Hout (Rhymes with pout or hoot?)

We've been lazy in not yet tackling or dissecting a critique of the Hout report written by a statistician at Drexel University. We're gonna try to get to that sometime this week. Honest.

But in the meantime, Mickey has linked to Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly points about the Hout Paper from November 20. (Why is Mickey linking to news from November 20? Who cares! He's at least still on the story, even if he's on it from ten days ago! He'll be getting to the Juan Gonalez piece by December 13. Just in time for the electoral college!)

Drum cites sociologist Kieran Healey, and your little friends here at RottenDenmark talked about Kieran Healey's findings/postings on blog collective Crooked Timber in this post back on November 23 -- and what we said then still holds.

The evidence of the Hout paper may be that fraud was not systematic and statewide -- but in proving that not to be the case, both Drum and Healey suggest that there was something wrong, quite wrong, quite wrong and in need of explanation, in everyone's favorite two counties imitating vats of electoral cat piss, Broward and Palm Beach.

Could the Republican Party machine have been so better organized in Palm Beach and Broward -- two counties that are not Republican strongholds in any way, shape, or form -- such that they would do that much better in those counties than they had in 2000, and with a rate of improvement much larger than any other counties in the state?

Seems pretty fishy to me. Mickey? Now is not the time to be using Kausfiles to find out about unsigned LA area bands. The fate of the election is at stake! (Whose election? -- ed. Quit that!)