The Most Painful Correction of All Time
Paul Krugman can rest easy – he will not be forced by Gail Collins into personally admitting the error behind his continued stubborn insistence that he got the story right on the 2000 Florida recounts despite widespread evidence to the contrary. Instead, Ms. Collins goes through hundreds of words before finally landing here:
CORRECTION
In describing the results of the ballot study by the group led by The Miami Herald in his column of Aug. 26, Paul Krugman relied on the Herald report, which listed only three hypothetical statewide recounts, two of which went to Al Gore. There was, however, a fourth recount, which would have gone to George W. Bush. In this case, the two stricter-standard recounts went to Mr. Bush. A later study, by a group that included The New York Times, used two methods to count ballots: relying on the judgment of a majority of those examining each ballot, or requiring unanimity. Mr. Gore lost one hypothetical recount on the unanimity basis.
In the interim, we have seen one faux correction, outside of the Times normal policy of appending corrections to the bottom of the original piece, that actually repeated the original error, and several calls by the NY Times Public Editor Byron Calame for Krugman to set the record straight.
Apparently, wringing a correction out of Krugman is so heinously difficult that it requires a full-fledged intervention by Editor Gail Collins in the form of a spotlight editorial – an editorial that manages to work in a cheap shot at Michael Brown in the course of describing how the Times will handle “minor” misstatements of fact:
A “For the Record” column of errata will run under the editorials whenever it’s appropriate. The first one appears today. It corrects several misstatements about when Joe Allbaugh, the former FEMA director, met his successor, Michael Brown, now legendary as a disaster in his own right. Although there have been multitudinous references throughout the media to the two as former college chums or college roommates, they in fact went to different schools. A spokeswoman for Mr. Allbaugh says that while they have been close pals for a long time, they met after graduation. Obviously, if we’re debating the serious issue of allegations about cronyism at FEMA, a friend is a friend whether the relationship was born off campus or on. That’s what makes this one perfect grist for “For the Record.”
Collins finds all of this necessary, mind you, to explain how the assertion that Brown and Allbaugh are college chums is in fact wrong in substance but right in spirit. Sure, Gail, whatever, it’s your world, I’m just living in it…
It’s enough to make one sympathize with former Public Editor Daniel Okrent, who said:
I learned early on in this job that Prof. Krugman would likely be more willing to contribute to the Frist for President campaign than to acknowledge the possibility of error. When he says he agreed ‘reluctantly’ to one correction, he gives new meaning to the word ‘reluctantly’; I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism.
Okrent is gone, and Calame will be soon enough…but how long will Gail Collins continue to run the Times…right into the ground?
UPDATE 10:08 p.m.: Many thanks to the great Tim Blair for the link…
UPDATE 2 10/02/05 8:50 a.m.: Thanks also to the mighty Instapundit for the notice…
UPDATE 3 10/02/05 9:32 a.m.: Tim Worstall wonders why the correction is still not appended to Krugman’s column as it should be, while Michelle Malkin asks about the other two columns where Krugman falsely stated the facts on this issue…and thanks to Michelle for linking back…
UPDATE 4 10/02/05 10:07 a.m.: Many thanks also to our good friend the MinuteMan for the linkage, as well…that pugilistic pontificator Patterico also notes that the mistake has still not been corrected, on any of the three columns…nice work, Gail…Lorie Byrd (thanks for the link!) observes: “Is there anything more difficult than getting a liberal to admit that George Bush actually did win Florida in 2000? Maybe getting Keith Olbermann to admit that he won Ohio in 2004?”…
UPDATE 5 10/02/05 1:13 p.m.: Patterico informs me that one of the three columns has the correction now, though the other two still do not…Also, thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link – I don’t believe I’ve had the honor before…Blogniscient currently has this post ranked #5 among political blogs…
UPDATE 6 10/02/05 3:36 p.m.: Good stuff here from Quantum Catfish, and a little Journalism 101 from Flex Blue…
UPDATE 7 10/02/05 6:55 p.m.: Still more from Power Line…
UPDATE 8 10/03/05 12:38 p.m.: Thanks also to Ace – I believe this is my first link from this long-esteemed personage…
As the Times would put it:
“Look, all this is very easy to understand if you are as intelligent as we are. The Joe Allbaugh – Michael Brown incident comes under our “false but accurate” doctrine. And the inclusion of our off-hand comment regarding Michael Brown’s reputation in a correction concerning an Krugman error, falls under our “cheap shot” doctrine, (I.E., always use a correction to settle scores with those we all hate, or should hate if we were all as with it as those of us at the Times.) See, for example, our use of a recent correction to slime Geraldo.”
