Republicans aren't the only ones who steal elections? Blue states are controlled by corrupt political machines too? DCDems who say they're backing Lamont are really helping Lieberbum?

Unless the Democratic Party is reformed first, good government is just a pipe dream.

I don't trust these numbers at all. I think they will drag their feet and try to get the media to report that this election is over, to make her look like a "sore loser" if she insists that ballots be counted.

As a contributor to the Edwards campaign, I am proud of what she achieved, but I will be really disappointed if she doesn't fight to the end. There are too many red flags that suggest cheating by Wynn's supporters.

thank you MyDD, count on it, this is a dress reheasal for November, and not just in Maryland.

I hope some MyDD readers will volunteer to be election officers in their respective states.

A little tiny point of clarification:  the Montgomery County machines did not break.  I repeat they did not break.  

The Montgomery County Board of Elections (a democratic controlled BOE--not the GOP controlled State BOE) forgot to supply all the parts to the machines.  They forgot to deliver to the polls ALL of the plastic credit card-like cards necessary to vote on a computer-based system.  

In order to vote, you insert the card in computer and your ballot appears on the screen, then you vote and then you eject the card and turn the card back in to a election judge.

NO CARDS--NO VOTING.  

Then the provisional balloting problems doubled and tripled in size as the Montgomery BOE wasn't expecting to rely on paper write in ballots and apparently didn't have enough, ran out--esp. of dem provisional ballots etc.  They went to the courts and extended voting by an hour--till 9pm.

The day was disaster and legal challenges will go on for sometime but this was caused by a democratic BOE.  And the machines worked once all the parts were delivered.

I am not saying its ok or that there weren't problems but your post is misleading.

After watching Donna Edwards clock Wynn in the debates, what's the first thing that happens?

Wynn's supporters jump on Edwards' supporters and start fights.  Hell, the man acted like he was offended he actually had to get off his fat ass and campaign.

I hope Donna doesn't concede a damned thing until all votes are counted and all legal remedies have been exhausted.  Wynn needs to go and I wish the yahoos in P. G. County would stop enabling him.

He's toast either way; if he wins, he's a beaten-up incumbent without any power.  Rahm Emmanuel will have to get another bag man for the DLC.  And if Edwards wins, Wynn gets a job on K street and gets the hell out of Congress.  A somewhat "win-win" no matter how it's sliced.

These problems are, sadly, not at all local to the 4th District, or even MD and are not, generally speaking, the result of partisan bickering so much as a result of the people in power either (1) wanting to to pretty much anythign to stay in power or (2) not giving a flying fuck about ensuring that the process of administering elections is executed smoothly and equitably.

Project Vote has been running an Election Administration program for 2 years that has documented these kinds of problems around the country. You can find out a lot about the efforts in the various states to suppress the progressive vote through laws and regulations at their website:
http://projectvote.org/clearinghouse.htm l - summary of voting rights lawsuits, among other things

http://projectvote.org/publications.html - more than you ever wanted to know about the problems of administering elections in America

http://projectvote.org/policy/provisiona l-voting.html - how provisional voting really works, including a survey of how MD is supposed to deal with provisional ballots.

MD's state office of elections was already stopped from creating rules that essentially prohibited voter registration drives, but the kind of problems we are seeing in CD 4 are the kinds of problems you can see in just about any populous county in the US.

That the self-styled world leader in democracy has a system that breaks so often should be an outrage, but more people don't know the details of how their votes aren't being counted.

As a life-long Marylander, I note that Maryland has a long history of decentralization in its elections (the Board of Elections until fairly recently was called SABEL - the State Administrative Board of Election Laws, reflecting its more distant role), that the Montgomery County Board of Elections, like all local boards, operates largely independently and that Montgomery County has been Sapphire Blue and Civic-Minded Good Government Blue for a very long time.

I am all for bringing out the long knifes but we should be careful to distinguish misfeasance from malfeasance and to remember that there is a long likely paper trail on this matter which has not yet been examined.  I would urge all Marylanders here to be vigilant about examining the actual evidence as part of the fight to take place, and to harmonize with Donna Edwards' legal team to the extent possible.  Ellen Sauerbrey made an ass of herself accusing Glendening of fraud in the courts 12 years ago without evidence; we are known for being a state of "middle temperament" as much as Connecticut is known for being the land of "steady habits" and a middle temperament is now well counseled.

My dad voted right at 7 in Montgomery's 2-5 precinct at King MS. He had to vote on paper, but the election judges said it wasn't a provisional ballot, which struck me as odd, but...Only 15 total votes were done that way at this precinct. We were one of the first to get cards prob b/c we're right near 270. Aparently some of the Olney precincts were the last to get cards and people didn't start vote electronically until 9. But in most of these montgomery precincts people can't stand Wynn. Yesterday was the first time I saw him and he's been my rep for four years.

I happened to work this election as a poll worker.  Not delivering the cards was a screw up of monumental proportions, but to say that there is any evidence of corruption is ignorance on a level that is bordering on insanity.  The way this happened is clear and well documented.  If someone wanted to steal an election there would be many ways to do it that didn't have such an obvious paper trail.  

Also, if Wynn wanted to steal the election, he would have left himself more room for error.  In my precinct (which was in MD8, btw) less than 5% of the people who voted that day showed up before the cards were delivered.

Finally, let me point out that this election isn't over by a long chalk.  In my precinct ~10% of ballots cast were provisional (some for reasons other than the early problems and extended hours.)  and we got our cards early.  If those numbers are the same across the county then the provisional votes could very well determine the election.

Why do Americans use machines at all? I don't just mean Diebold, but any machines, including those lever things you apparently use traditionally. We don't understand it in countries that use only paper and a pencil (and still get the counting done by the wee small hours of the morning).

I've asked Americans this, and the answer seems to be efficiency: that voting would be hopelessly slow and expensive without the machines to speed the process up.

This stuff just doesn't look efficient at all to me. And what's that business about Americans having to queue for hours to vote? We get all sentimental when we see people in third world countries doing it, but that doesn't mean we expect to see the richest country in the world looking like that.

Do the efficiency calculations ever take into account the massive externality of all those people waiting in line, who could be getting on with their lives and work?