11.12.2004
Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried (NYTimes.com)
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.
Much of the controversy, called Votergate 2004 by some, involved real voting anomalies in Florida and Ohio, the two states on which victory hinged. But ground zero in the online rumor mill, it seems, was Utah.
"I love the process of democracy, and I think it's more important than the outcome," said Kathy Dopp, an Internet enthusiast living near Salt Lake City. It was Ms. Dopp's analysis of the vote in Florida (she has a master's degree in mathematics) that set off a flurry of post-election theorizing by disheartened Democrats who were certain, given early surveys of voters leaving the polls that were leaked, showing Senator John Kerry winning handily, that something was amiss.
(More ... The New York Times > Washington > Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried) ¶ 23:26
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.
Much of the controversy, called Votergate 2004 by some, involved real voting anomalies in Florida and Ohio, the two states on which victory hinged. But ground zero in the online rumor mill, it seems, was Utah.
"I love the process of democracy, and I think it's more important than the outcome," said Kathy Dopp, an Internet enthusiast living near Salt Lake City. It was Ms. Dopp's analysis of the vote in Florida (she has a master's degree in mathematics) that set off a flurry of post-election theorizing by disheartened Democrats who were certain, given early surveys of voters leaving the polls that were leaked, showing Senator John Kerry winning handily, that something was amiss.
(More ... The New York Times > Washington > Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried) ¶ 23:26
