Hardest Words For A Columnist To Say: 'I'm Wrong'

I usually view Daniel Ruth's who writes annoying coy op-eds that would never get him hired with an A-list newspaper. Anyone can be cynical three times a week. Wayne Garcia labeled Ruth a "serial name-caller." It's hard to find something that Ruth passionately believes in and use his media real estate to try to better the community.

Ruth is entitled to his opinions. He is not entitled to his own facts. Ruth wrote that Sami Al-Arian made anti-Israel remarks in 1998. Al-Arian actually made those remarks in 1988. Journalist Eric Boehlert noted that the Tampa Tribune had not written a correction, as of January 19, 2002.

Ruth is once again kicking out the truthiness.

First, it is possible the voting machines ate 18,000-plus votes, sending them into cyberspace.

Second, it might well be that otherwise normal, reasonably intelligent adults simply couldn't find and/or understand the congressional election options, although they clearly grasped every other ballot choice.

And there is this: On Election Day, some 18,000 members of the body politic got to the congressional section on the ballot and said to themselves: "A pox on both their houses for mutually running such a nasty, cheesy, misleading, negative campaign. I'm going to pass on this one."

Computer scientists are saying that is not possible.

Kathy Dent, Sarasota County's elections supervisor, defended her county's $4.5 million touch-screen system. Dent said she thinks thousands skipped the race to protest intense mudslinging by both candidates.

Political scientists say that kind of voter rebellion is unlikely to be confined to a single county. The high rate of skipped votes in Sarasota County is a statistical red flag.

I don't think Ruth bothered to research the District 13 voting problem. If he did then he would have known that the machines were having problems with votes not showing up on the screen before election day. The Orlando Sentinel found that the 18,000 voters that registered no vote leaned heavily Democrat in the races they voted for. Vitual unknown Eric Copeland received 551 votes than agriculture commissioner winner Charles Bronson.

There is two things that Ruth should have taken into account before writing his column.

a). Florida's history of elections is considered a joke by the rest of the country.
b). 18,000 nonvotes is an unusually high number.

I can't say with no certainty that Christine Jennings won the race. Ruth shouldn't flippantly say 18,000 people decided not to vote in the Jennings-Buchanan just because it leaves space cutesy names like Dr. No. How original.