Web abuzz with vote-rigging tales - Toronto Star
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Voting
Torono Star


John Kerry may have conceded the White House to George W. Bush, but millions of Americans have not.

My inbox is engorged with some of their emails claiming that the election was hijacked. There are appeals to "bombard" the Ohio secretary of state over the provisional ballots, pleas for "emergency funds" to force state recounts plus entreaties for "first-hand'' anecdotes for a book on election irregularities.

But you wouldn't know anything was out of the ordinary from most of the mainstream media (MSM).

Since Nov. 2, they've produced plenty of post-vote pontification over "moral values," predictions on future White House appointments and premature speculation on who will run against whom in 2008.

Meanwhile, there's practically nothing on the issue consuming my bandwidth and clogging my computer.

The Nation's David Corn feels my pain.

"The election's been stolen! Fraud! John Kerry won!" he writes in the latest issue. "In the (post-election) days, these charges flew over the Internet. The basic claim was that the early exit polls ? which showed Kerry ahead of George W. Bush ? were right; the vote tallies were rigged. Could this be? Or have ballot booths with electronic voting machines become the new Grassy Knoll for conspiracy theorists?"

Yes ... and no.

No because, in many jurisdictions, including the contentious Ohio and Florida, real problems have been reported. Some local MSM (e.g. the Cincinnati Inquirer) and all kinds of websites (VotersUnite.org, to name one) have documented incidences of machine malfunctions, discrepancies between exit poll results and actual votes, "disappeared" votes, "extra" votes and other problems.

Yes because, thanks to a patchwork system of machine and paper ballots, a vast and confusing array of irregularities are turning up in many different counties. That means little coherence and much chaos, propelling wild rumours around the cyberspace, along with legitimate accounts of trouble.

But is that any reason to discount the story? What little MSM reporting there is of the irregularities is done with the intent of discrediting any potential case, however flimsy, against certifying the election results.

"Mocking us as `spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists,' (Washington) Post reporters Manuel Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating signalled their determination to put questions about Bush's victory outside the bounds of responsible debate," noted Sam Parry of Consortium News on Friday, before launching into a post-mortem of the paper's "sloppy mistakes and untrue assertions."

Also on Friday, the New York Times took a crack at the votejacking charges only to conclude that there is no there there.

"I'd give my right arm for Internet rumours of a stolen election to be true," David Wade, a Kerry campaign spokesperson, tells the paper. "But blogging it doesn't make it so."

This brings us to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, host of the best, although not best-rated, weeknight hour on U.S. cable. His Countdown With Keith Olbermann (at 8 and midnight) is a smart and snarky look at the day's events, with little of the spin you typically find on TV.

Not surprising, then, that Olbermann has been almost a lone voice in the MSM's treatment of voting irregularities, earning him hero status in blogistan.

Last Tuesday night, he asked Congressional Quarterly columnist Craig Crawford if "every news organization (gave) up on this story the moment John Kerry conceded the election." He got this reply:

"The glib answer, which is part of the truth, is I think everybody was tired after that election. And it was a gruelling one. And so, since John Kerry ? and this is the second factor ? since Kerry conceded, there wasn't the great desire to run out to Columbus or wherever and try to figure this stuff out. And the concession is the key, because we're often wimps in the media. And we wait for other people to make charges, one political party or another, and then we investigate."

Which once again confirms how journalism is dead while stenography lives and thrives.

Just like they did in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the media are not asking the questions they should be asking.

I am not saying that, given all the irregularities put together, the election outcome would be any different. I am just wondering why there's been precious little probing of the problems and how they must be fixed before the next election.

Of course, driving all these charges of election hijacking is a healthy dose of paranoia based on the all-too-real 2000 election mess. Mix in bewilderment over how so many Americans swallowed the Bush administration lies about 9/11 and Iraq with a generous helping of sore loserdom ? and you have the perfect recipe for a conspiracy theory.

But this is one cow pie that stinks to high heaven. You have to wonder why the media aren't sniffing around it.

Oh Brother, Ohio, and O'Reilly (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Voting
SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION? Keep your aluminum foil hats at the ready.

The purported linking of failed Florida congressional candidate Jeff Fisher and Ralph Nader, trumpeted on Fisher?s website, is news
Nader?s spokesman Kevin Zeese.

That?s particularly troublesome for Mr. Fisher because it is to Zeese that the connection is attributed:

?Kevin Zeese,? the Fisher site reads, ?officially announced that Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader will be consulting with Jeff Fisher and Jan Schneider regarding the investigation of voter fraud and a statewide recount for the state of Florida.?

