electronic voting, political patterns, weblog discovery

A great collection of links and good thoughts from Dave Pollard on voting system integrity - today's news of course being security lapses with Sequoia Technology's voting software - Dan Gillmor:

It continues to astonish me that we're letting our most fundamental duty in a democracy -- voting -- turn into a system that's just begging to be rigged in a way that can't be audited. Why are we so blind?

Much good stuff on Dave Pollard's weblog including his next post, on the dynamics of continued support for deservedly beleaguered presidents:

I remember the way Republicans also supported...Richard Nixon. When Watergate hit, they rallied 'round the beleaguered president and stuck with him until it became clear that he was a liability to their own political careers rather than an asset, and then they deserted him in droves.
...There was hardly a peep from Republicans against Nixon until mid-1973, when popular support for Nixon plunged below 50%. By that time at least two dozen senior members of the Administration had been jailed or fired...