Have you noticed that their stated policy was to run a correction under the column that generated the error, until Krugman apparently refused to go along? Only then do we hear about this “For the Record” idea. So who exactly is the editorial page editor again?
Well said, indeed, Fred…the Public Editor calls Krugman out, and now we have a 40,000-word essay (give or take 39,000) describing the new corrections policy…
If they added funnies & the sports scores to the Wall Street Journal, it would be the best newspaper anywhere.
If they added funnies & full-color weather maps to the New York Times, it would still be fishwrap.
– Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.
Add funnies to the New York Times? Why? What could be funnier than it is already? I mean what are we supposed to do? The Onion isn’t a daily. I can’t wait to get the days Times. Every day a train wreck, dead cow on the tracks, chickens, feathers, walking wounded… Look what we have to look forward to; Collins tell all book after she gets two in the hat, the further meltdown of Mo Dowd, Herr Professor Krugman eventually bunkered in his office with the swat team outside, continued losses on the balance sheet and a buyout by Rupert.
Maybe getting a correction out of Krugman would be easier if the NY Times put it behind another, more expensive subscription wall. Call it TimesSuperSelect — for just $69.95, you get not only TimesSelect, but you also have access to the weekly “For the Record” corrections warehouse. The offending columnist will then get a $4.95 kickback from each subscriber every time he admits a whopper, boner, howler or gaffe. Press honesty is at a premium; Shouldn’t the pay structure reflect that?
tempest in teapot–lots of ink spiolloed here because you can not stand the fact that the paper is still the best in America…find another hobbyhorse to ride.
Yes, Fred — repeat it enough times. No argument or demonstration of fact required; the mere repetition will make it true.
Fred wrote:
“tempest in teapot–lots of ink spiolloed here because you can not stand the fact that the paper is still the best in America…find another hobbyhorse to ride.”
Professor Krugman, if you’re going to post here, at least have the courage to use your own name.
inkling, I love the idea…sign me up! Fred, it is true that the Times is one of the premier papers in the nation…outside of the editorial page…but Krugman, MoDo, Herbert, and Rich are such partisan hacks that only the true believer can maintain that they contribute anything of worth to the public debate…Did you bother to read the comments about Krugman from the only two Public Editors the Times has ever had, both of whom say Krugman is deadset against admitting any error of any kind? Does that sound like a seeker after the truth, or a partisan, ideologically driven hack?
Getting one’s arm around the truth at The Times’ a bit like trying to catch a greased pig at the county fair. Perhaps if Ms. Collins forced Krugman and Rich to use up their precious 700 words for real corrections, then both might make a better effort to get their facts (or as Gail Collins derisively calls them, “factoids) straight in the first place, thus saving them future columns space.
New York Times Corrections Policy.
Gail Collins has a piece in the New York Times today about corrections to op ed pieces. This is obviously a response to the Public Editor’s (Byron Calame) concerns expressed in his web page four days back. It isn’t the
[...] But you can’t investigate a crime that consists of leaking to the press without getting the press to talk. Maybe the paper’s publisher and editorial board have figured that out now. They should have grasped it then, before requesting the epic collision of first principles from which Judith Miller has just slunk away. Shafer and I would disagree (or at least he suggests, elsewhere in the article, a very different view from mine) about the whole topic of the press’s privilege to shield sources. But on the realpolitik of the Times’s surrender, and the metastasis of its cancer of editorial-page incoherence, he’s right on. Then again, there’s a lot of that going around (via Reynolds again!) [...]
Liberals can’t retract anything because they are never wrong. They never let a little thing like facts get in the way of a good story.
The New York Times is no longer the American “newspaper of record” other than a record of its own biases, errors, and poor judgement. Its moment has passed not with a bang but with the whimper of its “public editor(s).”
I believe the satement that should have been used in the Michael Brown “Correction” is the Rathergate standard “Fake but True” answer.
Bart
Fred’s mindless defense of the Times reminded me of a question that I’ve been mulling for a while. For the last forty years or so, the Freds of the world were the predominate voices available. The MSM echo chamber and their minions is literally all there was.
I’m wondering if anyone has done a study of the decline of the Democrat party, liberals in general and the MSM in particular in relation to the rise of the internet, cable and talk radio. The timing is almost exact, beginning in 1994 with the aberration of Clinton discounted, the almost constant humiliation of the left has proceeded apace.
