In his latest post, Kos mocks those who called for a recount in New Hampshire as paranoid "morons". But he constructs a strawman by presuming that everyone who called for a recount in New Hampshire made a specific allegation of fraud, and only made such an allegation because their preferred candidate lost. I believe a mandatory manual audit should take place after every election, regardless of the outcome, to make sure the paper trail matches the electronic count. That's the position of Verified Voting, and Kos is lucky enough to live in the state of California, where that process is already a reality.
A few more comments after the flip . . .
Deliberate fraud isn't the only potential cause of an erroneous result, and many who called for a recount, including Kucinich, never alleged fraud. Software bugs, hardware malfunctions, and clerical errors cause miscounts as well, and with a great enough frequency that it shouldn't simply be laughed off. Verified Voting offers this 51-page document (PDF) of recent miscounts and malfunctions. These events are reality, not paranoid theory.
New Hampshire highlighted the existing need for reform, it didn't create the need. It wasn't just the pre-election polls in New Hampshire that differed significantly from the results, but the exit polls as well. (In contrast, the South Carolina exit polls were dead on.) If we don't count some of the paper ballots in that scenario, then this fight we've been waging for mandatory paper trails is all for naught. Was the electronic count likely accurate? Sure. But the point is that we never know without the audit.
Yes, we all tend to get more wound up when a candidate we like loses. That's natural. But it doesn't change the fact that mandatory audits should always be taking place, regardless of whether our preferred candidate wins.