Voting Art -- Oct. 31, 2004

  -- A weekly feature on This Week.

Paul Goldberger, dean of New York's Parsons School of Design, asked 50 of the country's leading artists and architects to convert Florida's Votomatic voting machines into art. "This Week" previews "Butterfly Ballot."

Paul Goldberger: "We've got 47 amazing pieces of art that comment on the state of democracy and the state of the whole voting process. I think the amount of passion and imagination that these artists have brought to this is incredible and is a phenomenal testament to how much they really care about public affairs in this moment in history.

"Two of the designers took a voting machine and literally put it under a one-and-a-half ton bulldozer and crushed it, and then put a little toy elephant on top. And it's visually very powerful. It's both cynical and witty at the same time, and I think a lot of these are very witty and very funny. There's a bitter edge to a lot of the humor, but it's funny nonetheless.

"Bob Stern did one with a whole bunch of different rear view mirrors on all sides of the voting machine. The message there is the voter is in the driver's seat. But it's also a message of introspection: You really look at yourself in a mirror and think about your connection to democracy.

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"This is Chuck Hoberman's brilliant piece that starts with the valise, and then he plastered the outside with stickers about the Iraq war. The thing mechanically opens, but then this very beautiful, sort of origami folding piece about voting just emerges. And it's actually a kind of mode of hope.

"The message of all of these projects, however different they all are, is that we shouldn't screw around with democracy and the voting process. It's delicate, and we need to take care of it."

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

Stewart: "Stephen, this story coming out so close to the election is sort of an embarrassment, I imagine, for the Bush administration."

Stephen Colbert: "Apparently, the U.S. never had possession of these dangerous ammunitions, and didn't even find out they were gone until a couple of weeks ago. So to the Bush critics who call this incompetence, the White House responds: Joke's on you. It's actually ignorance."