Department of Undecided Elections

Let's review:

1. Carteret County's notorious touch-screen voting device swallows more than 4,400 votes, putting in doubt who would have won the contest for Secretary of Agriculture. Republican Steve Troxler is ahead of incumbent Agriculture Secretary, Democrat Britt Cobb, by fewer than 2,300 votes in the statewide tally.

2. State Board of Elections' first fix of this problem: let the 4,400 lost Carteret voters re-vote, ALONG WITH (and here it got bizarre) about 10,000 Carteret voters who didn't even try to vote on November 2nd. This solution gets challenged in court and gets thrown out by an irritated superior court judge.

3. State Board of Elections' second fix: on a straight partyline vote, 3 Democrats to 2 Republicans, the SBOE voted in December that a state-wide revote of the Cobb-Troxler race was the only legal way to fix the problem.

4. Yesterday, another dyspeptic superior court judge threw out Fix No. 2, since state law says it takes at least four votes on the SBOE to order a new election.

5. Next step? Fix No. 3? Perhaps a spitting contest. Republican Troxler has already started, declaring loudly that the SBOE should just go ahead and declare him the winner and be done with it, BORG-like: "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." For his part, Britt Cobb wants the state legislature to decide who won. Britt's mama didn't raise no fools: the state legislature is now firmly in the hands of Democrats, not that they can all be counted on in a spitting contest.

How long before "The Daily Show" has Rob Corddry in Raleigh reporting "live" on the North Carolina Department of Agriculture election flap?