Status Quo Quickly Maintained
Whew! That was a scary few moments of healthy skepticism and a demand for accountability, but, luckily, the Times has asserted its supreme moral authority and comprehensively dismissed any and all weblog-based notions of electoral fraud.
Fraud Theories Quickly BuriedI, for one, intend to revel in this unmooring, and I will wear my tin foil hat with pride on Inauguration Day.
excerpt:
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in the interactive telecommunications program at New York University, suggests that the online fact-finding machine has come unmoored, and that some bloggers simply "can't imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president."
4 Comments:
This article seems to be making the rounds as well. It is funny that the article addresses many of the topics that I've talked about on Tsujigiri, such as the Voting Technology Project's report. It is also funny that the article scrutinizes all complaints except the ones that bloggers have actually been most worried about: exit poll discrepancies, the vulnerability of computer tabulation systems, the actual cases of misreported votes which have already upset some local elections, and the lack of a clear, traceable vote/tabulation record in many precincts using e-voting systems.
We also shouldn't forget Palast's observation, which may account for everything: spoilage. The exit polls may have been wrong because minorities were "overweighted". Minorities may have been properly weighted in the exit polls, but under-represented in the actual vote, because their ballots tend to spoil.
If the exit poll discrepancies were simply due to sampling error, then the probability of such errors always leaning toward Kerry is about .002%.
Where is the real stuff in the article? Why not cover the stuff that people are actually suspicious about? It is true that the straw man version has a tidier conclusion, but what about the real story?
Your bold type raises the correct point. The Times article seems like a diversion. "Oh, that's bunk; didn't you see the Times article about that?" For many people, the very existence of a Times article contrary to these objections and questions is reason enough to ignore the substantive issues at hand. Quoting some guy as saying, "It becomes a snowball of hearsay" doesn't counter the stack of circumstantial evidence.
And, yes, it's obvious, but you know who we need on this motherfucker? Eliot Spitzer.
And, for the record, machines don't become unmoored. If you want to mock dissenters, don't fuck up your metaphors.
I thought he was going for a "ship of fools" metaphor. Perhaps a mechanical ship of fools.
Post a Comment
<< Home