Has anyone done it?
“Collins finds all of this necessary, mind you, to explain how the assertion that Brown and Allbaugh are college chums is in fact wrong in substance but right in spirit.”
Its simply yet another manifestation of the “fake but accurate” defense that has been all the rage among the media elites since CBS pioneered its use in the Rathergate saga. What is going on here is exactly what went on at CBS, a big media organization is allowing one of its star players to bigfoot his way through their organization, using his reputation to get his way despite the fact that it conflicts with their own standards of accuracy and fairness. Solution: change the standards. It didn’t do CBS’s reputation one iota of good and I fail to see how it’s going to help the New York Times. CBS finally had the good sense to realize there was a problem and order an investigation. And Dan Rather retired early. The New York Times seems to be content to let the tail wag the dog. And they are doing it so publicly and abjectly that it can’t help but hurt them in the long run. How can Paul Krugman be more important than their 100+ year history as the newspaper of record?
[...] Decision ‘08 notes The Most Painful Correction of All Time: the correction the New York Times has finally run on Paul Krugman’s numerous errors regarding the 2000 election. Editor Gail Collins says: A classic case of correction run amok involved a column that Paul Krugman wrote on Aug. 19 about the Florida recount in 2000 in which he said that two different news media groups reviewed the ballots and found that “a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.” That was incorrect. Paul tried to clarify things in his next column, but the public editor, Byron Calame, objected that since nothing in the second column was labeled a correction, the original error would survive in the permanent record. [...]
portanpundit, if such a study has been done, I’m not aware of it…though I, too, would be much interested in the results…
Excellent points, kcom…it’s not like we’re talking about some little local daily, it’s the New York Times, for cryin’ out loud…how hard is it to keep Krugman under control?…
“the Bush administration has an infallibility complex: it never, ever, admits making a mistake. And that kind of arrogance tends, eventually, to bring disaster.”
– Paul Krugman
Once upon a time, in a land far away, the New York Times had credibility … oh, and just as long ago and just as far away so did an economist named Krugman.
That’s all flushed away a long time past.
As Krugman to economics, so rotting leftovers to the compost heap. Absent integrity, even intelligence, it is still possible to be interesting (the maniacal flas-of-insight, and all that). But Krugman is a dolt. Same old stuff, never a breath of fresh-air-and-exercise. As the ancient British witticism has it, regarding fox hunting, if that’s all you seek, “go home and bugger yourself with a bellows.” Puff away, Paul! No correction necessary.
The Incorrect Correction
Decision ’08 rejoices … Krugman screwed up. Collins covered up. Collins now spins. Correction not accepted. Admit you made a mistake. Don’t blame the Miami Herald. Read your own damned newspaper: Nov. 11, 2001.
In This Case, Delegation is Definitely a Good Thing
I have done my share of ripping The New York Times, all richly deserved.
But, I don’t have the time, patience, or stomach for dragging corrections out of a publication whose columnists and writers won’t admit they’re wrong until th…
I don’t know that I’d advise the Times to read the Times, Don. That’s a lot like marrying your sister…
Anyway, hey, it’s progress. Put the correction in the same place as the damned column. I give them credit for that, at least. What I’d prefer to see, of course, is an open-source Wiki correction site (with pages for each columnist) that the Times agreed to publish. It’s (obviously) dangerous to allow the paper and its egocentric columnists (with a few exceptions… Tierney has really grown on me) to control their own corrections. At the very least, you can’t have Krugman correcting Krugman. We understand the need for outside investigators and prosecutors in politics and corporate life – it provides both the impression and reality (usually) of a dispassionate and honest review, insulated from self-interest. Why does everyone on Earth understand that basic principle except the Times??
Alan Cole, you are simply wrong. You gotta have coupons to be in the running for best newspaper ever! (P&G coupons in today’s paper! Woohoo!)
cathy
Mark:
Krugman, Rich, Dowd–they’ve all let their status as opinion makers go to their heads, and their ilk is running out its string.
Thanks for this resource. I linked to this post on my blog, where I was discussing the decline in basic journalism skills.
Just wanted a chance to work the word “ilk” into my conversation today.
lapidies, The times is not a news organization, it is a propaganda rag, and has been for many years. Kind of a pity, that Pinch and his pet moose would ruin one of the best marques in the world, through his incompetence and dishonesty.
Flex Blue, many thanks…I look forward to reading your piece…
The Krugman, Dowd and Rich Outdoors Show
I’ve got this great idea for a new TV show.