When the nose-to-the-grindstone Countdown staff (as opposed to me, vacation boy) contacted Zeese, he said it was the first he?d heard of any ?official announcement.? Zeese acknowledges he?d spoken to Fisher, and surmises, correctly I think, that Fisher (he lost in the Florida 16th) and Schneider (she lost in the 13th, to Katherine Harris) were trying to increase their credibility by tying their efforts to the Nader campaign. Given the pounding Nader?s gotten for four years, Zeese laughed out loud at the irony.

Fisher has been cited in many places as claiming he has firm evidence of deliberate computer-hacking in the Florida vote, and was awaiting FBI agents with whom he was to share it. Not to dismiss him or his claims, but the show?s contact with him was not encouraging. He spoke vaguely of sources and whispered a lot.

Hell, ?Deep Throat? from Watergate whispered a lot.

Then again, so does the guy who wanders around Columbus Circle claiming the government caused the Red Sox to win the World Series.



We?ll reserve judgment on Mr. Fisher?s claims? and keep them out of this space until and unless they have stronger legs. But the ?consulting? role with Nader isn?t the case, and bodes ill for Fisher?s other assertions.

Meanwhile in Ohio, it?s not exactly the lead story on Nightly News, but the verifying of the provisional ballots has gotten the attention of the most influential, and underrated, news source in the country? the Associated Press. It is from this wire service that most smaller newspapers and nearly all local and national radio and television news departments glean their national material (and from which, though they?d never admit it, most newspaper columnists, draw most of their data).

The AP reports that by yesterday, 11 of Ohio?s 88 counties had completed vetting the provisionals and that ten of the districts have accepted the validity of more than 90 percent of them. One? Belmont County (along the West Virginia border)? has tossed 42%, and nearing the halfway mark in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the election board there has accepted about two-thirds.


And this afternoon, the AP?s TV and radio columnist Frazier Moore wrote a withering satire of the post-election television political landscape, so much in the manner of Jonathan Swift that it has been forwarded to me by conservatives claiming it ?proves? there?s no reason to cover any voting issues. Generally speaking, mainstream silence seems to be passing: Sunday, the Hartford Courant printed an op-ed from the Associate Dean of the Yale Law School, Ian Solomon - one of those Democratic lawyers dispatched to Florida to ?watch? the election - who suggested the monitors had been too busy verifying the paper ballots to pay attention to the prospect of computerized irregularities (thus, Dean Solomon admitted, ?I might have been an unwitting accessory to fraud.?)

The Boston Globe plans a piece on the silence? which still seems more a case of media passivity than conspiracy?in the next few days. Even the
Washington Times addressed it yesterday (albeit with the headline ?Anti-Bush Internet Site Angles For Election Probe?) by focusing on MoveOn.org?s ?Investigate the Vote? campaign. Jerrold Nadler of New York, one of six Democratic congressmen who demanded an investigation by the General Accountability Office in the days after the election, says now he anticipates a response from the GAO by the end of this week, and that could stir the pot a little further.

We may even have seen something of a reaction to this story on Fox News. There, our old loofah-wielding friend Bill O?Reilly is at it again, wandering further and further into semi-lucidity and self-contradiction. As reported by
Brian Stelter over at TVNewser O?Reilly managed to put himself at direct odds with his own boss, Roger Ailes.

?The Pew Research Center is out with which media was most trusted during the presidential campaign,? O?Reilly stated Monday night. ?On the TV side, Fox News wins big? Dead last was MSNBC, which was six percent of Americans trusting them. Obviously they have major problems over there.?

As usual when dealing with the O?Reilly Fact-or-Fiction, he leaves himself so open to fact-checking on so many fronts, that it?s difficult to decide where to thrust the first sword.

Let?s start with the Pew poll. Firstly, it had nothing to do with which media was ?most trusted? ? it only asked where people got most of their news on the election. And using Fox?s own criteria? they?re right and everybody else ranges from liberal to treasonous? they were cited as the respondents? primary source by 21%, compared to the NBC/MSNBC/CNBC combination (also 21%), and compared to the combined three broadcast network news departments (29%). The Internet was also cited as a primary source by 21%, suggesting respondents were permitted to give more than one answer. This not only isn?t ?Fox News wins big;? using some of the same massaging of numbers O?Reilly is fond of, it?s not even ?Fox News wins at all.?

Sorry about that ?massaging? reference to O?Reilly in there. Poor choice of words.

Most intriguingly, O?Reilly?s employer, Mr. Ailes, recently dismissed the company that did the survey O?Reilly trumpeted so loudly. In its recent piece on the network, "The New York Times" noted that Pew?s June survey reported that 41 percent of Fox News viewers identified themselves as Republicans, and 52 percent of them called themselves Conservatives.

Roger Ailes then told the paper that the Pew Research Center had produced ?a totally fraudulent survey done by a bunch of liberals.?

