The law does say that for manually cast ballots, but a whole different paragraph of the statute applies to electronic or machine balloting. It's really starting to frost my ass at the "newspeak" being used by the Democratic operatives here in my hometown.

How did you find out about the other paragraph? I would guess not from the mostly-liberal and sloppy-reporting networks.

>Disenfranchisement -- Nobody was disenfranchised. Disenfranchisement is being prevented from casting a ballot, NOT casting a boneheaded mistake.

Agreed. They had their chance to vote and didn't bother to follow the arrow. I'm sure that the ballot also probably had instructions about not punching more than one for the same office. Unfortunately, I haven't heard that mentioned by the press, either.

>Illegal ballot -- NOT illegal according to the PROPER statutes. I am sorely tempted to go to Sunshine Online (the Florida laws, freely available on the net) and grab that law and post it where people will read it rather than listen to the talking heads on CNN.

PLEASE DO!

We're also not hearing from the mainstream media about the previous Florida court ruling in the '70's which specifically addressed the layout of ballots. The ruling stated something like this: If the ballot is not challenged before the election, the candidates have NO RECOURSE after the election to challenge it.