Today's Wall Street Journal has a fascinatingly weird and wrong editorial mocking Democratic protests over the results in Florida's 13th House district, where 18,000 Sarasota County voters using electronic voting machines mysteriously registered no choice for Congress. As Jon Chait noted the other day, it's hard to believe anyone would argue with a straight fact that this isn't the result of malfunctioning voting machines. But in the Journal's view, "if anyone ought to be complaining about undervotes, it's the GOP." Today Brendan Nyhan has helpfully re-explained why the facts clearly show that to be a sky-is-green argument. For good measure, the Journal sneers at Democrats who invoke FL-13 to support calls for printed "paper trails" that can verify electronic voting tallies thusly:

This might be a reasonable request if it were made in good faith. But back during the Florida debacle in 2000, before touch-screen voting was widely used, the same Democrats and liberal columnists deplored the inaccuracy of paper ballots and those "hanging chads."

What ambiguous chads might have to do with a black-and-white computer printout of vote tallies is a mystery here. [Update: Commenter jfelliot has the answer: "They're made of paper. Duh!" Touche.] And if paper trails might indeed be a "reasonable request," and a bulwark against undemocratic electoral outcomes, is the Journal really disdaining them simply because it doesn't like how Democrats behaved back in 2000? --Michael Crowley