Taki's Self-Love; Cheshire vs. Anthony Lane; Readers Abuse Armond; Vote-Counts and Handjobs; More Maxim Fallout

Having suffered from insomnia myself, I can empathize with Jim Knipfel's ordeal ("Slackjaw," 12/13). A sleep-inducing technique I've found effective is to count the self-congratulatory statements in Taki's column. "I fly the Concorde. I vacation in Switzerland. I'm on a first-name basis with Margaret Thatcher. Al Pacino asks me for acting tips. Thomas Edison stole my idea for the lightbulb. I've got a hotter ass than Jennifer Lopez."

Zzzzzzzzzzz.

Brett M. Slater, Manhattan

Hollywood & Whine

Godfrey Cheshire's anti-Anthony Lane screed ("Film," 12/13)?vicious and pedantic, trite and self-fellating?only serves to illuminate the canyon-sized gap that exists between a great critic, like Lane, and a pant-leg-chewing striver like Cheshire.

Cheshire suggests Lane is off the mark in calling Ang Lee a product of "Hollywood." Let it pass, God. It's called journalistic shorthand. No one, not even the dimmest of your nine readers, would infer from Lane's description that Lee sups at Spago and keeps a parking space on the Universal lot. "Hollywood," in Lane's context, describes an amorphous commercial arena in which films are imagined, contracted, produced and marketed. You don't need to live in Southern California to have your movie routed through its far-reaching industrial labyrinths, and Lane knows this as well as anyone else, except you.

I could go on, but the act of documenting Cheshire's puerile, groundless charges is too painful, and would merely validate the brayings of a blinkered, self-aggrandizing dink.

For the reader, there is an object lesson in Cheshire's clueless rant. That is that "film critics" who have lived a life beyond screening rooms and VHS copies?who have read Malraux and Chesterton, who have studied Locke and Disraeli, who know the difference between A.Y. Jackson and Jackson Pollock?are much better equipped to write about film than the itchy, full-time film geeks, like Cheshire, who stumble from screening to screening, quoting from Cahiers du Cinema and squinting into the sun.

Your mind is pale, pal. Get a tan.

Craig MacInnis, Toronto

Measuring Stick

Christopher Caldwell is a huge asshole!

Eric L. Griffin, Lakeville, MA

Daddy's Little Helper

The XYZ book review by Marty Beckerman ("Books," 12/13) in Alaska is a Child Protective Services-baiting article. The father, in real life, would be sitting in jail faster than you could say "Monica Lewinsky" if his conversation had been repeated to a social services, school or hospital worker. So let's give the birds and bees some respect, dude!

Alicia Eng, via Internet

Force Mayor

Do you guys actually have a contest to see who can write the dumbest article every week? If so, congrats, Andrey Slivka. You take it for your "Mayor Bill Clinton" editorial (12/13).

You make it sound like Clinton becoming mayor is inevitable. What would be so wrong with that? The Clinton-attacking-the-drug-war argument is absurd considering the current police force policy of shoot first, ask questions later. You're worried about Bubba "running exuberantly roughshod over poor New Yorkers' civil liberties"? Give me a break. In case you've been in a cave, let me remind you that Giuliani has brought more than 30 civil liberty cases to court during his tenure. In the process, he's thrown away millions of taxpayer dollars with his attacks on housing, arts and education. In return, he's won less than a handful. You think Bill would have taken the Brooklyn Museum of Art to court over the "Sensation" exhibit? Very doubtful. And so what if he makes some "weep and snuffle" trips to Harlem churches? Giuliani hardly ever goes there to begin with.

Not that I believe that Clinton's the best man for the job. Hardly. I'd take Green, Hevesi, Ferrer or even (dare I say) Al "I want a press conference" Sharpton. Are they Democratic? Yes. Leftist? Perhaps. But at least these are bona fide, tested New Yorkers who have spent their political lives in New York and know the town better than the Clintons can name a New York baseball player.

As Groucho Marx might have said, Andrey, you might look like an idiot and sound like an idiot, but don't be fooled. You really are an idiot.

By the way MUGGER, so are you.

