I thought Kerry was gracious in not wanting to drag the country through a repeat of 2000 but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask questions or even be so bold as to make an assertion or two.

just my .02.

Further, one’s credibilty is better maintained when one has evidence. There is none. Polls are polls — including exit polls. People lie on exit polls the same way they do in other polls. And even if they didn’t — there are margins of error whenever stats are based on sampling as exit polls are.

I read Palast’s piece very closely and maybe Im dumb, but I see NO evidence whatsoever for his assertions. The only “fact” that might stand up is that ballot spoilage is generally higher among Blacks and Indians. That is because educational levels among poorer racial minorities are lower and their voting error rate is therefore higher. True in every election, in every state, in every county.

But, really, Palast’s piece is wholly leveraged on the absolutely absurd assertion that exit polling should be taken as a standard of certainty. That’s a dead end.

Conspiracy theories always pop up, because some folks are conspiracy minded. There are still conservatives who think someone killed Ron Brown on his plane before it crashed; who believe that Vince Foster was murdered (Gordon Liddy I think pushed this one along, though as a former FBI agent he had to know better); Clinton was involved in cocaine smuggling in Mena.

The internet allows conspiracies to be amplified.

A lot of conspiratorial folks believe in the face on mars, the hidden aliens from the Roswell UFO, and who know what else.

I hope nobody makes a big deal of vote conspiracies or it will create hatred, and we can do without that.

But the voting system is still in bad need of updating despite 4 billion already spent. Only I think Nevada has a paper trail for those electronic machines.

According to blackboxvoting.org, the results from precincts in King County, WA are modemed to a Microsoft 2000 Remote Access Server. The results are stored in a Microsoft Access database! That is so unbelievably hackable!

Shouldn’t our votes have the same protections as say money being transferred between banks?

But Dennis Bernstein on KPFA’s Flashpoints will

run his nonsense as absolute truth and Amy Goodman

will probably give him a respectful hearing too.

The real story of this election is Karl Rove’s success in registering new evangelical voters in crucial swing states, including swing states where you’ll note gay marriage or social issues generally were not on the ballot.

The country remains as fundamentally divided along political and cultural lines as it was in 2000, and in fact John Kerry won impressive victories among the crucial independent vote in important swing states (57% in Florida, 59% in Ohio), carrying on the trendline that began in 1992. Had Rove not been quite so politically astute, and begun registering new evangelicals soon after the 2000 election, Kerry would’ve won the Gore states + Ohio + Florida + New Hampshire. He might still have lost the popular vote, but that would’ve had everything to do with Bush’s huge margins in red states.

Yes the Democrats need to fundamentally reform the party from within, but without a massive and permanent voter registration drive aimed at Democrat friendly constituencies – the tens of millions of unregistered single women, peeople of color, the working poor – it don’t mean a thing.

Gee, how does the machine deterimine that the vote is Democratic?

Marc, you are again, as on so much on target. This is not rational discussions of what needs to change (for the democrats or republicans) or what needs to change in our political dialog. This speaks to paranoia.

I hope the real progressives in this country band together and take back the Democratic party, that can only be good for America. Just as the Democrats need to tone down the hate, the Republicans do too.

As Glen Renolds remarked, “It always strikes me that so many people who are quick to note the importance of understanding the differences in perception between nations, or races, or sexual preferences, and to try to bridge those gaps, are so unwilling to do the same thing where people from elsewhere in their own country are concerned. But Democrats must do better, or become a regional party. Because contempt doesn’t win a lot of votes.”

That goes for the right as well.

I don’t believe that Palast spread urban myths about Florida and disenfranchisement. That sounds like a mantra that the right likes to use in response to clear facts about fake felon lists, mass numbers of Jews voting for Buchanan… That was rather blatant, so blatant that it required a massive get out the vote effort on the part of relgious conservatives to beat back the improvements that resulted from the work of people like Palast and the NAACP, ACLU, in the post-2000 mess.

I am suprised that you are not all over this one Steve.

The madness never stops…

Marc we need you back on the radio in LA.

The madness never stops…

Marc we need you back on the radio in LA.

Why would you be surprised that a person who likes the writings of Jerry Lembcke, Noam Chomsky, and Doug is not a big fan of conspiracy theory? If you read any of such people carefully, I can’t see how you could express such surprise.