Florida's top election official four years ago also chaired the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign in the state, ...
Is this true? Seems to me that there's a basic conflict of interest with an election official being involved in an election campaign. Regardless of party.
he's referring to Katherine Harris, then FL Secretary of State, who served also as FL Chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Nothing unusual in that. If you look across the country at who the various state chairs of the respective campaigns are, you will likely see elected officials from the canddiates' parties in those roles.
That's certainly not unfair by Carter's standards. Jimmah apparently thought the Venezuelan election fair despite the fact that:
1. The Chavez government bought a little Venezuelan software company and had it write the software that tabulated Venezuelan votes, replacing six-year old American software2. The government's software company would not release its vote counting software for public scrutiny
3. The Chavez government would not allow inspectors into the central place where votes were tabulated
4. Two-way communications between the central vote counting place and the polling places were allowed allowing possible vote-altering instructions to come from central command
5. Exit polls of three independent firms, including one that did exit polling for Clinton, found Chavez' opponents had won by a landslide
6. The Chavez government would not allow inspections of the great majority of the voting machines
Perhaps if the Florida Democrat party were allowed to do something like Chavez did, then it would be a fair election by Carter standards.