Reply #50: as usual, your post rewards close reading

[OnTheOtherHand]

and I am sure that your dissertation will as well. ;)

There does seem to be a tedious rhetorical waltz that goes ONE-the-exit-polls-prove-fraud TWO-actually-they-don't THREE-why-are-you-defending-war-criminals? Hard to dance to that. Probably doesn't do much for the cause of election reform, either.

Now I'm afraid that someone is off saying that "In order for the official totals to be accurate, Bush had to have won 14.6% of the Gore 2000 vote." No, there are lots of smaller numbers that could work, too. It would be possible to enter into a serious discussion of what numbers make the most sense (not ruling out the possibility of vote miscount). But it's probably hard to do that if one is convinced from the get-go that Kerry won by several million votes, and is just trying to "prove" it.

Your post points to several other interesting conversations -- some of them quite important -- that probably won't happen here either. Oh well.