Gail Collins claims that in four years
as Editorial Page Editor, she has never had a
columnist refuse to make a correction. Of course, when
the correction request denominator approaches zero,
such a statistic is both incalculable as well as
meaningless. As we all know, the infallible Dowd, Herbert, Krugman, et al. never
include misleading or outrightly false information in
their columns hence the rare need to ask for (demand?)
a correction. The new policy (or perhaps more
appropriately, non-policy) serves to fulfill the
paper’s credo, “All the News that We Feel Is Fit to
Print.”
“….How is it that cultural coverage in The New York Times, which yesterday seemed as awful as it was possible to be, is today even worse? This ever-fresh question deserves serious thought. How do they do it: each week a little more tawdry and demotic, more politically correct, less intellectually nimble and journalistically serious.
Some of you may immediately object, pointing out that this prodigy of deterioration is by no means confined to the Times’s coverage of culture. We concede the point. After all, we are talking about a newspaper that actually employs Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Bob Herbert, not as comic relief but as some of its star pundits….”
http://newcriterion.com/archives/24/10/beyond-parody/
What actually did Krugman get wrong? Bush lost by virtually every measure except the most restrictive of recounts. In other words Gore won the election UNLESS you impose restrictive conditions on the votes counted. If you count all the votes Gore wins. Isn’t that the bigger picture? One that apparently is beyond the pale…and the real story.
[...] …in the increasingly popular sport of Times-bashing, with this piece from the New Criterion’s Roger Kimball. I had seen it linked to earlier today in the Power Line piece I mentioned elsewhere, but I had not taken the time to read it until it was highlighted by regular reader and commenter Fred. [...]
Umm. p.c. – Earth is calling…do you think Gail Collins would have publicly humiliated herself and Krugman if he had not gotten anything wrong? Jeez…first of all, educate yourself on the facts. Read Krugman’s originials (if you can find them behind the ridiculous TimesSelect wall), then read the corrections, and read the numerous pieces here, by Tom Maguire, by Don Luskin, by Michelle Malkin, really, there are no limits, to discover what Krugman got wrong.
In a nutshell, Krugman said that it was a certainty that Al Gore won the 2000 election, a remarkably ignorant statement, considering that the Electoral College seats presidents, and George W. Bush is now on his second term. I presume you mean to say that Gore would have won the hypothetical ‘stopped’ recount, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? I mean, what standard would have been used, and what further challenges in the courts, etc., etc., and it’s all useless anyway, because, like I said, the winner of the election was George W. Bush. How do I know this? Because he served the term after being appointed by the Electoral College. It’s pretty simple, really, when you give reality a chance.
Even given this useless fantasy recount, Krugman mistated the results on three separate occasions.
Please, if you’re going to come around here with conspiracy theories, at least acquaint yourself with the story thus far…
Gore won. That’s not a partisan statement. It’s just a fact. The election was stolen, and we’ve had to live with the consequences. Never mind the leftover undervotes and overvotes a few hundred one way or the other; look at the fraud. Look at the thousands of innocent voters who were removed from the voting rolls as “felons.” Look at what happened in Palm Beach…Teresa LaPore turns out not to have been a Democrat after all. And thousands of Jews voting for Buchanan? You think that wasn’t deliberate? You think that wasn’t a Rovian dirty trick? Are you KIDDING??? He’s been teaching this stuff since his college days.
Look at the exit polls, which were suddenly “wrong” in Florida 2000, in the Georgia Senate and governor’s race in 2002, nationwide and in all the swing states in 2004. And nowhere else, ever. Well, there was the Ukraine.
Wake up.
Just a question… does anyone remember the MSM having to retract a story that was favorable to Bush or to Republicans? Does the press ever leap to illogical, hysterical, thinly sourced conclusions when to do so would benefit the President? I can’t think of a single instance of this happening.
Just in case anyone was toying with the idea that these “errors” are actually unintentional.
Nina…thank you for visiting our planet, I hope you had a nice stay. Tell me, what did you wear to Gore’s Inaugural Ball?…
From the original Times article about the consortium recount:
“In a finding rich with irony, the results show that even if Mr. Gore had succeeded in his effort to force recounts of undervotes in the four Democratic counties, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia, he still would have lost, although by 225 votes rather than 537. An approach Mr. Gore and his lawyers rejected as impractical — a statewide recount — could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent.”
Now, the question is, wasn’t the relevant question what would have happened in a STATEWIDE recount? The Florida Supreme Court ordered a STATEWIDE recount. From the start Gore said he’d be happy with a statewide recount but under Florida law he had to pick counties – under their process, there wouldn’t have been time for a statewide recount.