James L. Simon, Manhattan

Andrey Slivka replies: Even now that I've corrected Simon's misspellings of the name "Giuliani," as well as his other orthographical and grammatical mistakes, I can't tell what his letter is about.

Just so there's no confusion, the point of my editorial?which Simon obviously misunderstood?was that a Mayor Bill Clinton would intensify Giuliani's right-wing authoritarian policies, precisely because?as the sort of "hip" meritocrat New York City "liberals" feel comfortable around?he could get away with it.

A Night on the Tiles

Is the end of the Clinton administration being marked by a contest to determine the silliest Clinton rumor? That is the only way I can account for the claim that Bill Clinton will move to New York City and run for mayor ("Editorial" 12/13).

I'd bet that this got started when some Republican politician was telling a Democratic psychiatrist about his nightmares. Later, in a yuppie bar, the psychiatrist told this to a couple of colleagues, who had a good laugh over it. But a New York Press editor was lying half-smashed under the table, believed it, and you printed it. The rumor will next surface on Drudge, and then Richard Mellon Scaife will subsidize every newspaper that prints it.

John Boardman, Brooklyn

Friends Like These

MUGGER: What a great piece of writing your last column was. I wish I could e-mail it to friends and family, but I don't know how to cut and paste yet!

A true fan,

Myra Washington, Oceanside, CA

Thankin' Vankin

Jonathan Vankin has done it again! Vankin's highly readable, meticulously researched analysis of the problems inherent in computerized voting and the electoral process was very illuminating and timely. Once again, as in his various books published on the fascinating, arcane lore of conspiracy theories, he demonstrates his profound abilities to cut through the superficial with wit and elegance.

Charles A. Burris, Tulsa

Use Your Hand

Jonathan Vankin's article should be sent to Jeb Bush, who is considering reforming Florida's voting machines and procedures. Doesn't this article confirm that all the votes that were rejected by the automatic voting machines should have been counted by hand?

Beverly Eby, Sarasota, FL

Soup Bones

It is idiotic to suggest, in reference to the Florida recounts, that the idea that machine counts are better than manual counts is "absurd" (Jonathan Vankin, "Votescam 2000: The Real Scandal Is the Voting Machines Themselves," 12/13). The issue was that many of the people doing the recounts were cheating, and that there were no standards. Nor is the country going to wait two weeks for the results of a presidential election. Low-tech might be the most cost-effective way to go after all. But you could certainly do it better than they're doing now.

Hanging chads are just not a difficult problem. The crux of the problem is how to generate a filled-out, valid ballot so that there can be no claims after the election that voters were "confused" or "tricked." Since evidently not all voters can be trusted to follow simple instructions on how to punch a hole in a ballot, you should get the voting machine to do it.

I don't see why you couldn't have a machine generate a ticket in the voting booth that the voter could check before depositing it in a tamper-proof box. Afterward, you can count the tickets by hand as much as you please. If they can make a reliable laser printer, it seems to me they can produce a legible ticket on Election Day. No problems with chads, because the machine should be able to reliably make the voter's intention clear. If the ticket is illegible and the voter casts it anyway, throw it out.

To make counting easier, have the machine put a nick in the ticket in a different place for each candidate, and have the machine read the nick before ejecting the ticket. Then line up the nicks when counting the votes. Let the voter generate a different ticket for each race, in a different color. Each vote count can be done in parallel in a few hours.

Your only problem then is verifiability?making sure only the votes legitimately cast wind up being counted. This is made more difficult by the requirement that no one should be able to figure out how you voted (otherwise you could just number the tickets). Let the nth batch of 100 tickets for each office be assigned two numbers: n and a unique number, in random order, from 0 to 99. At the end of the day you record n for each office. Since you know how many people came to the poll to vote, this would limit the number of manufactured votes, since tickets with duplicate numbers and tickets with batch numbers greater than the recorded n (which can be at most 1 percent of the number of voters) would be fraudulent. Tickets should only be generated one by one by the slow process of pulling levers on the machine. Both of these measures would make life tougher for the Richard Daleys of this world. At some level you have to trust the poll workers.

Joe Rodrigue, New Haven

Get Whitey

Will someone please just beat the shit out of Armond White? His pseudo-intellectual, everyone-is-part-of-the-racist-Hollywood-machine bullshit is like the worst of the Village Voice.

