Times reports chatter, not substance

Eschewing, as usual, the burden of investigative journalism, the Times waves away all suggestions that the election results are invalid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html

The enterprising reporters invented a new species of thought avoidance -- let's call it chatter-cancelling. Take an arbitrary sampling of sometimes hasty or dispeptic suspicions. Find counterarguments of equal weight. Declare tempest in blogspot.

Well, we don't have to know the specifics in order to know that the election results are wrong.

The digital balloting system does not qualify as a knowable or politically insulated counting process. Indeed, it seems designed to issue some number and frustrate anyone who tries to figure how that number was calculated. There is a fundamental burden of proof on those who report the tallies: their reports must have prima facie credibility.

The only empirically based measure, one that has served well when the dispute is outside our borders, is the exit poll.

We don't know, and probably won't ever know, what really happened. But the burden of proof is not on us to prove anything about what went wrong. The only data we have, and it is highly reliable data, gives us confidence that George Bush was not elected.

This fact naturally inspires a brainstorm of hypotheses about what really happened. But even if every single hypothesis were disproved, it would still be the case the George Bush was not elected.

•  Isn't there grounds

  for a class action lawsuit against several state governments, perhaps the federal government, regarding the use of paperless voting machines?

  Recounts are impossible.

  Isn't that illegal......?  If not, shouldn't it be?

  I think lawsuits are in order until this goes all the way to The Supreme Court and the citizens of the United States secure paper-verifiable voting for all future elections.

  by HariSeldon on Fri Nov 12, 2004 at 12:59:50 AM PDT

•  I believe we did lose the election.

  Look, Florida and Ohio aside, we lost Iowa, New Mexico, and Nevada, and almost lost Wisconsin and New Hampshire. In a Kerry win, we would have won these states by a decent margin.
   All irregularities should be investigated to the full. All votes should be counted. Changes should be made in our voting procedures to ensure confidence. No one should have to wait in line for as long as they did. All these are true. But we still lost.
  We all have our theories why. My own is just the old truism, Americans vote their wallets. Most people are doing pretty well under Bush, and that's all they really care about.
  When they tell pollsters 'values', they really mean their home values. It was that simple. The economy just wasn't bad enough to throw the bums out.

  by AWhitneyBrown on Fri Nov 12, 2004 at 01:07:14 AM PDT

•  Depressing

  It's disheartening to realize that there are so many parallel realities when it comes to this political landscape. Conversations here, as during the election, reinforce a certain point of view. For instance, I am convinced, without evidence whatsoever, that paperless voting has no purpose other than to allow fraud to be perpetrated. However, picking up the New York Times, the first story that hits my eye is that Electronic Voting Worked Well...As if the fact that the machines did not crash on a mass scale is proof of the soundness of the system. How much intellectual energy does it take to understand that paperless voting is inherently illicit? If you can't PROVE the results were valid, irrespective of any controversy, then the system itself is not trustworthy. It is as if, instead of marking ballots, people in the pre-technological age relied on whispering votes into the ear of an election official. It is exactly as untrustworthy as that. Yet this clearly is not an important concept to the mainstream media.

  Thus, my creeping sense of hopelessness. If these machines are allowed to take hold, in their current paperless form, with no security procedures as to their coding, no validation practices...then our democracy is truly lost. And, outside of the liberal blogosphere, this seems to be a compeletly irrelevant concept

  by Hrubec on Fri Nov 12, 2004 at 04:14:38 AM PDT

•  NYT Title Change

  Interesting that the title of Zeller's article was:

  "As Fast as Blogs See Vote Fraud, Web Is Proving Rumors Wrong"

  very early this morning and became:

  "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried"

  My impression of the latter is it's even more denigrating and offensive.

  by juniper on Fri Nov 12, 2004 at 06:21:43 AM PDT

•  Anyone hear NPR's story last night?

  It's probably already been posted and discussed ad nauseum, but in case not, here's the link:
  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4166837
  It was much less dismissive than the Times' patronizing non-story.

  by bopes on Fri Nov 12, 2004 at 07:18:54 AM PDT