By Brad Friedman on 2/4/2008, 1:12pm PT  

The courageous anonymous diarists at Daily Kos, the world's largest so-called "progressive" blog site, continue their pre-emptive suicide.

Today's dangerous mislead comes courtesy of anonymous poster "smintheus", who warns readers, in advance of Super Tuesday, that no matter what happens, there is nothing to worry your pretty little head about...

Expect trouble at the polls on Super Tuesday. It's almost inevitable that there'll be screw ups due to human error. But if the NH recount documented anything it's that such random glitches rarely amount to much and aren't worth getting exercised over.
...
Conspiracy buffs don't seem to understand how much damage they do to the cause of election reform by looking instinctively for malice in every glitch and under every voting machine – even those with a paper trail.

Yes, "even those with a paper trail." There's one anonymous dKos lecturer who truly understands issues of Election Integrity. (Congressman Rush Holt thanks you for your bad work, "smintheus".)

To save you the click, his/her linked reference to "the NH recount" in the above quoted text smartly cleanses the horrible election processes in the Granite State primary by incorrectly asserting (as if with evidence-based authority): "All results point toward an extremely clean election process, with small numbers of votes miscounted due to human error."

Translation: All is well. Just as it was in Florida 2000, Ohio 2004 and Sarasota 2006. Go back to bed. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

"Smintheus" goes on to salve the fears of us "conspiracy buffs"...

Sure, all voting machines need to have a verifiable paper trail. We all get that. But it's a battle that has to be won by convincing state officials there's a credible threat to election integrity, rather than by chasing phantom conspiracies up to their doorsteps.

Thank you, "smintheus". How American democracy can survive without your sage counsel, we'll never know. The dozen or so scientific, independent studies by states, universities, and commercial computer security experts since at least 2003, which specifically describe "the credible threat to election integrity" posed by these voting systems, are clearly not enough to dispel geniuses like him/her that the demand for 100% transparency in American election is anything more than "chasing phantom conspiracies."

The good news: With irresponsible diaries like that, "smintheus" should be able to retain the "front-pager" status bestowed on him/her by site-founder and Denier-in-Chief, Markos Moulitsas, for some time.

The even better news: The majority of those posting comments on the item seem to completely reject the perilous idiocy of "smintheus". Keep it up dKos commenters, your job this election cycle is becoming clearer and clearer. You'll need to spend day and night taking back dKos from the inappropriately powerful diarists there who show their disdain for American democracy by convincing themselves they're protecting it. (Sound familiar?)

You'll likely be banned many times in the process of winning that regrettable battle, but re-upping to continue the fight is an heroic necessity. When someone's got a gun to his or her own head, it's incumbent upon the witnesses to do all that they can to get that gun away from that person.

Clearly the major dKos Denial Diarists don't understand it yet, but someday it will dawn on them that the far better way to ensure voters cease having worries about vote counting is by removing the reasons for the worries, as opposed to attempting to dismiss and/or vanish the worriers.

How to do it? By transparency. Not by apology.

Recent BRAD BLOG coverage of dKos' attempted suicide by "democracy":

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