Tom Patterson, Brooklyn

Blacker than Night

Armond White: Okay, I'm black and quite conscious of racial stereotypes in movies. But in the case of your 12/6 review of Unbreakable, I think you read wayyyyyyy too much into it all.

First, there were three so-called bad guys in the film. The rapist was white and the orange-suit dude was white. Sam Jackson was black. It's not like all the bad guys were black.

Second. Take this scenario: M. Night Shyamalan wants to reunite Bruce and Sam for his good vs. evil film. Hmmm. Who plays which part? Personally, I think Bruce would have sucked as the bad guy. Sam is the better actor, and the bad guy parts should always go to the better actor, period.

I'm sorry, but your racial argument was full of crap to me.

Veronica Bailey, Jersey City

Breakdancing

I am an admirer of Armond White, but I must take issue with his 12/6 review of Unbreakable. He is guilty of running wild with his rhetoric to an extraordinary degree. He calls Unbreakable the Birth of a Nation of our day. I never saw Birth of a Nation, but understand that it is a picture that portrayed the free blacks as such vicious criminals that vigilante action against them was justified. Unbreakable presents one black man as a sort of evil genius and in no way suggests that he represents the entire race.

Mr. White states that in this picture "white equals good and black equals evil." Late in the movie there is a battle between Bruce Willis and a vicious murderer who is white.

Mr. White asks, "Was any white star ever so unrelentingly unsympathetic?" What about Richard Widmark, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff?

Mr. White states that the director "seems to have no ethnic solidarity." Does that mean that his films should have only white villains?

We all make errors sometimes, and I am sure Mr. White's future reviews will mostly meet his level of high professionalism.

Robert Combs, Manhattan

Body of Christ

Re: Andrey Slivka's "Devil's Advocate" ("New York City," 12/13):

So the priest who presided over a gay meeting held at St. Joseph's on 6th Ave., which featured a cartoon Catholic named Andrew Sullivan, was very impressed by how nicely Andrew genuflects.

But does Andrew also preach the common sense that anyone who is HIV-positive has a moral obligation of celibacy? When Andrew genuflects, he is supposed to be showing devotion to a lamb who sacrificed Himself for the good of others, and yet he supports a community of thought that does not even expect a man to sacrifice his sex life for the good of others. Holy bullshit, Batman!

Diane Moriarty, Manhattan

Will Vote for Food

Jonathan Vankin: If you want bipartisan support for voting reform ("Votescam 2000: The Real Scandal Is the Voting Machines Themselves," 12/13), you'll have to confront the matter of illegal voters voting. Reasonable men can support accurate voting machines, since that kind of inaccuracy can be manipulated by both parties. But illegal voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, so there will be a "reluctance," expressed in racist terms, for any such action.

My guess is that you can forget it.

Frank Natoli, Newton, NJ

Imitate Canada

MUGGER? Oh, please, lose that name.

Jonathan Vankin: How about paper ballots, a la Canada? And wouldn't even they be manufactured by those evil corporations you so detest?

What capitalism has to do with this, in other words, is next to nothing. What ethics has to do with it is everything. But unless you're willing to destroy the federalist system completely (a job the Supreme Court has carried out relentlessly since the days of Roosevelt, but has not yet totally succeeded in), the states still call the shots for their own system choices. Let the state of Florida have one system, and I'm happy.

Meantime, isn't this the same article from The New Republic?

Len Krisak, Newton, MA

A Man Needs a Maid

Taki: Your first sentence ("Top Drawer," 12/13) really says in one word the way it was?"ladies." Today, there is an unmistakable distinction between women and ladies. Like then, the distinction is more important than money. There are very few ladies left, and they really stand out now.

What's more sickening than female boxing or roller derby is today's contrived feminist notion of romance?that is, that men should treat women as equals in a competitive workplace and refrain from any sort of flattering commentary or deference in consideration of sexual harassment laws and the appearance of discrimination. Once men and women exit the corporate threshold, men should forget the apprehension of sexual harassment law suits and fall hopelessly in love with women?showering them with flowers and favorable commentary, and extending courtesies such as forgoing a claim to a subway seat. Extending this further, male soldiers are expected to maintain morale and discipline if a female soldier is hurt or raped by an enemy soldier. Outside the realm of combat and the military unit, men are once again expected to behave romantically.

