She is in politics, she is a Republican, and she is a Bush partisan. But she is also the co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Florida, her name has been mentioned in connection with an ambassadorial appointment, an appointment she is seeking. When partisanship gets that deep and obvious, the official should recuse herself and let someone else make such decisions. By like token, the Democratic Attorney General should have disqualified himself, but in fact his decisions have not been and are not likely to be determinative of the election. If they were, he would be in the same ethical and moral posture of Katherine Harris, the secretary of state of Florida.
Machines are more reliable than people.
Hand counts are inherently suspect. That fallacy is obvious on many counts. Neither process is perfect, but the foibles and mistakes of humans make better television that those of machines. You don't see the built-in error rate of machines, which can be high depending on how they are maintained. Anyone who owns a computer, a car, a vending machine, a change machine, or almost any other consumer product knows that machines are not the perfection claimed for them.