Some well meaning folks want to follow the red herring - crying "fraud!" in the vote count. The problem is not in the vote count - it is in denying the vote. Keeping eyes on the ball of voter suppression is the real battle for clean and fair elections - not silly Diebold conspiracy theories.

I wonder if you include The Brennan Center for Justice among your list of "well-meaning" but, presumably, delusional folks who concern themselves with the kind of election fraud that can be perpetrated via Electronic Voting Equipment; manufactured primarily by Diebold (now called Premier Election Solutions) and Sequoia Voting Systems.

Do you dismiss empirical data like The Brennan Center for Justice reports, which found that Electronic Voting Equipment is susceptible to all manner of deliberate tampering and miscellaneous error?

What are their creds, please?

What information do they have to back that up?

I've only heard stuff like that from the manufacturers of the voting/counting equipment.

From the Miami Herald:

 Congressman Kendrick Meek delivered a strong message from his Miami Gardens office Monday night, outraged at long lines that in some places had people waiting up to five hours to vote.

Meek urged elections supervisors to offer those in line the option of mail in ballots, and said more machines were needed to aide the huge crowds that turned out to vote in Miami-Dade and Broward counties Monday.

From the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel:

David Hare thought he'd get a jump on Election Day by taking advantage of early voting this morning. He got on line outside the Art Serve library on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale at 10:30 a.m. Nearly three hours later, he was still waiting.

There were long lines at many of the 17 early voting locations across  Broward County. At the African American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale, more than 200 people were on line when the polls opened at 10 a.m.

From the Palm Beach Post:

People trying to cast ballots on the first day of early voting faced long waits in Palm Beach County, as cars jammed roads leading to the polling places. And some would-be voters even camped out overnight.

In Wellington, people faced waits of an hour and 15 minutes at the village's municipal complex, where poll workers directed traffic and warned undeterred voters of the long line ahead. Parked cars lined both sides of the grassy shoulder of the road.

Liddle came to believe our election "may well have been rigged," that "real and massive vote suppression" occurred in Ohio where the recount was "a sham" and the Secretary of State "should be jailed."

So, as far as I can tell, Liddle agrees that election fraud was committed in Ohio in the '04 election, evidently by GOP operatives.

Here's where it gets sticky: there was a large discrepancy between the exit polls and the final vote count. Liddle subsequently analysed the polling data and wrote an 18 page paper, critiquing the methodology of the exit pollsters.

Evidently, she concluded that the original exit poll data could not prove evidence of election fraud. Based on her foregoing quotes, she appears to suggest that the real evidence of election fraud lies elsewhere.

However, her research has been used to argue that there was NO election fraud in Ohio in '04 and the GOP didn't steal the election. To me, that seems like a misinterpretation of her research.