Various updates on vote fraud

Today's the one-month anniversary of our national mugging. I'll keep posting on this topic as long as the gods of the internet give me stuff to post -- and right now, we face no shortage whatsoever.

Ohio: Remember the judge who ruled against the Green/Libertarian recount? His name is W. Duncan Whitney, and he's a right-wing religious kook. How kooky is he? Well, he uses his taxpayer-funded website to quote from the Old Testament.

David Cobb, the Green candidate, has written an excellent op-ed piece in which he ooutlines the reasons he took action.

Madsen: I've been told (sorry for the vagueness here) that new evidence has come forward indicating he has been the target of a disinformation campaign.

Yes, I know I've been hopping back and forth on this story ever since his first article. Catch me between the hour and the half-hour, and I'll tell you that Madsen is onto something huge. Catch me between the half-hour and the hour, and I'll tell you that the problems with his tale are insurmountable. At this moment, it's 55 minutes past the hour...

Olbermann: His MSNBC show is up 128% in the ratings. I guess a lot of Democrats rallied to the sole mainstreamer willing to pay attention to the vote fraud controversy. However, their infatuation may soon sour.

Olbermann has run a troubling column in which he asserts that Bev Harris has not allowed his staff to examine the poll tapes. Olbermann speaks of "grand-standing" and even "tin-foil hatting" (a verb which I hope does not enter the language).

Harris' web site has offered this response:

Contrary to Olbermann's assertions, neither he nor his staff have ever spoken with Harris to ask her to show anyone the Volusia County tapes. Producers now admit that they have not spoken to Harris at all since November 8, when they cancelled a scheduled appearance on Countdown. Harris did not come to Florida until November 12, when investigations in Volusia County began. Both Executive Producer Izzy Povich and producer Katy Carp admitted they have not been able to get hold of Harris at all since Nov. 8.

When Harris asked about Olbermann's mischaracterizations of the LePore incident (which he characterized as "crashing" "rushing" and "screaming.") Izzy Povich said that they took those details "from other news sources." When asked by Harris, she declined to name any of the news sources. When Harris stated that she has always been, and was still willing to come on the show, Povich said they are not interested in having Harris as a guest, but only in getting copies of the videotapes.

Harris arranged for the owner of the Volusia County videotapes to call Povich and offer her the tapes. Povich admitted that producers had never tried to call the owners of the tape. The tape was offered to Povich by its producers, who called to make the tape available, but Olbermann's producers have so far not returned the call.

Olbermann's producers had earlier asked Harris to appear on the Countdown show, twice, on Nov. 5 and Nov. 8. Each time, after Harris cleared her schedule to appear and shortly before the show, Olbermann's producers canceled the appearance without explanation.

Harris showed the Volusia County tapes to CNN cameramen, but Harris has never been asked to show any Volusia County materials to any MSNBC producers, or NBC producers. The NBC local affiliate in Palm Beach County asked for the LePore videotape, which Harris promptly provided. The LePore tape was aired on both Orlando and Palm Beach County NBC affiliates on Dec. 1.

Also contrary to Olbermann's claims, Harris is not making a documentary, but the makers of the Votergate documentary, an independent team who captured the Volusia County trash incident on film, are eager to interview Keith Olbermann on camera to ask him why he produced this report.

My take? Right now, I'll trust Bev Harris over Keith Olbermann.

Cannon's law: "Many lie, but few lie for no reason." What is Harris' motive to deceive? I don't see one. Anyone who tries to force-fit a tin foil hat onto her head could do the same to anyone else's noggin. Olbermann's motive to smear her? Cynics will remind us that his fat paychecks are paid by a subsidiary of General Electric, a major defense contractor and a huge component of the Bush war machine.

A (slightly) less cynical explanation: Olbermann, it is said, does not want the word "fraud" uttered on his program -- gotta maintain that credibility, dontcha know -- and Harris would not agree to censor her language. (A glance at Olbermann's site tells you that the F-word does not make him feel comfortable.) And that, I have heard, is the real reason she was bumped from the earlier broadcast.