Let’s repeat. a statewide recount …could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent
Why Gail Collins is issuing corrections, I don’t quite understand. The Times said Gore won under any standard.
Gore won. That’s not a partisan statement.
I like you; you’re funny!
Of COURSE it’s a partisan statement. Claiming otherwise makes any argument you use inconsequential because you prove that you aren’t reality-based.
Artic Tern…here’s a thought experiment for you: George W. Bush won – get over it, already…and please, get out of here with that ‘voter intent’ stuff. News flash – it’s not that difficult to cast a valid vote…and it doesn’t require any ‘divining’ of intent…you know who tries to figure out the intent of the voter? The guy who didn’t get enough votes, that’s who…
In any event, Krugman was wrong, as are you…again, I don’t have the patience or time to go through all this again, so I’ll refer you to this earlier post, if you really want to see why and how Krugman lied.
Here’s an excerpt for you (and it’s sourced, too):
(1). In the first full study of Florida’s ballots [after the 2000 election] ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled “undervotes” — ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through — to be counted.
(2). A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.
The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.
Bush won the counts that were actually performed. The first count. And the mandatory recount. And when it reached the courts – which Team Gore initiated -team Bush won the day in pretty much every court but the ridiculously skewed Florida Supremes.
Gore initially conceded. Then he withdrew his concession, and put the country through a monthlong ordeal that he was destined to lose, along with any shreds of mainstream credibility. Gore’s lack of respect for the process has cheapened political discourse, just one more legacy of the Clinton years.
Of theoretical recounts, Bush would have still won under the two standards most likely to be allowed – and requested – in such circumstances.
Of the two theoretical recounts Gore would have ‘won’, the standards used were least likely to be employed in actual practice, and which were not requested.
America doesn’t count voter intent. It counts VOTES. And as simple as the process is, voting still requires at least two brain cells and a firing synapse. Had this gone the other way, the Democrats would have been laughing about “those dolts too dumb to vote” all the way to inauguration.
Wonderduck, no, it’s not a partisan statement. Whether or not someone legitimately won an election is a matter of gathering facts. I can admit that LBJ got into Congress through ballot manipulation, and I liked Kennedy, but when I found out that the voting was rigged in his favor in Chicago, I didn’t deny it. Instead, I was disappointed.
Jeb Bush and Kathryn Harris were running a machine in Florida; if you think otherwise, fine. See no evil, hear no evil.
The argument has been going on for five years, so it’s not much use repeating much of it. But I met a woman who has worked at elections in Miami for years. She seemed very non-political, and travels because she has a job organizing airport inspectors. She said there was no question that Florida was rigged; election day at her polling place was a disaster. Large numbers of people who had voted for years were unable to vote because their names had been unexplainedly removed from the rolls. Election workers couldn’t get through to the main office to find out what to do, there were no questioned ballots available, it was a mess. People were very distraught. Later on we found out these people were all removed because a company, Choicepoint, had been given millions of dollars to remove thousands of “felons” from the voting rolls, except it turns out that most of them had never committed any crime. I won’t go through the litany. I’ve talked to several people close to the situation in Florida. It was rigged for Bush up down and sideways. The top Republicans know this, they think it’s funny; it’s the foot soldiers who deny it. But they are kept in the dark and fed on slogans.
Ron Coleman says “Repeat it enough times. No argument or demonstration of fact required; the mere repetition will make it true. This is the Big point that everyone is missing! The liberals run the media with all the editorial opinions they wish to pander all in print. Besides, whom do you think writes the textbooks for all the generations up and coming. What it will come down to is the longevity of the print medium that will determine which side wins. Do you really think that the history books that our children read in high school will focus on anything about Bush other than his verbal gaffes.
