the election is over. the actual vote counting is still underway. & if the US is going to go around the world inflicting our vision of "democracy" on other countries whether they like it or not, it seems obvious that we need to lead by example & make sure all the votes are counted. the chances of the final vote counts flipping the election for kerry are slim (and you'd better believe the gop would fight with all its might to ensure that doesn't happen), but that's not really the point.

(i keep having visions of the Count from sesame street inspecting punchcards... "that's one vote for kerry, ah ha ha! two votes for kerry, ah ha ha!" maybe that's just me. or maybe that would make for a kickass episode of elmo's world.)

if you listen to the mainstream corporate media, they might tell you how amazingly "clean" this election was. but that's not really true, except possibly by 2000 standards. yes, so far there have been no federal lawsuits filed by the candidates. the election will most likely not be decided by the supreme court this time around. but there are lawsuits aplenty, with tons of allegations and stories of voter fraud, voter intimidation, & all-around voter irregularities.

so far, the only member of the mainstream media to acknowledge all this is keith olbermann at msnbc. he's been doing some great blogging about voter irregularities, such as strange results in many florida counties, which show bush winning significant numbers of democrats (some counties even have more ballots cast than actual voters... thousands more). or the fact that everyone was so quick to accept that exit polls were wrong, despite the fact that exit polls have always been considered fairly reliable, to the point that observers would shout "fraud!" if exit polls were that far off in other countries. and greg palast has been talking a lot about "spoilage": the whopping three percent of votes in a standard election that are simply thrown away due to "voter error": undervotes, overvotes, chads of the hanging & pregnant persuasions.

so far, if you want to hear about these stories you must research them yourself, or frequent the liberal blogs & news sites. but with olbermann, a major pundit on a tv network, pushing the story, the rest of the corporate media might get shamed into covering the story as well. ohio results are confirmed on november 12, if i'm not mistaken. so pay attention.