So O?Reilly is reduced to relying on a polling company that his boss believes traffics in ?totally fraudulent surveys,? to altering the questions posed by that company to fit his own boasts, and to accepting those numbers he likes from that polling and ignoring the ones he doesn?t.

Sounds like somebody hasn?t had a good falafel in awhile.

Comments? E-mail me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Glibs reach their recount dough count (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  happy
Topic: Voting
SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION? A presidential vote recount in Ohio seems inevitable today with the announcement from Green Party candidate David Cobb that he and the Libertarians' Michael Badnarik have raised $150,000 in donations to meet filing fees and expenses.

That fund-raising goal was set last Thursday; on
Cobb's website the two parties now say they're going to try to raise an additional $100,000 for "training, mobilizing, and per diem expenses" for those "thousands" who'll be involved in the statewide effort. They're also calling for volunteers from Ohio, and elsewhere, to be the Green/Lib observers in the county-by-county process, or house out-of-state volunteers.

I swear: I'm on vacation (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  accident prone
Topic: Voting
SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION?Golly, I?ve never been the subject of a conspiracy theory before.

Yet, there it is, flying around the Internet under the byline of a Peter Coyote: that when I attempted to break the ?lock-down? of coverage of the voting irregularities story in the media during Friday night?s edition of Countdown, I was fired, and left the studio in the middle of the program.

Um, no, actually.

I?m on vacation? it?s been scheduled since August; I?ll be blogging in the interim; Countdown will continue to cover the story in my absence; I not only wasn?t fired for ?mentioning? the story - but we covered it five nights in a row; and, I?ll be back on television on the 22nd (earlier, if developments warrant).

But we can now trace how just a dollop of the truth can be subverted into an item available for purchase in the Tin Foil Hat District - and we have another reminder that what you read on the Web, no matter how much it might fit your beliefs, anxieties, or even other facts, might still resemble more a game of telephone than actual investigative reporting.

I?m reminded suddenly of the lyric from The Talking Heads? ?Life During Wartime?: ?Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA??

What happened was this. We end nearly every Friday show with a news quiz. Each week my colleague Monica Novotny asks me a series of questions sent in by viewers. If I get half or more correct, I win a ?prize? - if not, I suffer a ?punishment.? This edition?s prize was a week?s vacation. I feigned surprise, asked when it began, was told it began whenever I wanted, and promptly got up and literally ran off the set.

Two insider facts:

a) We planned that gag to tamp down any surprise or speculation if people tuned in Monday and didn?t see me (I assumed reactions would divide into three groups: ones from the left which assumed I?d been ?silenced,? ones from the right which assumed I?d been ?suspended,? and, the largest group by far, ones who couldn?t care less).

b) The rest of the show is live, but, for reasons of technical complexity, we always pre-tape the quiz in advance. The whole running-off-the-set gag was recorded at 7:45. Temporally speaking, my ?mid-show firing? occurred before the newscast itself.

Thanks, though, to all who e-mailed fearing a reply ?Olbermann? No Olbermann ever worked here.? The e-mail volume since the first blog last week, incidentally, is up to 27,000 as of 2 PM ET Sunday, and it continues to run at about 22:1 in favor, with the ?ones? boiling down to messages like ?get over it? and the cordial greeting from a woman in late middle age: ?Shut the F up.? We do learn from this correspondence that not a lot of people like Ann Coulter, and that the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is so infrequently read that the oxygen over there is being utterly wasted.

There is another fallacy in the Olbermann?s Been Disappeared story, and it?s the very idea that there is a ?media lock-down? of coverage. Nobody can argue that the MSM has been vigorous here - nor, in television?s case, anything but largely dismissive - but you can ring that up much more to hauteur than to censorship.


On Friday, David Shuster, who has already done some excellent research at Hardblogger, did a piece on the mess for Hardball, and Chris followed up with a discussion with Joe Trippi and Susan Molinari. There was a cogent, reasoned, unexcited piece about the mechanics of possible tampering and/or machine failure on CNN?s ?Next? yesterday, and Saturday alone there were serious news pieces in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Los Angeles Times, Salt Lake Tribune, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. NPR did a segment of its ?On The Media? on the topic (with said blogger as the guest).

And today the New York Times continues its series of ?Making Vote Counts? editorials with a pretty solid stance on the necessity of journalistic and governmental proof that the elections weren?t tampered with, nor the victims of Speak & Spell toys retro-fitted as electronic voting units. By way of contrast, though, the Houston Chronicle has an editorial so puerile that it may be the most naive thing I?ve ever read that was actually written by a grown-up.