Women see this behavior as romance, but men see it as subservience and it offends their sense of fairness. The result is a world where men will not treat women with any deference whatsoever. Women were and are the keepers of polite society, yet women have reduced themselves to mere sex objects, roommates and workforce competitors. Love, romance and peaceful families have suffered tremendously under the tide of feminism. Let's have three cheers for the good old days!

Name Withheld, Oakland, CA

Inside Media Dope

Super 12/14 "e-MUGGER," Russ Smith. I especially liked your evisceration of that profoundly foolish reverend from Chicago.

About Michael Wolff of New York, answer me this: Is he sniffing white powder, giving himself B-12 shots from a burned spoon? He must be doing something. No one could write such dreck without chemical assistance.

Almirante Trentino, Manhattan

Never Gonna Get It

MUGGER: Your most recent column was superb! I wish (sigh) that the media were more "objective." Never going to happen.

Going to check you out on a regular basis. Thanks!

Clasina J. Segura, New Iberia, LA

He's Made a Little Dreidel

MUGGER: As always, great column. You are like a laser cutting through the b.s. Keep it up.

Happy holidays.

Ron Rowe, Pacific Grove, CA

People Often Call You "Genius," Steve?

Regarding MUGGER's latest rant about the Satanic Evil That Is Al Gore, was I the only one surprised that the little twerp lacked the guts or intellectual honesty to address the real issue?i.e., whether or not George W. Bush actually won the popular vote in Florida?

Just asking.

Steve Simels, Manhattan

Forbidden City

Sam Feldman, in the 12/13 "Mail," writes: "[Taki] certainly doesn't seem to understand that he writes for a newspaper that is both published in and read primarily by the denizens of an urban area."

What is this supposed to mean? That denizens of urban areas shouldn't be exposed to views with which they might disagree? Or that denizens of urban areas should be more vigilant in stomping out views with which they might disagree?

Peter Dutton, Queens

How About "Mediocre, Social-Climbing Twat"?

MUGGER: To call Eric Alterman a two-bit hack would be an insult to both quarters and taxicabs.

Tom Hennessy, Reno, NV

"Manhattan Style" Is Taken

May I suggest you change the name of your fine publication to something that can't be so easily confused with others? Case in point: Stephanie Gutmann obviously intended her shallow pull-piece love letter to the Israeli government and their morally questionable policies ("First Person," 11/22) for the New York Post.

By publishing such dreck, you not only deprive the Post's cementhead readership of their daily dose of Zionist chauvinism, you also lower the overall standards of the Press.

Deborah Brovniak, Manhattan

Shilling an Arab

Regarding Scott McConnell's "Arab Vote" ("Taki's Top Drawer," 12/13):

1. His gloating conclusion that Jews are really to blame for high rates of Arab immigration to the U.S. ignores that the recently defeated Sen. Spencer Abraham, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, and as pro-immigrant as they come, is of Arab descent.

2. He offensively predicts the growing Arab U.S. population will push the U.S. away from Israel?offensive because it implies the only tie between the two countries is based on domestic ethnic concerns, rather than, say, on the fact that both are democracies.

3. Equally offensively, he stereotypes Arabs as likely GOP voters. Zogby's own politics are much more nuanced.

4. McConnell has written interesting and well-respected articles elsewhere, but now is writing alongside the seedy cranks of "Top Drawer." Is it really that bad out there for freelancers? How did McConnell's career collapse? What went wrong, Scott?

D. Adler, Manhattan

Glass Aye

I am writing to commend you on including Charles Glass' Armenian holocaust article in your 12/13 "Taki's Top Drawer." It is so rare in this money- and power-hungry world of ours that the truth is able to present itself. It is true that journalists such as Charles Glass, and the editors of your publication, become the unsung heroes who assume the responsibility to not only inform but also to empower the people with the truth.

I honor your stance and hope it paves the way for a larger movement!