If I were bumped from a news show for that reason, I'd never deal with that broadcaster again.

Also, Olbermann has insinuated that Bev Harris is "grandstanding" because she is making a Michael Moore-ish documentary. But that is not true. She isn't making one.

Why is this slimeball accusation -- "they're only in it for the money" -- always applied to Democrats, never to Republicans? (I'm thinking, for example, of the rightist response to Richard Clarke.) The moment any left-wing blogger allows ads to appear on his site, a horde of critics will flick open their switchblades. Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh can rake in enough dough to buy Africa and part of Asia, yet nobody says he's just in it for the buck.

Perhaps Mr. Olbermann will let us know the name of the charity to which he donates his salary?

The exit polls -- again: Did the exit polls underestimate support for Kerry? That decidedly non-intuitive proposition is the underlying thesis of this piece on the Hispanic vote. The eixts tagged Hispanic support for Bush at 44%, but he actually received about 40% of their votes. The given reason? The exit-pollsters oversampled heavily Cuban areas of Florida.

Overviews: Bruce Fraser has written a nice summary of the election from hell.

You'll also want to see this piece by Alan Waldman of the Missoula Independent. Regarding the polls before the election, Waldman notes:

All early Tuesday indicators predicted a Kerry landslide. Zogby International (which predicted the 2000 outcome more accurately than any national pollster) did exit polling which predicted a 100-electoral vote triumph for Kerry. Zogby saw Kerry winning crucial Ohio by 4 percent.

Princeton professor Sam Wang, whose analysis had shown the election to be close in the week before the election, began coming up with dramatic numbers for Kerry in the day before and day of the election. At noon EST on Monday, Nov. 1, he predicted a Kerry win by a 108-vote margin.

And (just as a reminder) he gives this summary of the rebuttals-to-the-rebuttals of Kathy Dopp's controversial analysis:

Republicans have argued that the Florida counties with majority Democratic registration that voted overwhelmingly for Bush were all conservative “Dixiecrat” bastions in northern Florida, and that all the reported totals were accurate. But MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann demonstrated that many of these crossover states voted Republican for the first time. He poked another hole in the Dixiecrat theory when he noted that in Democratic counties where Bush scored big, people also supported highly Democratic measures—such as raising the state minimum wage $1 above the federal level.

Moreover, 18 switchover counties were not in the Panhandle or near the Georgia border, but were scattered throughout the state. For instance, Hardee County (between Bradenton and Sebring) registered 63.8 percent Democratic but officially gave Bush 135 percent more votes than Kerry.

James Tobin. As mentioned yesterday, the Bush-Cheney campaign wheeler-dealer has been indicted for his electoral abuses. I had forgotten that Josh Marshall was talking about this guy in October. The Republicans new about Tobin's criminal behavior for nearly four months, but kept him on the job. That fact tells you all you need to know about the G.O.P.'s willingness to do what it takes to maintain power.

The way to break the larger conspiracy is to pick up a medium-sized fish like Tobin and pressure him to speak up about the larger fish.

Jesse Jackson: I should have linked earlier to this interview betweent he Reverend and Amy Goodman.

Tom Daschle: His was the other election which puzzled me on election night. When I (finally) hit the hay that night -- to dream troubling dreams of atom bombs and goosesteppers and televangelists in powder-blue suits -- Daschle was behind, but the TV newsfolk seemed to think he would pull out a victory. The only counties in South Dakota which remained to be counted had large Native American populations. The next morning, alas, I learned that in SD -- as in New Mexico -- our Indian brethren showed a historically-unusual fondness for the G.O.P. In other words, Daschle lost.

Now we have this interesting analysis on the Democratic Underground. Apparently, 3000 more people in South Dakota voted in the Senate race than in the Presidential race. How likely is that?

Some will argue that voters felt a measure of disgust with both Presidential candidates this year -- but similarly captious comments are heard during every election. Even so, how often does the vote for senator attract more interest than the race for the White House?