Mark Crispin Miller blogs here.
Brad Friedman Blogs here.
The Miller blog linked over to two interesting items, here and here, respectively an ABC online report of Iraq contractors being hired to investigate - go on, guess - Iraq contractors, and a raw story report of a $100,000 reward posted for tying Karl Rove and a computer-jock affiliate, Michael Connell, to illegal election manipulation.
The Miller blog also compiles election/voting related news items, e.g., here and here.
The first of those posts linked to a St. Cloud State University Chronicle online item from October 2, "Ritchie speaks on voting," covering an appearance by our Secretary of State on campus to discuss voting issues.
The Palin-Biden debate was discussed by Miller, linking to Juan Cole.
Both Miller and Cole were dismissive, considering the process itself flawed, with Miller noting:
The problem here lies with the two parties' hijacking of the entire process, which used to be conducted, its ground rules established and enforced, by the League of Women Voters. Now it's just a big blitz by (and for) the media, its format set up to the weakest candidate's advantage, and no chance to push either one to clarify, elaborate, defend.
The moderator ought to hit both sides with hard, specific questions. Gwen Ifill, for example, should have asked the governor about her close ties to the Christianist far right (including her membership in the Alaska Independence Party), her policy, as mayor, of making rape victims pay for their own rape kits, and her having asked the town librarian about the possibility of censoring certain books.
And Ifill also should have asked Joe Biden about his central role in pushing through the bankruptcy bill that punished countless average debtors, while benefiting the big credit card companies.
Indeed each candidate could have been pressed over the indicated matters, which every voter should wish to fully understand. But who got the bigger free ride? Palin's closet has been opened other places, while that bankruptcy "reform" does pinch the little guy, who Dems traditionally say they underpin rather than undermine. I would be interested in knowing the role Biden played in it and his rationale, for such "reform" was something proposed while Wellstone lived which he strongly opposed. Credit card interests were big 2000 donors to Bush-Cheney, and the proposal became law making it hard to use bankruptcy to cancel oppressive credit card debt and rates, or to escape ruin if uninsured medical costs arose in amounts beyond the patient's ability to pay.
A final interesting Miller item I will note, here, is more on the unreliability and openess to tampering that often used voting equipment entails. Both Miller and Friedman say enough that way, in several posts, to be troubling to all of us about how our votes are counted, whether phantom votes can be added, vote intent reversed by machine error, and whether our votes actually count for what they should where we are told they are sacrosanct.
Friedman has an interesting post on the Diebold service van with the McCain sticker in the back window; in a historical context, here.
Friedman has an intensely provocative post about a matter that has generated much blog and internet reporting attention, and worry, about troop deployment in the "homeland" from Iraq duty, where Democracy Now and Army Times give some sobering detail - and where readers can Google to read more but still be left wondering - what's happening, what's being anticipated, why this?
Finally, Friedman posts a guest editorial by Miller, about election theft and the McCain choice of Sarah Palin.
If no other links are pursued but the last two, the homeland troop deployment and the Palin - election considerations, the most important gist of things can still be sensed. I do not discount election fraud and manipulation claims dating from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as freely as many others do. I think accepting the "generally accepted version" is much like being accepting without skepticism of all single-gunman-killed-Kennedy explanations. Believe what you will.