de minimis minutiae

Problems for Florida Voters - Again?

New York Times editorial, 9/7/04:

"There is no excuse for turning away eligible voters at the polls, but that is what apparently happened in Florida's primary elections....Under Florida law, registered voters can vote without showing identification. But election officials at some polling places misstated the law and tried to keep eligible voters from voting. In one county, the official sample ballot got the law wrong. Officials in Florida, and nationwide, must improve their poll workers' training and written materials to ensure that this does not happen in the November election. Florida's voter-identification law is inartfully written. It says photo identification is required at the polls, but it goes on to give voters without such identification an alternative: signing affidavits swearing to their identities. By that reasoning, Florida voters who show up without identification should be told that they can vote as long as they fill out affidavits. But that did not always happen. In Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, poll watchers from People for the American Way saw voters being turned away after being told about half the law - the photo-identification requirement - but not the other half, the affidavit option."

Pro-Polluter Legislation

From the Baltimore Sun, 9/9/04:

"Beware of Congress always, but particularly at this time of year. Lawmakers are in a hurry to get done whatever they need to get done and go home. Sometimes really bad laws get made. One such measure awaiting a final push is the wildly misguided energy bill - a $19 billion package of subsidies for the energy industry to which supporters want to add one last insult: a taxpayer
bailout for manufacturers of the cancer-causing fuel additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE).
In other words, they want to shift legal liability for damage caused by MTBE contamination away from oil companies that make a profit from selling the stuff and foist it instead on everyone who pays the gasoline tax because they think that proposition has a better chance of winning enactment."