Narineh Mirzaeian, Los Angeles

 

Deep-Fried Turkey

Charles Glass with good reason mentions the Armenian holocaust. However, he gives a version of events so simplified and distorted that it invites shooting down even from sympathizers. It is a great disservice to the victims and survivors to present a distorted history. The mendacious Turkish establishment loves this kind of tale, since it provides them with ammunition for their so-called "accurate" interpretation of their government's actions.

Kostas Laskaris, Bernex, Switzerland

"President Chucklehead." Man, That's a Good One

MUGGER: It always amuses me when you right-wing wackos demonize anyone, like Jesse Jackson ("e-MUGGER," 12/14), who uses your own scorched-earth tactics against you. You love to whine, point fingers, blame the other guy and generally take no prisoners. But how defensive you get when the other side does the same. The Rev. Jackson's statements echo what I and many Americans feel: that the so-called President-Elect is merely a pretender to the throne and that his presence in the White House will never be seen as anything but an illegitimate assumption of power.

After all, this is the person who allowed people like James Baker to whine about "fairness" and lack of standards and consistency in counting the undervotes, yet was supportive of the extraordinarily haphazard and suspect way in which the absentee ballots were counted in the various counties in Florida. How is that "fair"? You can't apply one standard in one place because it's to your advantage, decry that same standard in other places when it's possibly to your detriment and expect to be taken seriously, by anyone with a functioning brain, as a "fair" person.

Well, I will never accept this man as president of the United States. Should I ever have cause to refer to him, it will be as "President Chucklehead." To paraphrase the immortal words of Bob Dole in the early years of the Clinton administration, he's your president, not mine. You want to claim an alcoholic, drug-addicted, brain-damaged abortion hypocrite and intellectual midget as your leader, you go right ahead. But he is not, and never will be, mine.

Sharon Johnson, Valley Village, CA

Staying Hard

In his 12/14 "e-MUGGER," Russ Smith writes: "I think it's time Michael Wolff returned to recording his cocktail chatterings with glossy magazine editors and musing over the imminent demise of content-devoted websites."

Um, New York Press' site excepted, I suppose...

One good thing to come out of the Bush administration should be a considerably lessened likelihood of Jesse Jackson's getting his name in the paper.

Pete Madsen, Olalla, WA

Bill Come Due

Russ Smith: You mentioned the Justice Dept. in your 12/14 "e-MUGGER" column: "...the jolly Arkansan does have reason to fear a Bush Justice Dept."

I absolutely despise Clinton, but I think one of the smartest preemptive moves Bush could make would be to pardon Clinton very soon after inauguration. There are at least two good reasons for this:

1) Do we really need a president to be indicted? Of course we know he should be, but does that really do the country any good? Nixon was disgraced without being indicted.

2) As a preemptive strike, it would be brilliant. Bush is going to have enough trouble with the loser Democrats, and getting Justice out of investigating Clinton would take a lot of arrows from their quiver.

I like your stuff, keep up the good work.

Mike McConnaughey, Monument, CO

That's Tattooed on Our Asses

MUGGER: Just finished your 12/14 online column. My son sent it to me. Fantastic. You said what needs to be said early and often. These hypocrites shouldn't be allowed out in public without a leash.

I sure hope President Bush doesn't fall for this reconciliation garbage.

Years ago a friend passed this on to me, and I'd like you to pass it on to Bush:

"Oh Lord, protect me from my friends, mine enemies I know."

William K. Hammel, Aurora, IL

Border Dispute

MUGGER: I enjoy your column.

I keep hearing stories about four million illegal-alien votes having been cast for Gore (nearly two million in California). I hear that the Immigration service furnished Clinton and the Gore campaign the names and addresses of all the illegal aliens in this country, and that Clinton wrote to each of them, urging them to vote, and sending each what purported to be a voter identification card, which they used to get past the election officials, and to vote. Though the election is now over, in favor of Bush, and exposing those votes will not affect that election, it will stop the Gore crowd from continually alleging that he won the popular vote.

I am getting so sick and tired of hearing that repeated, daily (a dozen times). Why do we not hear more about the illegal-alien votes? What do you know (or what can you find out) about the stories that I keep hearing on this subject? If they're true, you could do this country a great service by tracking it down and exposing it.

