Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Fraud, cont'd.
Just what Rove wanted, I'm sure: first a stolen election, then a huge in-fight on the left over whether or not the election was stolen, whether it can ever be proven, whether it's better to make noise about it or just shut up and organize for the future, etc.
This comment from an Eschaton reader sums up pretty well where we are right now:
One thing that I definitely don't like are comments such as Al Franken has been making about "being careful" not to "fan the flames" of conspiracy. If people have reasonable evidence that a conspiracy may exist, how else to draw attention to it than flame-fanning? I understand there may be something to be said for lying a bit low rhetorically while evidence is amassed and investigations proceed--but that's assuming you have any faith in the investigating, and whether the people investigating have enough power (doesn't seem likely) to bring any shit to light. In other words, if you believe the extant evidence from the election points to something "fishy," you can either sit back and put your faith in an eventual, down-the-road exposure (as in Watergate)--or you can make as much noise as you can right now, before everyone forgets the whole thing.
posted by Blicero : 11/09/2004 07:14:00 PM
This comment from an Eschaton reader sums up pretty well where we are right now:
So what do we know?
We do know there was opportunity for the election to be rigged out of sight of the many monitors on the ground, because the internal workings of the black box voting machines were out of sight of the many monitors on the ground.
We don't know the election was rigged.
We do know that there have been computer glitches reported.
We don't know if they represent fraud.
We do know that statistically improbable figures were produced in exit polls and votes-against-registered-voter counts.
We don't know if there is more information out there that would explain those improbable figures but not point to fraud.
We do know that allegations have been made about the susceptibility of the voting process to malicious hacking.
We don't know that any malicious outside hacking was done (and absent 1 million votes for Mickey Mouse in Dade County, I suspect little or no malicious hacking by disinterested outsiders was done).
All in all, we certainly don't KNOW that the election was a fraud. But right now it sure smells fishy.
One thing that I definitely don't like are comments such as Al Franken has been making about "being careful" not to "fan the flames" of conspiracy. If people have reasonable evidence that a conspiracy may exist, how else to draw attention to it than flame-fanning? I understand there may be something to be said for lying a bit low rhetorically while evidence is amassed and investigations proceed--but that's assuming you have any faith in the investigating, and whether the people investigating have enough power (doesn't seem likely) to bring any shit to light. In other words, if you believe the extant evidence from the election points to something "fishy," you can either sit back and put your faith in an eventual, down-the-road exposure (as in Watergate)--or you can make as much noise as you can right now, before everyone forgets the whole thing.
posted by Blicero : 11/09/2004 07:14:00 PM
