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Times Watch for
November 16, 2004
Burying Vote Fraud Accusations --
And Digging Them Up Again
Perhaps Times editorial writers should glance at their paper's front page more often. On Friday, reporter Tom Zeller debunked Internet allegations of anti-Kerry vote fraud.
But on Sunday, a Times editorial, "About Those Election Results," lent credence to those very same left-wing accusations: "There have been a flood of reports, rumors and theories over the last 12 days about problems with the presidential election. The blogosphere, in particular, has been full of questions: Why did electronic voting machines in Ohio add nearly 4,000 phantom votes for President Bush, and why did machines in Florida mysteriously start to count backward? Why did the official vote totals for Ohio's largest county seem to suggest that there were more votes cast than registered voters? Why did election officials in yet another part of Ohio lock down the building where votes were being counted, turning away the press and public?"
The Times puts the burden on the election system to dissuade the conspiracy theorists: "It's important to make it clear that there is no evidence such a thing happened, but there will be concern and conspiracy theories until all software used in elections is made public. Voters who use electronic machines are entitled to a voter-verified paper trail, which Nevadans got this year, so they can be sure their votes were accurately recorded. The outrageous decision by Warren County, Ohio, to lock down the building where votes were being counted is an extreme example of another serious problem with the elections: a lack of transparency. In some states, reporters are barred from polling places. The wild rumors about Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where the official results appeared to include an extra 90,000 votes, were a result of its bizarrely complicated method of posting election results, which is different in even- and odd-numbered years."
At the end, the editorialists detour into blasting alleged Republican partisanship, as if trying to link that to the unsubstantiated allegations of vote fraud: "Ohio and Florida, two of the key states in the election, have highly partisan secretaries of state who favored the Republicans all year in their rulings. If we want the voters to trust the umpires, we need umpires who don't take sides."
For the full editorial, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Editorial | Vote Fraud
Maureen Feeling Mobbed by "Vengeful" Bushies
Columnist Maureen Dowd isn't quite over Bush's victory, judging by the opening lines of her Sunday column, "Slapping the Other Cheek": "You'd think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like 'love thy neighbor,' 'turn the other cheek,' 'good will toward men,' 'blessed be the peacemakers' and 'judge not lest you be judged.' Yet somehow I'm not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals who claim to have put their prodigal son back in office. I'm getting more the feel of a vengeful mob -- revved up by rectitude -- running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels."
Four more years of this? Ugh.
For the rest, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Columnists | Maureen Dowd | Religion
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org