I suspect the coverage is going to go through the roof as the news spreads that Nader has gotten his recount in New Hampshire, and that the Greens and Libertarians are actually going to get their Ohio recount. When reporters discover what Jonathan Turley pointed out to us on Tuesday?s show, namely that 70% of Ohio?s votes were done with punch cards and as Florida proved in 2000, in court, a lot of those punch cards? as Jon put it? ?turn over,? I suspect there will be long-form television on the process. As an aside: as of earlier today, the Green/Libs? should we just go ahead and call them the Glibs?? were at $118,000 towards their Ohio war-chest goal of $150,000. I?ve gotten a peck of e-mails about why neither party?s Website has details, and it turns out the site you want on this is VoteCobb.Org.


All that having been said, the most remarkable read of the day is probably the item buried on page A5 of The Washington Post. (Registration required but free). There, Charles Babington and Brian Faler take the wind out of the primary post-election grist for the yak-fests of radio and television: the overwhelming relevance of ?Moral Values? to 2004?s presidential voters.

You will recall that the Exit Polling on November 2nd ranked the most important issues as follows:

Moral Values, 22%
Economy and Jobs, 20%
Terrorism, 19%
Iraq, 15%
The authors point out that those results came when pollsters offered voters a list of which issues factored most into their decision to vote. They note that last week, Pew Research went back and surveyed voters again, and took their temperatures in two ways? with a list (as was offered on election day), and without one (in other words, voters had to remember their issues; it ceased to be multiple choice). Those working off the checklist responded similarly to the election day exit pollees:

Moral Values, 27%
Iraq, 22%
Economy and Jobs, 21%
Terrorism, 14%
But the free-form Pew survey produced entirely different data. Given nothing to work with, simply asked to name the deciding factor in their vote, ?moral values? shrunk back to human size:

Other, 31%
Iraq, 25%
Moral Values, 14%
Economy and Jobs, 12%
Terrorism, 9%
Babington and Faler point out that ?other? included such gems as not liking Bush, not liking Kerry, honesty, and presumably ?I was following instructions from Jon Stewart.?

Oh and by the way: how come the ?Kerry?s winning? part of the election night exit polling is presumed to have been wrong, or tampered with, but the ?Moral Values? part of the same polling is graded flawless, and marks the dawn of a new American century?

On Vaco but still reading your e-mails. Write to me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

A Legitimate Recount Effort in Ohio
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Voting
A Legitimate Recount Effort in Ohio
By Steven Rosenfeld
AlterNet.org

Friday 12 November 2004

An effort led by Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy is underway in Ohio to conduct a statewide recount.

Efforts to launch an official statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote are underway. While it's unclear if a recount will result in a Kerry victory, it's likely to highlight many flaws in Ohio elections that may have tilted results toward Republicans and against Democrats.

Common Cause of Ohio and the Alliance for Democracy, a progressive coalition, Thursday announced they were launching a recount campaign for Ohio. Columbus, Ohio attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who represents both groups, said both the Green Party and Libertarian Party presidential candidates would seek a recount if the $110,000 filing fee could be raised.

"Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy are not partisan. The purpose of the recount is to verify the honesty of the process," Arnebeck said. "That is in the interest of anyone who would be declared the winner."

A coalition of progressive groups will hold a public hearing on election abuses this Saturday in Columbus calling on the Kerry campaign to pay for the recount.

Meanwhile, they have created a Web page to collect donations at the Alliance for Democracy site. The Kerry campaign reportedly was sending lawyers to Ohio to look into election irregularities, but Arnebeck said only the public interest groups were now committed to a recount.

While there have been many accounts of problems associated with the Ohio vote, from reports of 90,000 spoiled ballots, to software glitches resulting in more votes tallied than the number of registered voters, to new voters not being notified where their polling places were, to too few voting machines in Democratic strongholds, the only legal process that could immediately address some of these concerns is a recount.

The recount would be just that: a recounting of all the votes cast. If the results change, meaning more votes are added to Kerry's total ? then the official result, what the secretary of state certifies, is changed.

"It's re-certified," Arnebeck said. "If Kerry emerges victorious, he's president." Of course, a certification in Kerry's favor for Ohio won't take away the fact that Bush won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes.

And he clock is ticking on the Ohio process. In coming days, the Ohio secretary of state is expected to announce that the provisional ballots have been counted. A losing candidate for president then has 5 days to request a recount, filing the paperwork and filing fee.

That cost is $10 per precinct, which comes to slightly more than $110,000. As of Friday morning, $35,000 had been raised. There is a possibility that not all Ohio counties will finish the provsional ballot count, which would prompt those seeking the recount to pursue other actions, Arnebeck said.

In Florida in 2000, before the Supreme Court interceded in the election outcome, there was no statewide recount conducted. A coalition of newspapers later analyzed the vote, in essence, doing their own recount.

They found Al Gore had won.

That result was spun by those defending George W. Bush, however, saying that the smaller number of counties where Gore wanted a recount would not have made Gore president.

