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 voting machines all over the country. Is that overstated?

M: Well, that's a good argument, I hadn't thought of that, but yes, why should Florida
 be singled out solely because there was litigation?

P: Well, I forget, something like 40 percent of the voting precincts in America had
 punch card machines.

M: Did they? I didn't know it was that high.

P: That may be a little bit high, but there were certainly a huge number of people in
 this country who voted on those machines. If you assume that the machine,
 because of the nature of that machine, is inherently discriminatory, then you
 would have to apply it all over the country, wouldn't you?

M: Yes, that's something you have to think about.

P: Do you think the voting public understands the importance of the vote? Do you
 think they're better educated about the function of the canvassing boards and
 election supervisor, and do you think that we will ultimately get higher turnout
 because of what happened in 2000?

M: I have no idea, I really don't. The news media, especially with twenty-four hour
 news television now, tend to trivialize virtually everything, rather than engaging in
 the incisive analysis that really says something of significance. So, I'm not
 optimistic by that score. By the way, I had my exterminator come the day before
 yesterday, and he said, I saw you on television the other day. I said, what? He
 said, yeah, when you were in charge of the recount. [It was] just one of these
 voice-over things showing me sitting at the end of the table, I suppose, presiding
 over the canvassing board, so the beat goes on.

 Just to return briefly to what effect this has had on me, I [have] spent a lot of time
 talking with people like you who are writing books and so forth in the hope of
 getting the historical record correct. I've been disappointed, for example, by the
 article written by US News and World Report where I counted several factual
 errors on an article that took less than one page. I talked with the reporter that
 they sent down here afterward. He was a very intelligent guy, he has a
 bachelor's degree in history from Yale, so he's no dummy, but I was just really
 pained to see how badly he messed it up. He just got so many facts so wrong in
 such a short space of words that it was breathtaking, it really was.

P: I think that's one of the advantages of this oral history, that we get your version
 down word for word, so that anybody who reads this transcript sees exactly what
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