Shuster no longer so skeptical

Every time I seem to think that maybe there wasn't as much funny stuff going on as I thought, new stuff pops up.

So now David Shuster joins his MSNBC colleague Mr. Olbermann... to at least say that there's enough there worth an investigation with the GAO: " I've seen enough to conclude that the congressman demanding a GAO (Government Accountability Office) investigation is not nuts... at least not on this issue."

Then Shuster runs through an itinerary of what has "been established":

"In Franklin County, Ohio... an electronic voting machine reported an extra 3,893 votes for President Bush. Local officials caught the error.  But as my colleage David Corn of "The Nation" has reported, Peggy Howell, one of the key officials, "doesn't know" why the mistake occurred.  That, by itself, is a strong argument for the GAO to step in....

We still "don't know" why the officials in charge of voting at Kenyon college in Ohio equipped the site with only two voting machines  No explanation has been offered.  Students who waited in line for 9 hours believe it was an effort to "disenfranchise" easily identifiable democrats.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio has changed its explanation as to how some precincts could have reported more votes cast than the total number of registered voters.  The county says it added absentee ballots to the "reporting" not the "counting."  Hmmm.  Hello, GAO?

Shuster then says that the anomalies aren't part of a pattern to steal the election. He cites Florida's Dixiecrat situation -- again sighting the debunked fact that most of these counties which boasted mostly Democrat registration but voted Republican had voted for Bush in 2000 and Dole in 1996 at similar rates. He then debunks the exit polls role in all of this.

But he ends with: "In any case, we still have a lot of unanswered questions... and I know many of you do as well.  Can we agree that the non partisan GAO is wise to get involved?" Yes, we can. Just to clear everything up.