Thank God for recounts...

via Kausfiles (no permalinks, because Microsoft is too good for them, I guess, so scroll down to December 28) comes news that the Ohio recount has reduced Bush's votes in Ohio - by 300. He only won Ohio by 118,457 votes instead of 118,775.

There are two things that struck me about this story. First of all is this:

Kerry gained 734 more votes in the recount, and Bush picked up 449, mostly from disqualified ballots that were counted in the second tally because hanging chads had come loose when ballots were handled again or rerun through counting machines.

How is "creating" more votes by manhandling the ballots until chads get loose, and votes that were not legit votes become votes, more fair than not counting them? Is voting so tough that we can't expect people to push the damn chad all the way through the ballot? And is it possible that some of these chads fell out of ballots where the voter didn't intend to vote for anyone for president?

The second part that made my blood boil was this:

The Green and Libertarian party presidential candidates asked for the recount and raised the $113,600 required under state law. Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) has estimated that the recount will cost taxpayers $1.5 million

I thought the Libertarians were all about reducing government - and here they are wasting a million and a half of taxpayer money on a recount that accomplished abso-freakin'-loutly nothing. Did they really think they would "find" an extra 118,000+ Kerry votes? Or an additional 2,845,088 Badnaric votes? And it looks like Cobb, the Green party candidate, wasn't even on the ballot in Ohio - I'm guessing the WI stands for write-in.

I used to have a degree of respect for the libertarians - I read one of the books that Harry Browne (the previous libertarian candidate) wrote, and liked much of it, although I didn't agree with everything. Post-9/11, though, I could not agree with any party whose stance on national defense was "we'll stay out of other countries and they won't bother us". The fact that they would join hands with the Green party and get taxpayer money spent on such a useless pursuit sinks them even lower in my estimation.