A federal court in San Francisco has ruled that the California recall must be postponed because several counties are still using the old IBM punch-card system that gave the nation two months of chad analysis in Florida just three years ago.

Of course, it was this same system of punch cards that re-elected Governor Gray Davis last year and somehow is now not good enough to use in the recall. Obviously, what worked to put Davis back in the governorship is considered unfit to take him out. How much hypocrisy and selective jurisprudence can you stomach?

But that's not the worst of it.

Much of California seems to have converted to the "touch screen" method of electronic voting where there's no paper trail and nothing to recount if there's a dispute over the posted results. Critics and conspiracy theorists claim that this system leaves us wide open to computer hacking and rigged elections. And they are probably right.

The fact that President Bush and his henchmen favor the "touch screen" should be enough to make anyone suspicious.

Almost immediately after the 2000 voting debacle, my area converted to optical scanners which I consider far superior because they leave a paper trail. Ballots can always be recounted if there's a dispute.

Here's a wild idea.

Let's go back to hand counting paper ballots. Under the supervision of monitors from all parties, including independents, let the people at the polls hand count every ballot at least twice before submitting the results. We could even have relief shifts. We are already broken down into small precincts that would not make this an impossible task. California could be the first trial.

Who, besides the media and the candidates, cares how long it takes to have a fair and accurate count of the ballots? Personally, I don't care if it takes a week or two, even a month. It would still be quicker than the two months we spent chasing chads and trying to psyche out the intention involved in "pregnant" and "hanging" chads.

Unlike the media who by election night have invested so much time and energy in promoting their favorite candidates, as they are now promoting their own Maria Shriver, oops, Arnold Schwartzenegger, I've got plenty of things to keep me busy until the results are firm. I don't need any immediate gratification and would just as soon wait for a fair count.

The media, on the other hand, would go ballistic if they couldn't have immediate results. They would probably run about like rabid dogs biting people because they couldn't be "first with the results." Look at the mess they made of things trying to anticipate the vote with "exit polls" in 2000.

And how do you suppose this looks to the Iraqi people when a state that happens to be their size can't get its act together? If the wealthiest nation in the world can't replace its voting machines in less than three years, how are they ever going to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure they so systematically destroyed?