There is a big difference between this effort and what Bev Harris and Black Box Voting are doing. That group, which is investigating computer voting fraud, is making Freedom of Information Act requests.

That does not have the force of law behind it to change election results, unless it is entered as evidence in litigation sparked by a recount. The recount sought by the Ohio groups can revise the official state count.

There are three new areas where votes can come from in Ohio: absentee ballots, provisional ballots, and computer errors. Arnebeck said he has evidence how in one rural county more computer votes were counted than there were registered voters.

Arnebeck said that the issue has been referred to the FBI.

Arnebeck also said that the provisional ballots are also thought to favor Kerry, adding that this week the Ohio Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was issuing new orders to disqualify provisional ballots if the voter did not enter their dates of birth. That shows how political a supposedly mechanical process already has become.

On the other hand, there are aspects of Ohio's vote that a recount is not likely to resolve. Questions such as what happened to people who did not vote ? because they never received notifications after registering by mail, or because of long lines and too few voting machines in their precincts, may not get addressed, as a recount is a formal procedure where local election officials redo the count.

In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, for example, there was a clear pattern of a shortage of voting machines in Democratic inner city precincts, where new registrations skyrocketed, compared to the more middle-class white, GOP-dominated suburbs.

Deliberately putting too few machines would violate the national Voting Rights Act. But that's hard to prove - especially because the county's election supervisor has said all the local boards are bipartisan. On the other hand, Ohio activists point out that people with longtime GOP ties supervised the county's election.

Still, there are many things that a recount could yield - apart from the possibility of Kerry victory. There is a tremendous need for a plausible explanation of what actually happened on Election Day in Ohio. Kerry's Wednesday morning concession pre-empted that explanation.

"Many people are saying, why bother to do this? The answer is we have not gathered all the facts," Arnebeck said. "Until you recount the votes, and look at the possibility of a sophisticated computer fix, you cannot draw conclusions.

Whatever it costs to properly analyze this is nothing in terms of enabling the country to move forward. They just have to raise the money to officially file the recount request. The case is ready."

Worst Voter Error Is Apathy toward Irregularities
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Firestarter - The Prodigy
Topic: Voting
Worst Voter Error Is Apathy toward Irregularities
By Donna Britt
The Washington Post

Friday 12 November 2004

Is anyone surprised that accusations of voter disenfranchisement and irregularities abound after the most passionately contested presidential campaign in memory?

Is anybody stunned that the mainstream media appear largely unconcerned?

To many people's thinking, too few citizens were discouraged from voting to matter.

Those people would suggest that not nearly enough votes for John Kerry were missed or siphoned away to overturn President Bush's win.

To which I'd respond:

Excuse me -- I thought this was America.

Informed that I was writing about voter disenfranchisement, a Democratic friend admitted,

"I'm trying not to care about that."

I understand.

Less than two weeks after a bruising election in a nation in which it's unfashionable to overtly care about anything, it's annoying of me even to notice.

But citizens who insist, election after election, that each vote is sacred and then shrug at hundreds of credible reports that honest-to-God votes were suppressed and discouraged aren't just being hypocritical.

They're telling the millions who never vote because "it doesn't matter anyway" that they're the smart ones.

Come on.

If Republicans had lost the election, this column would be unnecessary because Karl Rove and company would be contesting every vote.

I keep hearing from those who wonder whether Democrats are "too nice," and from others who wonder whether efforts by the mainstream media to be "fair and balanced" sometimes render them "neutered and less effective."

Perhaps.

But the much-publicized voting-machine error that gave Bush 4,258 votes in an Ohio precinct where only 638 people cast ballots preceded a flood of disturbing reports, ranging from the Florida voting machine that counted backward to the North Carolina computer that eliminated votes.

In Ohio's Warren County, election officials citing "homeland security" concerns locked the doors to the county building where votes were being counted, refusing to allow members of the media and bipartisan observers to watch.

Bush won the county overwhelmingly.

Much of the media dismisses anxiety over such irregularities as grousing by poor-loser Democrats, rabid conspiracy theorists and pouters frustrated by Kerry's lightning-quick concession.

Some of it surely is.

But more people's concerns are elementary-school basic -- which isn't coincidental since that's where many of us learned about democracy.

We feel that Americans mustn't concede the noble intentions upon which our nation was founded to the cynical or the indifferent.

We believe in our nation's sacred assurance that every citizen's voice be heard through his or her vote.

The point isn't just which candidate won or lost.

It's that we all lose when we ignore that thousands of Americans might have been discouraged or prevented from voting, or not had their votes count.

If it were us, we'd be screaming bloody murder.

Yesterday, Lafayette Square was the scene of a lively rally at which dozens of upbeat, mostly older-than-25 protesters organized by ReDefeatBush.com heard democracy-praising singers, rappers and speakers.

