Comedy is the trickiest of art forms. In order to execute it well, the performer needs perfect timing, good material, a feeling for your audience, and most importantly, the ability to make the absurd seem reasonable. Tripping on a banana peel done incorrectly brings gasps of concern from the audience. Is he hurt? Did he break something? Therefore, it’s imperative that when you slip on the banana peel, you do it in such a way as to make the audience aware that you didn’t really fall down because you skidded across the floor after stepping on the banana peel, you only made it seem like you did. The audience becomes part of your little conspiracy and laughs at you when you fall on your rump.

Bear this in mind when you read what the Democratic National Committee came up with to explain why John Kerry lost the election in Ohio. It’s a perfect illustration of bad comedy. In fact, if I were to rate the show they put on yesterday in the unvieling of this 200 page report on voting “difficulties” in Ohio, I’d have to give a thumbs down.

Not only did the performer, a Mr. Howard Dean, not have any sense of timing, he had no sense of the absurd whatsoever. In fact, Mr. Dean did not even realize he was involved in a comedy skit. However, since his audience didn’t either, I guess that makes them even.

One thing I will say is that as comedies go, the material was excellent. For pure enjoyment, it doesn’t get any better than this. In dealing with those electronic voting machines that Mr. Deans theater group pushed on the public following the 2000 election debacle, the report states:

It’s entirely possible that a DRE voter could vote for one candidate, which would be displayed on screen, while an entirely different candidate could be recorded internally as having received that vote. If such an error occurred, neither the voter nor any election official would be able to undo the damage after the fact. If such an error occurred systematically, it could swing the outcome of an election. And, if the faulty software was deliberately placed in the machine, it could even be programmed to modify itself to eliminate any traces of its having been present. If such fraud were occurring, it would not be visible to poll workers or election observers.

As with any other voting system, DRE votes must ultimately be centrally tabulated. This information may be communicated over a modem or carried by hand in a computer memory card. As with traditional ballot boxes, such data may be subject to tampering while in transit. However, while ballot boxes are large objects that can be easily observed and tracked, computer memory cards are small and sleight-of-hand can allow for quick substitutions. Likewise, telephone lines are not terribly secure against attackers who can climb telephone poles.

While appropriate cryptographic techniques can mitigate against all of these risks, many DRE vendors either use no cryptography at all or do it improperly, leaving the data effectively unprotected while in transit

Please note the subtext of the piece. Comedy can also be simple imagery as with the strange man on the telephone pole stealing vote tabulations or the “sleight of hand” required to pull the old “switcheroo” with computer memory cards. This is a cheap gag that can be traced back to the days of vaudeville. It’s also noteworthy that mixing comedy and magic never works. For that faux pas alone, Mr. Dean and his troupe should be shunned.

Mr. Dean’s troupe also had problem with insulting their audience. Clearly, if you’re going to put on a show, you can’t treat your audience like a bunch of buffoons. Mr. Dean comitted this unpardonable sin when he revealed how truly clueless his audience is:

Six (6) percent of voters who went to the polls reported feelings of intimidation. This group includes voters who heard that police would be at the polls to arrest people who had outstanding child support or car payments, and voters who said they felt intimidated on Election Day.

Voter Intimidation
• Isolated instances of overt intimidation at polling locations
• Scattered reports of fliers threatening arrest of people with outstanding parking tickets or with child support owing

Clearly, anyone who thinks they’ll be arrested for outstanding parking tickets if they show up to vote do not belong in any kind of a discerning audience. And yet, Mr. Dean makes it a point to take them seriously, a cardinal sin in putting on comedy. One must always keep in mind that there should be at least some kind of minimum sophistication for this kind of cerebral comedy. Bugs Bunny is funny to five year olds. Lenny Bruce was not. Similarly, people who feel intimidated when asked to show their ID at a polling station fall into the Bugs Bunny category of sophistication and therefore, need not have any attention paid to them. And yet Mr. Dean spends a great deal of time trying to make it appear as if the Bugs Bunny crowd deserved his consideration.

In summary, despite excellent comedic material to work with, Mr. Dean failed to arouse any laughter in his audience. Perhaps if the performance had been done in a decent theater rather than DNC headquarters, the results would have been different.

UPDATE

Matt Margolis:

When Christine Gregoire “won” the gubernatorial race in Washington state by a mere 129 votes, Democrats called it a done deal… despite mountains of evidence of irregularities…

Yet, President Bush won the state of Ohio by 119,000 votes, and Democrats still cannot accept it.

Yup.

GOP Bloggers:

So the real story is that people may have had a hard time voting… not because of some evil Republican scheme, but because they were impatient, untrained or confused… and even still George W. Bush legitimately received more votes in Ohio and won the election regardless of the findings.

Thanks for the news flash.