Leading readings

Keith's blog highlights: Keith's going on vacation (but isn't fired); Countdown will stil lcover the story/ies in his absence; Keith reports on several newspapers carrying stories over the weekend regarding the irregularities; he also salutes the NY Times and -- what's the reverse of a salute? ah yes -- gives the middle finger -- to the Houston Chronicle for their editorial. "The Houston Chronicle has an editorial so puerile that it may be the most naïve thing I’ve ever read that was actually written by a grown-up."

Keith focuses on the fact that Nader is getting his recount in New Hampshire, and the Green/Libs (who Keith coins "Glibs") are really on their way to affording the recount in Ohio:

I suspect the coverage is going to go through the roof as the news spreads that Nader has gotten his recount in New Hampshire, and that the Greens and Libertarians are actually going to get their Ohio recount. When reporters discover what Jonathan Turley pointed out to us on Tuesday’s show, namely that 70% of Ohio’s votes were done with punch cards and as Florida proved in 2000, in court, a lot of those punch cards - as Jon put it - “turn over,” I suspect there will be long-form television on the process. As an aside: as of earlier today, the Green/Libs - should we just go ahead and call them the Glibs? - were at $118,000 towards their Ohio war-chest goal of $150,000. I’ve gotten a peck of e-mails about why neither party’s website has details, and it turns out the site you want on this is VoteCobb.Org.

In the interest of fairness, here's the Houston Chronicle editorial Olbermann olbermentions. I was prepared from Keith's description to find a Hannitilian avoidance of facts, but instead, the Chronicle's editorial is mild, if misleading.

The miracle of the Internet helped to resolve and disprove the allegations it had cast over the Web. Objective election analysts countered the charges one by one.

This year's election was marred by real, admitted problems: long lines and voting machines that went haywire and had to be fixed or sidelined. But the unthinkable, a tilted election, apparently did not take place. As some analysts pointed out, the electronic voting machines, though imperfect, are an improvement over the punch-card systems they replaced, systems that routinely failed to count or discarded thousands of votes in each state.

Unfortunately, objective analysts have only countered the "Florida Democrats voting for Republicans" theory and mostly countered the exit poll discrepancies. Nothing else, to my knowledge. Good for the Chronicle for acknowledging that there were problems with the voting machines, but bad that they claim that a tilted election did not take place. We can't rule anything out, even though I remain doubtful that recounts will prove that John Kerry won Ohio and so on. That's far from the rationale behind having these recounts. Whatever the outcome, we need to affirm and cement people's confidence in the security of the vote, and, because of all the malfunctions and discrepancies, that's just not going to happen without recounts in at least a few states.

Also: here's an article from New Hampshire's Union Leader about the State approving a Presidential recount for Nader. The state is granting Nader recounts in Litchfield, Sandown, Newton, Danville, Salem, Pelham, one ward in Somersworth and four wards in Manchester. His campaign has paid the $2000 fee.