Protester Susan Ribe, 33, a Wheaton tax researcher, said that though she's "open-minded" to the possibility that election results might be correct, she believes that reports of irregularities suggest "there's the need for a serious investigation."

Election Protection, the nonpartisan coalition of civil rights organizations that sent 25,000 poll monitors across the nation to ensure that registered voters could cast their ballots, received hundreds of reports of Election Day abuses.

Some were from voters who said they repeatedly pressed the "Kerry" button on their electronic voting screens, only to have "Bush" keep lighting up.

Others said that though they pushed "Kerry," they were asked to confirm their "Bush" vote.

There were calls about a Broward County, Fla., roadblock that denied voters access to precincts in predominantly black districts, and reports from hundreds who said they'd registered weeks before Florida's October deadline yet weren't on the rolls.

Why aren't more Americans exercised about this issue?

Maybe the problem is who's being disenfranchised -- usually poor and minority voters.

In a recent poll of black and white adults by Harvard University professor Michael Dawson, 37 percent of white respondents said that widely publicized reports of attempts to prevent blacks from voting in the 2000 election were a Democratic "fabrication."

More disturbingly, nearly one-quarter of whites surveyed said that if such attempts were made, they either were "not a problem" (9 percent) or "not so big a problem" (13 percent).

Excuse me?

Electronic, paper-trail-free voting is a danger to democracy that the United States can, and I believe will, address.

But not giving a damn about fellow citizens' votes?

Election Protection volunteer Bernestine Singley, a Texas-based writer-lawyer I know, was torn between elation and outrage on Nov. 2 as she monitored polls in three Florida precincts.

Inspiring to Singley were hundreds of volunteers, most of them white, who'd traveled hundreds of miles to ensure the inclusion of minority voters.

She felt stirred by scores of young, black voters whose attitude, she says, was, "I don't care how long I have to stand in line before I do what I came here to do."

Singley's outrage was sparked by clearly hostile white poll workers, and the police officer who stood -- illegally -- by a polling place door, hand on his revolver.

Did I mention the guy who shoved her?

After watching Singley assist voters for hours, a scowling, white-haired 70-something poll worker patronizingly suggested that she was not a poll monitor.

When she replied that he knew exactly what she was doing, he rammed his chest into hers, shoving her backward.

Pushing right back, Singley told the man, "You better get off me."

He did.

Minutes later, Singley says the man told another poll worker within her hearing:

"I don't know why she thinks I know who she is. They all look alike to me."

Excuse me -- is this 2004 or 1954?

Ironically, if all Americans did look alike -- if "black" and "white" and "poor" and "well-to-do" didn't exist -- outrages such as those would happen much less often.

When they did, many more Americans would fight to ensure they never happened again.

Rolled up papers at fifty places (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Voting
SECAUCUS? You know it's bad when the two sides start throwing professors at one another.

Two conflicting scholarly studies on the variance between the national exit polling and the presidential election results, are flying across the Internet, eating up your e-mail storage capacity.

One, from the University of Pennsylvania, reminds us that exit polls are used as 'audits' on the elections in places like Germany and Mexico, and suggests the actual statistical odds that the exit polling was that wrong in the battleground states were 250,000,000 to one.

The other, from a voting project managed by CalTech and MIT, says that while the incorrectness of national exit polling can't be explained by the proverbial 'margin of error,' on a state-by-state basis, it actually was within that margin.

Craig Crawford joins us tonight to try to make political sense of the theory-laden scholarly research.

KOlbermann@MSNBC.com

Recounts and Retractions (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK? John Kerry or no John Kerry, there could still be recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire? courtesy of the two candidates who got far more grief than votes during the presidential campaign.

David Cobb of the Green Party told a California radio station late yesterday afternoon that he is ?quite likely to be demanding a recount in Ohio,? with a final decision to be reached and announced during the day

The New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General, meanwhile, told us at Countdown that negotiations are ongoing with Ralph Nader, who at a news conference yesterday not only demanded a recount in a minimum of four districts, but also added another bizarre touch to the proceedings by launching into a brief but surprisingly high-quality Richard Nixon impression.

The central issue in both potential recounts appears to be money. Cobb, whose presence on the ballot in all 50 states is probably coming to your attention only as you read this, said in an interview with the Pacifica station in Los Angeles, KPFK, that a recount would cost the Greens around $110,000, on a basis of approximately $10 per precinct. As you?d probably guess, Mr. Cobb?s doesn?t have the money lying around? but as a presidential candidate, he does have the right. Whether or not he can raise the cash is the operative question.

