[IP] NY Times to Bloggers: Calm down!
Begin forwarded message:
From: Steven Cherry <s.cherry@xxxxxxxx>
Date: November 12, 2004 10:27:20 AM EST
To: "David J. Farber" <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: NY Times to Bloggers: Calm down!
Dave,
In two articles today, the NY Times tells those of us concerned about
the 2004 election process that there's nothing here to look at, just
move along.
In the first, it dismisses concerns about county-by-county vote
patterns in Florida with the most superficial of statistical analyses.
In the other, it dismisses concerns about unauditable electronic voting
machines, saying, for example, that the Ohio county with 4000 extra
votes was an anomaly. Of course it doesn't give the slightest clue how
we could know that (because of course we can't).
Steven
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html>
Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Electronic voting machines, like these at a polling place in West Palm
Beach, Fla., are at the center of Internet rumors about election fraud.
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: November 12, 2004
The e-mail messages and Web postings had all the twitchy
cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. "Evidence mounts
that the vote may have been hacked," trumpeted a headline on the Web
site CommonDreams.org. "Fraud took place in the 2004 election through
electronic voting machines," declared BlackBoxVoting.org.
In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding
last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.
But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the
swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come
to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to
debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy
theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in
fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many
were still reluctant to let them go. <etc.>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12evote.html>
Mostly Good Reviews for Electronic Voting
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: November 12, 2004
Numerous problems with electronic voting machines were reported around
the country on Election Day and immediately afterward, but most
election officials and experts say the great majority of the machines
functioned as expected. <etc.>
--
Steven Cherry, +1 212-419-7566
Senior Associate Editor
IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave, New York, NY 10016
<s.cherry@xxxxxxxx> <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org>
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