Atrios on the voting thing

...sez:

Yes, there are serious problems with the way we count the votes in this country. Yes, no electronic voting machines without paper trails should exist. Yes, all machine counted votes should have random audits to ensure their reliability even if the election isn't thought to be close. Yes, no one should stand in line for 4 hours to vote. Yes, the media should be demanding, and the authorities providing, answers to obviously legitimate questions about various anomalies, such as more people voting in a county than were apparently registered. And, yes, I'm sure I can think of a few more things.

But, irregularities and questionable results are not necessarily "proof" of "fraud" and "proof" that the "election was stolen. " If people want this issue to be taken seriously they need to stop thinking that any of the information floating around right now - and yes, I've seen it all multiple times - provides proof of any such thing. Yes, legitimate questions have been raised, but I fear people on "our side" have started to confuse the legitimate questions with the answers to those questions they've imagined. I'm fully ready to believe that everything was corrupt in Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere, but thinking and knowing are different things entirely.

-- Atrios, Voting issues

...strikes me a an opinion worth counting, with all due respect to Bob Harris, who does seem to be adding up stuff worth adding too.

On balance, my response to this whole thing is the same as it always seems to be in politics both in the US and at home--which is: whereinhell is the mob with pitchforks and torches when you need them, anyway? What does it take to get folks riled enough to demand a little better? Whether or not the bastards actually stole a few states last week, it looks like it was entirely too easy for them to have done so, and all those odd little jitters in the stats are a bit too suggestive for my taste, given that fact. Which leaves the unsettling question: did they? Will anyone ever know? And howinhell is it that this door was ever left open?

Paper ballots, people. Paper ballots with little circles for marking an 'X', and multiparty scrutineers peering over the shoulders of the counters. And real databases, with integral audit trails and lotsa people watching them do their thing, for adding them up. Or am I just talking crazy talk here?