Election Worries Start to Mount

There was plenty of talk in political circles this week about having free, open elections unfettered by interferences....and no, we're not talking about first-time voters in Bagdhad or Tikrit. We're talking about red-blooded Americans getting a fair shot at the polls in Ohio, Florida and other key states in the U.S. Nov. 2 presidential elections.

Seems Ohio's Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, has ruled that only a certain stock of paper is allowed for voter registration cards, leaving some speculating that hundreds of voters who thought there were registered might not be. And former President Jimmy Carter's editorial in the Washington Post does little to calm fears that Florida's election hassles (remember hanging chads? the Supreme Court's intervention?) have been solved for 2004. Indeed, he predicts a repeat performance of how not to run an election in the president's brother's state in 2004. In fact, Carter's editorial is Tuesday's top link via the BBC, which means the rest of the world is watching how we execute the very democratic principles we proclaim to deliver to the rest of the world.

And how about this interesting bit of news? Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" viewers are among the most educated on political issues, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey.

And hey? Do you have an extra $70,000 lying around? Take it to space. The folks behind Virgin Galactic are predicting civilian trips into space in the next few years.

Today's tidbits: The World's Shortest Blog (No. 13 on Tuesday's top links). Also, the latest update on the level of insurgency in Iraq is quite chillling.

TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Since Iraq is now the leading campaign issue, take a look at the top links on the topic at BlogPulse's politics-only blog tracking site, Campaign Radar 2004.