Reply #63: Good point. He's interested!

[m.standridge]

I just didn't want to open him to an accusation of some agenda or something.
He's a reputable academic. He will let the facts speak for themselves.
What I'm excited about, is what the facts are saying.
What I get a little impatient about this, with the academic material (there was some material about Florida which got into a situation similar to this, as you may recall), is that the general public doesn't, early on, get a real, lay interpretation of it that shows how it impacts on their lives.
In this case, the fact Phillips' people finally did this addition, was very heartening. If I'm accused of excessive optimism or spinning, that's ok. As long as it's clear that the very real implication of the data, is that it's looking more all the time like Bush didn't carry Ohio, and that this means he didn't really win the 2004 Presidential election.
This website/forum is frequented by people who aren't always highly-academic people. The power of people like that, is information and numbers. For the general public, the publication at a general public-accessible Site, (i.e., Freepress.org), of added-up numbers of the Ohio ballots that show it likely Kerry had a lead in Ohio, and revealing the data's eventual potential to tell us the numerical figure of that lead, is exciting and has real, political potential.

We're cutting new ground here, and we don't really know what time-frames we have to work with in terms of any action we take. We know we have an intimidated, and seemingly indifferent-to-hostile mainstream media and a GOP-controlled federal government (all three branches). I just want ordinary people to know about these numbers and how they add up. They're the best weapon we've got.
It was time to let them know.