Nina, and of course, the press, which is so in love with Bush, is not interested in the bombshell accusations that you present, as they have no interest in selling papers…give me a break; we’re supposed to take some anecdotal ‘evidence’ you present, and conclude that Florida was rigged…Choicepoint is a company I’m quite familiar with; they have no political affiliation. If they made mistakes, you can be sure they were just that…mistakes…
The felon scam is well documented. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1174115.stm gives it some drama but there have been a number of articles. Figuring you already knew about that, I was just adding to it some anecdotal information – what it looked like to an election worker who had to deal with non-criminal voters who went to the polls on election day and found themselves not on the voting lists and didn’t know why. It happened to the sister of Gore’s campaign manager, didn’t you read about that? It was just one of many “accidents” all of which helped the same candidate. If you think Jeb Bush and Kathryn Harris, and more recently Ken Blackwell in Ohio, had too much integrity to rig things for their candidate, okay, you have a different view of their character than I do. In any case, people running elections offices should not be involved in campaigns of one of the candidates, that seems pretty obvious, and some states, not enough, have rules against it. Even if they aren’t outright crooked, there will be a tendency to decide things in favor of your candidate. It’s basic. Beyond that is the voting equipment. You wouldn’t like it if the tables were turned and Democratic companies were making the machines, programming them using code not available to the public, and counting the votes. Diebold and ES&S have longstanding strong ties to one party.
It is useless arguing this: you guys think the media have a liberal bias. To me, it’s clear they have a corporate bias. The major networks are now owned by corporate conglomerates. We just see this differently, but it remains curious to me that because you voted for Bush, you have such a different picture of what happened in Florida. Again, just because I vote Democratic doesn’t mean I think there is no crookedness on the part of the Democratic Party, I don’t see why you can’t admit crookedness in the Republican Party. Part of the problem with trying to reform our elections nationwide is that both parties have gamed the system for so long, especially in some states. But it has gotten easier to at least theoretically rig them in a big way, with the advent of software and paperless computers.
I do know conservatives who think Gore was the real winner in Florida even thought they didn’t support him. Statisticians look at what happened with the exit polls in Florida, and the exit polls nationwide and in key states in 2004, and they’re not so quick to believe that it was the exit polls which were fishy.
I think Dick Mango sang it best: “For the benefit of Mr. Gore/We will count the votes some more/until he wins.”
Nina, I’ll give you this much…I’m not a fan of having declared ‘partisans’ in charge of election offices. But to say Diebold and ES&S are ‘Republican’ companies is ludicrous. They can’t share the code, because to do so would just make it that much easier to hack. People screamed about how hard it is to vote (ha!) after Florida in 2000, the market complied with virtually idiot-proof electronic voting machines (they use ‘em here in Travis County, so I know whereof I speak), and now, that’s no good either.
Why not just call off Democracy, it’s too complicated…so much easier to vote in, say, an Egyptian election….
Why not turn your assumptions on themselves? If you were running a scam to leave off voters, would you choose the sister of Al Gore’s campaign manager? If you wanted to rig Florida, why make it a margin of a few dozen votes, sure to result in the review of the ballots?
You’re quite right there is a difference in our view of these things, but it’s not a Republican vs. Democrat thing – I trust the market far more than government, and clearly you have a distrust of corporations that is quite common on the Left. More power to you – but you don’t hear me crying about how the networks declared Florida for Gore while voting was still taking place in the heavily Republican panhandle – conspiracy? No – anxious to brag about being the first to make the call, that’s all…
Mark, of course you’re right, Choicepoint wouldn’t have removed someone high profile deliberately, if it happened, it was inadvertent. The point is that thousands of voters who were not felons were removed from the rolls, and after having read a good deal about it, it doesn’t look accidental to me. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe all these “irregularities,” all of which helped the same candidate in Florida, and in Ohio, were just accidents. Like a big hurricane which blew a lot of ballots Bush’s way. (By the way, I only know that Donna Brazile’s sister had trouble voting, I don’t know for sure whether it was connected with the Choicepoint removal-of-voters. I never saw any follow up on that story. Maybe she was being asked for three pieces of ID, that was another problem people were having.)
I’m not sure why it’s ludicrous to say that Diebold is a Republican company, I doubt they’d deny it themselves, the board of directors gave exclusively to Republicans for years, that’s public info. The president of the company wrote a fund-raising letter that he would “deliver” Ohio to the president – you can argue that he didn’t mean that the way it sounded, but in either case, it WAS a REPUBLICAN fund-raiser. I think lately they’ve been trying to change their image because of all the bad publicity. It goes further, actually, with connections to Bush and other Texas politicians that go way back. Google on Diebold and Bush.
As far as turning assumptions on themselves – actually I ran into an essay along these lines written by a Republican for fellow Republicans, trying to show them how this looked from the Democratic side. If I run into it sometime, maybe I’ll post it here.
But there’s too much here, and we could argue forever! My home state has fair elections and as a result, I TRUST the results even when I don’t LIKE them. But you and I are NOT going to convince each other about what happened in Florida, or in Ohio. Peace – it is the High Holy Days coming up, and I’m not planning to be on the web. I hope this country can someday heal.