11/11/04
This afternoon, I received a phone call from a New York Times reporter. After watching the hits on this website skyrocket for the last 3 days, I knew something like this was inevitable.
Luckily it was a message on my voice mail, so I had some time to think about it before I spoke to him. At first I was excited. Perhaps the story is finally going to break into the mainstream media, and perhaps my website helped facilitate that happening.
Then reality set in. I could see it now. The headlines read, "Crazy conspiracy theorist stays up late at night working on website..."
That's just what I want for my 15 minutes of fame, the whole country (or at least the few "liberals" left who still read the NY Times) laughing at me and my conspiracy theory.
I figured if anything does get printed, it will probably be something between the two visions I had, so it was worth it to call back.
The reporter's first question, "so who are you?"
I thought that was a bad sign. He wasn't asking about the data, the polls, the investigations, he asked about me. But I had the perfect answer for him.
I explained "I am nobody." The website I've created is not about me. It's merely a collection of information, links and articles that other people have written. There are investigations going on, data, information, and commentary around an interesting and potentially explosive subject. The media is not reporting on it, so I am.
I explained that I was trying to be objective as possible. The heading on the website says "Was the election stolen? Here are the facts. You decide." I explained that there are enough questions about the election that the issue deserves scrutiny. The media was not even asking the questions. I put the website together so that people could at least look at the information that's coming out.
Perhaps it will all be explained away. Maybe there's a reason why thousands of more votes were cast in Ohio than there are registered voters. Maybe there's a good reason why heavily democratic areas voted for Bush. Maybe there's a good reason why the exit polls were only wrong in the states with electronic voting machines. Maybe there's a good reason to have paperless voting machines manufactured by companies that support the Republican Party. Maybe there was a good reason to send out flyers to people telling them they can't vote.
My point is that these issues are worth discussing and in order to discuss them we need to see the data and try to get to the truth. It is worth our time, and it is worth our money, because our democracy is at stake.
Luckily, the reporter didn't only want to know about me. He also did want to discuss some of the specific issues and questions that have been raised. He told me that he personally had not seen any conclusive evidence that the election was stolen. My question to him is, does that mean we should stop looking at the data? You can't find anything unless you look for it, things like this don't usually drop out of the sky on to your desk.
One thing he asked me was, "what do you think is the most important issue of all this?" I replied, it's the electronic voting machines with no paper trail that were manufactured by supporters of the Republican Party. I told him that if those machines were not involved I highly doubted that my website would exist or that I would have received one such phone call from a NY Times reporter.
My point is, we have questions. We have data that doesn't seem right. And the situation with the machines at least looks suspicious.
As long as we have questions without answers, I'll keep the website up and I'll keep updating it. And if I have to stick my neck out in the New York Times just for putting up a few links on a website, then so be it.
The easiest article to write about this website is about a conspiracy theorist who stays up late at night. It involves nothing more than a 15 minute phone call and few light-hearted words to make the reader chuckle.
On the other hand, investigative journalism involves looking for facts, and following leads wherever they take you. To coin a phrase, it takes a little "hard work." Which article will appear in the paper tomorrow? We'll see.