In New Hampshire, Assistant Attorney General Bud Fitch indicated that reports that Nader forfeited his right to request a recount there because he didn?t get a $2,000 filing fee to them before last Friday?s deadline were erroneous. However, Fitch did raise the bar on Nader, saying that he would have to provide a written guarantee that he would cover all costs relating to a recount, and that the state would probably demand a deposit, or the establishment of an escrow account. Complicating matters still further is Fitch?s admission that New Hampshire really can?t give a good estimate on the final costs.

It?s been twenty years since they?ve had a recount there and Fitch said costs in today?s dollars could be $30,000, $50,000, or even $80,000? although he guesses that the middle figure is the ?top end? of what they?re looking at. New Hampshire is a recount-friendly state. Candidates are permitted to base a recount on the results of a particular community, and if they find their doubts resolved, they?re afforded the opportunity to cancel the rest of any statewide investigation.

That Cobb and Nader between them could lead to a resolution of both Democrats? doubts about the legitimacy of the election, and Republicans? resentment that there are doubts, contains a delicious irony. To call them ?fringe? candidates is to demean their efforts, but they?re hardly favorites at any spot on the political spectrum. Nader, in particular, was trashed on a daily basis by the Democrats who feared he could negatively impact Kerry?s vote totals in swing states, as he clearly did to Al Gore in Florida in 2000. For the rancor, Nader has nobody to blame but himself. Not until late in the campaign did he successfully articulate his reasons for ?running anyway?? namely, his conviction that breaking the two-party duopoly at lower echelons of government (particularly in the House) will take decades, and had to start at the top and work down.

In any event, if Nader and Cobb are at the edges, questions about Ohio moved back into the mainstream yesterday with another cogent article in The Cincinnati Enquirer. The rationale for the bizarre ?lockdown? of the vote-counting venue in Warren County on election night suddenly broke down when it was contradicted by spokespersons from the FBI and Ohio?s primary homeland security official.

County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said last week that in a face-to-face meeting with an FBI agent, he was warned that Warren County, outside Cincinnati, faced a ?terrorist threat.? County Commissioners President Pat South amplified, insisting to us at Countdown that her jurisdiction had received a series of memos from Homeland Security about the threat. ?These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County, and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.

?In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services,? Ms. South continued, ?we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10.?

But the Bureau says it issued no such warning.

?The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day,? FBI spokesman Michael Brooks told Enquirer reporters Erica Solvig and Dan Horn.

Through a spokeswoman, Ohio Public Safety Director Ken Morckel told the newspaper that his office knew of no heightened terror warning for election night for Warren County or any other community in Greater Cincinnati.

Despite the contradiction from both security services, Ms. South again amplified, telling the Enquirer ?It wasn?t international terrorism that we were in fear of; it was more domestic terrorism.?

So the media was kept two floors away from the vote counting at the Warren County Administration on election night on the basis of a ?10? FBI terror threat that the FBI says was never issued.

Appearing with us on Countdown last night, Newsweek Senior Editor and columnist Jonathan Alter said the Warren ?terror? story was likely to grab the interest of the mainstream media: ?I think you?ll see in the next few days, other reporters start to get their act together? you?ll hear more about this story in the days and weeks to come.?

It has all even come to the attention of the blithe agitator of the far right, Ann Coulter, who yesterday not only wrote of the election irregularities but, I?m proud to say, slimed and misquoted me. ?In a major report on ?Countdown with Keith Olbermann? last Monday,? my fellow Cornell alum writes, ?Olbermann revealed that Bush?s win in Florida? and thus the election?was ?attributable largely to largely Democratic districts suddenly switching sides and all voting for Mr. Bush at the same time?!?

It made for fascinating reading, because it made me think for a moment that I had been on television while in a coma. I couldn?t recall making such a broadly ridiculous remark? and it turns out I didn?t. Ms. Coulter, living up to her usual standards which many of us in the Alumni Association nightly pray she didn?t learn at the university, took

a quote from a transcript of the November 8th show
completely out of context, and entirely twisted its meaning.

The actual quote follows, with the key portion discarded by Ms. Coulter indicated in bold face:

?There (Florida), county totals in Tuesday?s election might be attributable largely to largely Democratic districts suddenly switching sides and all voting for Mr. Bush.?

Thus, a comment indicating how President Bush might have legitimately achieved majorities in some Florida counties, is transformed into a contention that the entire election turned on those county margins.

It?s a neat trick? the journalistic equivalent of the dog who learns to balance the biscuit on her nose and then flip it into her mouth on voice command.

Never tried it myself.

What do you think? Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

A bunch of cats across the parking lot (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK - The election vote mess is like one of those inflatable clown dolls. You knock it down with your hardest punch, it goes supine, and then bounces back up, in the meantime having moved an inch or two laterally.

