Never give up: The election mess continues

Bev Harris: You'll want to read about her recent battles in Volusia county; scroll down.

Felons: In some states, felons cannot vote -- but they can still count the vote, according the investigator Daniel Hopsicker.

...the owner of Sequoia Pacific until recently was also accused of bribing public officials, in this case the Prime Minister of Ireland.

While the name Dr. Michael Smurfit is not well-known to Americans, his company manufactures the software used to compile more than two-thirds of the nation's electronically-counted votes.

Smurfit? We've placed our democracy in the hands of a guy named Smurfit?

Jerry Fowler had run up some big gambling debts at Harrah's in Atlantic City, we learned. So he found the chance to pay off by making his voting machines "pay off" irresistible. In all, 22 people were indicted, 9 pled guilty, and Fowler went to jail.

But the Sequoia Pacific "Southeast Sales Manager," a man named Pasquale "Rocco" Ricci of Marlton, New Jersey, barely even got a slap on the wrist. For the crime of suborning democracy in the state of Louisiana for over a decade, Mr. Ricci was sentenced to just a year...

A year of home detention.

As is often the case with Hopsicker, his report breaks new ground yet leaves too many threads hanging loose (if I may be forgiven such a terribly mixed metaphor). Still, any armchair sleuths will want to Google these names...

Reward: Remember the group that offered a cool hundred thou to anyone who could prove vote fraud (or rat out the fraudsters)? They've doubled the offer. They only catch: The evidence must change the outcome of the presidential race.

The Florida analysis. I've tried to get beyond Kathy Dopp's famed chart of the seemingly-odd results in many of the smaller Florida counties. But every time I think the matter has been buried, the "corpse" shows signs of vitality. Now Thomas Hartmann, who did much to publicize Dopp's work, offers something of an apology. Perhaps he does so prematurely? Dopp, he notes, has several experts backing up her version of events -- and as I have mentioned earlier, the "Dixiecrat" theory does not mollify some observers, such as Randi Rhodes and Jeff Fisher, who actually live in Florida.

Ohio: If you haven't seen it yet, check out this piece on the gross (and obviously intentional) violations of the Voting Rights Act:

Across Ohio’s minority-rich cities, there were fewer voting machines than during past elections, including March’s presidential primary. As the number of voters grew by as much as 50 percent in some precincts, according to pro-Kerry field organizers, the number of voting machines on Election Day shrank by a third. Precincts that usually had five machines only had three...

"Based on what we were being told by people on the ground, at the door, on the phones as we were doing our get out the vote effort, it was very clear that enough people went out intending to vote to meet the projected turnout by the secretary of state, which was 73 percent," he said. "The final number was about 70 percent of the voting age population actually voted. So I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least 3 percent of the people who went out to vote didn’t get to vote, because of these problems statewide."

That three percent would have been sufficient to swing the election to Kerry. Why won't he or the Democratic party or the black community or somebody mount a class action lawsuit against Ken Blackwell and the Republican party?

Scientists, not lawyers. This important story by a Democratic activist argues that instead of mustering an army of lawyers for election day, the Kerry campaign should have gathered together scientists and computer experts.

Olbermann: Did I call the shot, or what? Conservatives have now inaugurated Keith Olbermann into their demon-of-the-month club.

Olbermann and Fisher: We should note that Olbermann seems to have a cautious, perhaps even dismissive attitude toward Jeff Fisher, the Florida congressional candidate who has made startling claims regarding vote fraud in Florida. The brouhaha seems to center on one Kevin Zeese, a spokesman for Ralph Nader. The Fisher site allegedly quoted Zeese as affirming that Nader would consult "with Jeff Fisher and Jan Schneider regarding the investigation of voter fraud and a statewide recount for the state of Florida." Zeese denied to MSNBC that he had made such a comment. The quote now seems to be missing from Fisher's site (at least I could not find it); Olbermann implies that the whole affair injures Fisher's credibility.

To me, this business seems like the usual molehill-made-mountainous that invariably crops up in the course of any nationwide controversy. I would chalk the matter up to miscommunication.

Mind you, I still do not trust Nader or anyone closely connected with him.

Olbermann, I am sorry to say, makes snide reference to -- you guessed it! -- "tin foil hats." If I were a truly paranoid type, I would take those words as a possible sign that Olberman's bosses have asked him to change his tone. Don't be surprised if this reporter contributes no further election-related writings of any major value.

The New Hampshire recount. Trust him or mistrust him, Nader at least is going ahead with the recount in New Hampshire. This recount cannot change the outcome of the election in and of itself. But if it uncovers proof of the machinery of deception, you can expect recounts in other states.

Exit polls: This UPI story offers some figures worth noting:

Exit polling by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, which created the National Election Poll for ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC, had shown Kerry leading by 3 percentage points in Florida and by 4 points in Ohio. Kerry lost Florida by 5.2 percent, with Bush running ahead of his 2000 performance in 58 of the state's 67 counties. In Ohio, the margin was 2.5 percent.

Florida's 8.2-percent spread -- between the early exits and the results -- is more than double the standard error rate. In Ohio, the spread is 6.5 percent.

The article goes on to discuss the various theories for this wide (wider than most people acknowledge) disparity.

First up: The "chattiness" theory. Supposedly, Kerry voters were more willing to discuss their vote than Bush supporters. A fanciful notion, that -- Republicans are notoriously mouthy.

The UPI piece does not address the other theories, such as James Galbraith's asinine notion that lines were longer in "red county" precincts -- an assertion which stands the truth on its head. We have also heard the theory that "women were oversampled." Actually, the results were categorized by sex, thus rendering this concern moot. Neither of these theories explain why exit polling works so well in other countries, why it worked so well in Illinois and other non-battleground states, or why such polls worked so well in elections predating the era of electronic voting.

Finally, we have the conspiracy theory: Masses of Democratic activists posed as voters and "spammed" the exit pollsters, in order to depress the Republican turnout, who supposedly heard the exit polls from the liberal media. This evidence-free notion presupposes a brobdinagian conspiracy, not to mention some preternaturally dim pollsters. Oddly, the "liberal" media -- which had paid for the information and could do with it as they pleased -- refused to publicize the pro-Kerry polls.

Still, in lieu of any better explanation, the conspiracy theory is all the Republicans have left. In a sense, both sides are touting conspiracy theories -- one posits tainted exit polls, while the other posits tainted final tallies. That famed tin-foil hat must be a one-size-fits-all deal.