John E. Adams Jr. Grove Hill, AL

Teen Angst? Nahhhh...

Why are you guys surprised ("Dudes: Q&A with the Guys of Maxim," 11/1) that Maxim "seems aimed at 15-year-olds aspiring to be 18-year-olds" and yet manages to be highly successful among 30-year-olds? The infantilization of the population?especially men?has been taking place for some time. Ninety-five percent of Americans will not read a book after age 25. I read somewhere that most primetime tv programs are aimed at persons with a sixth-grade reading level. Yet most Americans spend eight hours per day staring at the tube.

I realized that I was (and I am) a member of the intellectually inferior gender when I happened upon a telecast of a football game being played when it was two degrees below zero. There were men, hundreds of them apparently, who had taken off their shirts and held up signs that said, "We're number one!"

In the entire universe there aren't many women stupid enough to engage in such behavior. I doubt that many women would pay good money for a magazine like Maxim.

For this reason, I voted for Hillary Clinton. Rick Lazio is exactly the sort of guy who reads...well, looks at the pictures in Maxim.

Juan Galis-Menendez, Manhattan

Face to the Nat

Armond White's 12/6 condemnation of Unbreakable ("Film") assumes that writer/director M. Night Shyamalan wants the audience to accept the white/black, good/evil analogy. I actually read the movie as a condemnation of that sort of stereotyping.

Who is it that sets up the opposition between the white, working-class, superstrong hero and the black, flamboyant, physically disabled villain? Why, the villain himself does. And his obsession with this comic-book way of seeing the world leads him to commit terrible crimes so that his superman can emerge. When the hero actually tries to be a hero (by saving the burglary victims), the scenario is messy, ugly and not wholly successful, suggesting that pure and simple victories don't exist outside comic books.

Nathaniel Hawthorne used a similar technique in some of his short stories about evil geniuses, whose fatal flaw is that they see the world in allegorical terms and demonize those who represent evil to them. I think Unbreakable could be read the same way. Maybe less discerning viewers will take away a racist message, but it's irresponsible for a critic to assume the worst of a filmmaker's motives instead of trying to suggest a more nuanced reading.

Jendi Reiter, Manhattan

Brotherly Grudge

Sneers to Armond White for his chainsaw 12/6 article on M. Night Shyamalan's strange, delicate masterwork Unbreakable. White's sputtering tirade is just latent buppie guilt sounding a death dirge for the identity politics that underlie White's increasingly childish laments.

In a world where black men are rarely allowed to play villains, let alone interesting ones, Jackson's Elijah emerges in thrashing defiance to both Hollywood's unctuous attitudes toward race and New York's effete analysis thereof. He's the perfect Philadelphian bad guy in this sense: elusive where L.A. is obvious, restrained and dangerous where New York is boastful and, ultimately, unarmed.

But there's nothing new here. White would cite racial invective in any film sporting a multiracial cast that doesn't directly address his particular brand of tight-assed, racial dialectic as the presiding subtext of its interrelationships. Indeed, one wonders what tack Armond White might have taken if the roles had been (literally) reversed?if Bruce Willis played the brilliant, well-to-do eccentric to Jackson's intellectually inferior prole hero? White's a one-trick pony, to be sure, and doubtless we'd have been subjected to a three-page treatise on the rebirth of antebellum phrenology instead.

As one of her well-traveled native sons, I can affirm that Philadelphia is both morally and artistically one of the murkier destinations in the country, making it the perfect playground for Shyamalan's opaque characters and oddly self-conscious narratives. In the town that endured everything from the draconian antics of Frank Rizzo to the Barrabus-esque farce of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the very idea of a "straight" race parable set in the City of Brotherly Love is laughable, especially if the director lacks the local chops. Luckily for us, Shyamalan is a Philly boy, and thus didn't account for White's intellectual laziness.

That the colors of the lead characters are the only element of import in White's reading is therefore not at all surprising?or, indeed, dismaying?in the least. Filmmakers like Shyamalan and Jonathan Demme (whose hyperrealistic Beloved was mangled by similarly hysterical treatments) create films whose black characters aren't chained to the academic's silly, cloying need for the ideal hero, but are rather set loose to sweat and breathe and become human, stowing along all the grim frailties that accompany such a fate.

