OK, it's good that the mainstream media is paying attention to the recounts going on in Ohio. I guess they kind of have to at this point. Crazy conspiracy theorists (and their respected-statistician-at-major-research-university allies) seem to have a point after all.

But what I love is shit like this (from the AP):

Election officials in one Ohio county found that about 2,600 ballots were double-counted, and two other counties have discovered possible cases of people voting twice in the presidential election.

Prosecutors were trying to determine Wednesday whether charges should be filed against a couple in Madison County accused of voting twice.

In the media, as we know, every fraudulence and lie must have two equal and opposing sides. Sure enough, here we have the equally nefarious instances of:

a) 2,600 ballots being double-counted

b) "a couple in Madison County accused of voting twice."

And guess which of these cases is being pursued by the prosecutors? The couple!

Ha! No doubt the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of miscounted ballots in Ohio (ballots which, I believe we will find, tend to be "miscounted" in favor of Bush) will be counterbalanced by the "possible cases of people voting twice"--Democrats, no doubt.

When will the media call this red herring for what it is, and drop this fucking charade?

Media figures are still giving credence to the GOP line that the reason they placed ballot-challengers in every fucking precinct in Ohio was to prevent "fraud" (on the part of Democrats)--rather than systematically supressing the vote, which is what actually happened?

Does the media think that forcing thousands to wait for hours in lines and discounting thousands of legitimate ballots is an acceptable prophylactic against "possible cases of people voting twice"?

I love how stories of these old Democratic Machine tricks--paying the bum a dollar to go vote under the name of an old guy who died, etc.--are still being bandied about, in an age when almost all ballots are counted by machines widely known to have systemic flaws, and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of votes can be manipulated by hacking a bit of simplistic software?

"Hey buddy, wanna free candy bar? Just go innat pollin' booth and tell 'em you're Mr. Jones, from 23 Maple Street. Then check off the Democrat line, and pull the old lever! Haha!"

I'm nauseous.