16 November 2004

Conservatives rail against MSNBC's Olbermann for reporting election irregularities

November 16, 2004

Media conservatives have labeled MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann a "voice of paranoia" and accused him of perpetuating "idiotic conspiracy theories" for his sustained spotlight on the numerous local news reports of voting irregularities during the November 2 presidential election. Olbermann's emphasis during Countdown with Keith Olbermann on voting irregularities has been part of a critique of what he has called the "Rube Goldberg voting process of ours" -- as well as a criticism of the major media outlets' failure to report on the irregularities.

[...] But Olbermann has not suggested that the election was stolen. Discussing the possible causes of the bevy of reported voting irregularities from around the country, Olbermann offered this analysis on the November 10 edition of Countdown:

There are really only three possible explanations for all of this. The first is hoped for virtually unanimously by supporters of every candidate and every party -- namely, that all those elected last Tuesday got in because that's the way the people voted. The second is that some of them got in through manipulation of a series of insufficiently sophisticated, insufficiently secure computer voting machines that might be hacked into by the nearest 9-year-old. But the third possibility is actually more heart-stopping still, one that threatens the democracy in the way 100 terrorist rings could not -- that the president or the District 90 dog catcher or other Republicans or other Democrats were elected because a series of insufficiently sophisticated, insufficiently secure computer voting machines was affected by bad design, bad use, damp ballots, power surges, and/or static cling.

Olbermann's commitment to addressing voting irregularities has been coupled with commentary on the lack of media coverage they have received, which Media Matters for America has also noted.

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