What White missed was that Unbreakable is a story about broken people trying to find the other half of themselves. It's at once touching and disturbing, and a rare find in a market full of blatant exploitation and tender holiday fluff. And the audiences loved it.

That's why 20 years from now, while poor, sullen Armond rankles over the pro-Aryan tropes of Universal Soldier 8, Mr. Shyamalan will still be eating cheesesteaks all the way to the bank.

Jarod Kitchen, Brooklyn

Are Handjobs the Answer?

Jonathan Vankin: I read your very interesting article about the fraud that can be perpetrated with the voting machines ("Votescam 2000: The Real Scandal Is the Voting Machines Themselves," 12/13). I would imagine that what you say is accurate. Maybe the old paper ballot, hand-counted, would be more accurate.

However, I see some problems. First, as you stated, we are all so anxious for quick results. I also see another problem. I live in a suburb of Milwaukee, WI, and in Milwaukee they had problems because they could not find enough poll workers. I understand that Milwaukee was not the only place where this was a problem. How many more people would be needed to do a manual count of the paper ballots? In our fast-paced world, would there be enough people who would be willing to take time out of their lives to do the work? What would be the criteria for the people who would be hired to do this work? I remember when that was how everyone voted?but we were living in a different world then. People were more dedicated and more trustworthy. It certainly was a simpler life, in which many pitched in to be a part of the community.

Also, what would it cost? Would states or counties or municipalities that have invested in voting machines be willing to scrap them and pay more workers if they could find more workers?

While you very well may be right about the possibly of fraud with the voting machines, the biggest problem with the 2000 election was people who could not or did not follow very clear instructions. Many were sent sample ballots and clear instructions in advance. At the very least, the instructions were available at the voting place. When the election did not turn out the way they wanted, they decided to cry about it.

I imagine that the machines can be tampered with, but is it any more accurate for a few people to try to decide how some other people meant to vote, even if the voters didn't follow instructions? I don't think so.

Elizabeth Mueller, Waukesha, WI

Scales of Justice

Jonathan Vankin wrote: "Noncomputerized elections take a lot longer to produce results, there's no denying that."

I'll deny it. Hand-counting could be faster than machine-counting if it is done right; and especially, hand-counting could be faster if only one issue is being recounted. Did I hear correctly that Canada took four hours to hand-count their presidential election?

And hand-counting can be much more accurate and, done properly, could eliminate any need for recounts, because there would be no substantial possibility of error. The ballots remain for later audit; any system is vulnerable to fraud.

How could a fast and precise hand-count for a single office be done? Here is one way. I'll assume there are two candidates. With marked paper ballots on a strong, nonabsorbent paper, the ballots are divided into batches of about 500. The batches are numbered and weighed with an accurate scale (500 was chosen because scales sufficient to weigh them accurately are widely available for well under $100). Each batch is divided into stacks, one stack for each candidate and a stack for undervotes and overvotes. Each candidate's representative is permitted to search through all the other stacks looking for incorrectly classified ballots. Each stack is counted twice by one counter representing each candidate. The sorted stacks are each weighed. If there are any discrepancies that cannot be quickly resolved, the batch goes to a new counting team and the process is repeated. Any unresolved disagreements are submitted to the canvassing board. The ballots are preserved as evidence, maintained in the original batch sets. The forwarded data is compiled into a spreadsheet that shows each batch total; the spreadsheet is published and can be examined, by the counters and anyone else, for entry or formula errors.

Obviously, the more people who are available to count, the faster the count can take place.

With a system as described, an optical scan would quickly produce results for all issues, for the machines are faster for dealing with many issues at once. The equipment to do such a scan is cheap and widely available. (Equipment for sorting ballots is what is more expensive.) An inexpensive scanner and personal computer at each polling place could be used to provide private ballot verification for each voter, which has been shown to greatly reduce undervotes and overvotes. Manual counting would then be done if needed.

We don't need better machines, we need better thinking.

Abdulrahman Lomax, El Verano, CA