The punch, of course, is the explanation that the 29 more-votes-than-voters precincts in greater Cleveland appear to have been caused by the addition of Absentee Ballots. The total difference between registered voters and votes (93,000) might be explained by that process, but it does little for one?s confidence in the whole result from Ohio.

The problem is, the rubber clown immediately bounces back with the report that officials in Youngstown managed to catch a slight glitch in their voting there: a total drawn from all the precincts that initially showed negative 25,000,000 million votes cast. It evokes a Monty Python sketch (?Mr. Kevin Phillips Bong - Sensible Party - 14,352. Mr. Harquin Fim Tim Lim Bim Bus Stop Fatang Fatang Ole Biscuit Barrel - Silly Party -- minus 25,000,0000).

No reason to worry about the integrity of the outcome in Ohio, is there?

The most pleasing thing of the last three days of blogs and newscasts is the reassurance from political professionals that all of you (all of us) who have wondered about what went on a week ago yesterday are not necessarily nuts. We might not necessarily be right, but there are some very stodgy, very by-the-book folks who think we?re damned right to be asking.

?Ohio was rife with allegations,? Jonathan Turley said on last night?s show. He?s not merely a superior expert on the Constitution, teaching it at George Washington University?s law school, but back during my first incarnation at MSNBC, as host of The Big Show and The White House In Crisis, Jonathan was a regular guest who regularly said that the investigation and impeachment of President Clinton was largely being done within the framework of the Constitution, and as bad as much of it looked, it was well within the margin of error.

Professor Turley is no partisan.

?There was litigation over pockets of voters,? he continued, on the subject of Ohio. ?There was far more litigation than was indicated in the news programming.? He should know - he was on the clock and on the set working for CBS News throughout the campaign, and straight through to 6 AM in the hours after the vote. ?So when you look at provisionals and absentees and then those pockets of votes, yeah, there probably is enough of a margin if things broke for Kerry that he could turn the state. Is it likely? No. But it is not impossible.?

Turley noted that a complaint now, without John Kerry?s sponsorship, is also a longshot: ?Without the candidate, judges don?t work as hard? when it comes to overturning a set of returns, or a county?s report, or a state?s. But, he added, ?remember that over 70% of Ohio?s votes were done with punch cards and we know that when you do a challenge to those, they tend to turn over.?

Paging Mr. Gore! Mr. Albert Gore, please report to the blog?

On the show last night there was also confirmation of something I speculated about here 24 hours ago. Craig Crawford, one of our MSNBC political contributors and also a columnist for Congressional Quarterly, admitted that the concession did trigger a kind of ?we can all go home now!? exultation in the media. ?Since John Kerry conceded,? Craig said, ?there wasn?t that great desire to run out to Columbus and try to figure this out. And the concession is the key because we?re often wimps in the media and we wait for other people to make charges, one political party or the other, and then we investigate.?

Bless Craig Crawford for saying that. If you haven?t seen him a lot on the tube you may be misled by his Aw-Shucks delivery and willingness to laugh at the subject matter. The political insight, shorn of the political pomposity that so many of the pros evince, is as refreshing as his laugh. Next to that admission that the Starting Line mentality pervades so much of political journalism, came the message about investigating, prodding, pushing, yelling, shouting, and blogging: ?This is the time to do this. There?s still time before the results are certified. It doesn?t mean it?ll change the outcome - but it?s good.?

Craig also connected a few unpleasant dots. Kerry, he says, is ?definitely interested in running in 2008,? and the image of Gore?s political death after the 2000 re-count may have played as much of a part in his hurried concession as any realistic appraisal of his chances in reversing the election by reversing Ohio.

He didn?t, however, endorse any conspiracy theories. ?My experience with Election Supervisors is that they?re very independent, often real characters, hard people to actually organize into a conspiracy. I think it?d be easier to herd a bunch of cats across a parking lot.?

But ? as I pointed out to him after he crafted that colorful bit of imagery - when one voting machine can add 4,000 votes for one presidential candidate in a 650-vote precinct, and another one in the same state can turn a day?s balloting into a net result of negative 25 million, it may also be true that altering those machines may be easy enough that it could be pulled off not only by conspiratorial Election Supervisors, but also, just by a bunch of cats from across the parking lot.

Thoughts? Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Do Over [NC] (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK? With news this morning that the computerized balloting in North Carolina is so thoroughly messed up that all state-wide voting may be thrown out and a second election day scheduled, the story continues.

Tonight on 'Countdown,' we'll examine the N.C. mess (which would not include a second presidential vote), new fuzzy math in Nevada, allegations against the Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ralph Nader's news conference, and the other voting developments as they occur. A Stanford computer expert will address the vulnerability of the Optical Scanning system (and answer the question: which is easier to hack, electronic voting or exit polls?), and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter will join me to report on the reporting.