Times reports chatter, not substance

Eschewing, as usual, the burden of investigative journalism, the Times waves away all suggestions that the election results are invalid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html

The enterprising reporters invented a new species of thought avoidance -- let's call it chatter-cancelling. Take an arbitrary sampling of sometimes hasty or dispeptic suspicions. Find counterarguments of equal weight. Declare tempest in blogspot.

Well, we don't have to know the specifics in order to know that the election results are wrong.

The digital balloting system does not qualify as a knowable or politically insulated counting process. Indeed, it seems designed to issue some number and frustrate anyone who tries to figure how that number was calculated. There is a fundamental burden of proof on those who report the tallies: their reports must have prima facie credibility.

The only empirically based measure, one that has served well when the dispute is outside our borders, is the exit poll.

We don't know, and probably won't ever know, what really happened. But the burden of proof is not on us to prove anything about what went wrong. The only data we have, and it is highly reliable data, gives us confidence that George Bush was not elected.

This fact naturally inspires a brainstorm of hypotheses about what really happened. But even if every single hypothesis were disproved, it would still be the case the George Bush was not elected.