"I believe that what is occurring in Florida is purposeful," says Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat whose district includes Palm Beach and Broward counties, areas hardest hit by the 2000 fiasco. Hood's maneuvers in the state are not a matter of mere ineptitude, Wexler says. "This isn't one incompetent error -- it's five or six. It's impossible to believe that Jeb Bush is that incompetent. This is a purposeful strategy." Bobbie Brinegar, president of the Miami-Dade chapter of the League of Women Voters and a fiercely nonpartisan advocate for election reform, is even more blunt. "There's very little chance we'll have a fair election in Florida," she says. "Very little chance." It seems crass to compare the chaos of Nov. 7, 2000, to the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001, but in the elections business the comparison has a certain resonance. The events in Florida in 2000 were transformational; in the aftermath of that debacle, election reform advocates pointed to all that went wrong as proof that Americans had ignored, for too long, the mechanics of their democracy. Nov. 7 was a wake-up call, and afterward reform advocates were given license to think big, to consider all options for making elections fairer, more equitable.[more
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