The secretary of state has a news conference tomorrow. He’ll highlight improvements in election procedures in the runoff versus the first primary and, no doubt, pin blame for problems on the state’s contractor. Which is fair enough.

A reminder to those who say (we mean, you, Jim Lagrone) that Daniels should have “started earlier.” This is at least a little misleading. You can’t prepare ballots or program machines for the ballots until the ballot closes, less than two months before the first election. It was in the ballot preparation and programming that the problems occurred, a preparation for a new form of voting in some 2,500 precincts in less than 60 days. With only a couple of major contractors in the field nationally on similar problems everywhere, mistakes were going to happen.

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Did we have an election? Were the votes counted? Was anybody denied the ballot? Is there any indication we didn’t have a fair outcome? These are the important questions, not some election night glitches and a few delays. But what Daniels has to say tomorrow will be important to his future. And should be.

His announcement on the jump.

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