Essentially your defense of Holder's risible remarks on voter fraud which the posted video makes even more laughable is "You guys do it more!", though with no actual substantiation of that claim. You should refrain from making such remarks unless you want to get into a point-counterpoint on this matter, I do not like people trashing my home state of Ohio with unsubstantiated accusations of rigging the 2004 election. There were problems, many of which were caused by good-faith efforts of republican and democrat alike to avoid other problems, but most were smoke, mirrors, and moon dust. I'm quite willing and able to defend my state, and I'd politely ask you to withdraw your implications above and lower in the thread unless you'd actually care to back them up with specific, substantiated claims I can refute and not just saying they took place.

Many of the claims of irregularities upon investigation not only couldn't be locked down with cold, hard evidence suitable for conviction but flew directly in the face of evidence. Many reports were loudly made about ten hour lines that upon investigation, which were woefully under-reported to the point of verging on slander, could not have possibly occurred. Even the voting machines problems themselves stem in large part from concerns by Dennis Kucinch that Diebold would seek to rig the election so that none of their equipment was used and thus many other things could substituted in with bugs and limited training and understandable errors... that's note voter fraud or voter suppression and shouldn't be considered such, and has no place in the discussion if chalked up to simple confusion.

Frankly the only results of democrat congressmen and democrat prosecutors working over time on what bordered at points on a witch hunt was the resignation of the Democrat who was in charge of the Cuyahoga (Cleveland) board of elections and two workers who even the prosecutor said were guilty of laziness not attempted voter fraud. Probably worth noting that the particular process they'd have been involved in would have required they be one each from each major party, one of the reasons the litigation came from neither the Dems nor GOP.

As I said... and as you just sort of ignored rather than attempting to rebut... voter fraud/suppression is very hard in many cases to prove as criminal rather than the object of neglect, accident, or he said she said. My objection was to Eric Holder calling these non-existent problems and ignoring red-handed cases.

People might claim their pen malfunctioned by running out of ink and not bothering to ask for another and later feel aggrieved about it, you get more of these complaints from Dems because they demographically are concentrated in Urban areas which incidentally also tend to have noticeably higher fluctuation rates in presidential versus non-presidential years. Rural areas rarely have this kind of packing on the simple grounds that they have more polling precincts per voter since polling locations are expensive but you generally need an individual location for every unique ballot, and a city councilman might represent 10,000 people while a township trustee might only have 500 people with no other precinct sharing the facility because it's many miles to the next town, not several blocks. People don't accidentally wander into the wrong voting place as novice voters thinking any polling place will work in rural areas either... not to be a prick but in terms of raw stats that sort of confusion afflicts Dem voters more, who statistically are simply more likely to live in urban areas and be newer voters. You also do get the occasional unbalanced voter coming in, I hesitate to say the crazies tend to hang out more in cities but as I said tongue-in-cheek to Joel on this matter some time back the crazier rural republicans typically vote absentee from inside fortified bunkers, rather than trying to vote using a prescription bottle as proof of ID (the possibly apocryphal story says the case involved someone using a bottle of anti-psychotic medicines) and these sorts of things can cause delays that make people get frustrated at having to wait ten minutes, later reported as 'a whole hour!' or come by during the morning rush, get scared off by the line, come back in the evening and get scared off again only say 'there was a line there for ten hours!'

All of which on examination is highly implausible. Most voter precincts contain around a thousand people, most of whom do not vote, many of whom are minors or never bothered registering. There are over 11,000 in Ohio, and about 5.5 million votes in 2204, averaging 500 votes per precicnt In Ohio, each precinct has a minimum of 4 workers, 2 Dems and 2 GOP who aren't allowed to do crap without one of both parties involved. Polls are open for 13 hours in Ohio, 6:30 to 7:30, and absentee voting requires no reason be given besides whim, ask and ye shall receive, but that means the average precinct would have been getting a flow of about 40 voters an hour, speaking from personal knowledge that will keep you busy, especially during pre and post work rushes and lunch rushes, but hardly causes hour long delays.

By the way, since I happen to have the actual data in spreadsheet form I can tell you that the largest precinct in Ohio in 2004, in terms of registered voters, was Columbus's 41st Ward Precinct B, 1000 votes cast. To get to Cleveland you have to go down to the 17th largest precinct in which 285 votes were cast... not to damn probable, as any reporter worth their salt (something of an endangered animal these days) could tell, it's not too damn likely a place had ten hour delays pushing through 285 voters.

Queerly the Cuyahoga precinct that had the most voters some in was Olmsted Township, which was roughly 50/50 GOP Dem and processed slightly over 1000 voters with no issue in spite of having 82% of their registered voters turn out. Ohio accepts all sorts of means for proving ID and we got clogged up in 2004, where we did which was over-reported, mostly because of primarily well intentioned and bi-partisan efforts to avoid problems.

Essentially like other swing states we get abuse from others because their hard red or blue status means nobody is standing behind them looking over their shoulder, breathing down their neck, and doing anything else which might suggest itself at such proximity. Then people go out pointing fingers at us when they don't like the result and treat unsubstantiated rumor as hard fact and isolated incidents as major conspiracies at the behest of the party leadership. But I never claimed the Dems were more or less guilty of it then the GOP, I said Holder had no business declaring it was a non-existent problem. So there's still no 'irony' in A/T2K's comments because while he might have some partisan animosity on the issue as clearly do you, my issue is with Eric Holder himself, and to a lesser degree my irritation at the not-entirely-unjustified tendency of both parties to leap to the defense of their own even when they're clearly incompetent or corrupt.

With that in mind would you care to either A) Defend Eric Holder's comments about voter fraud "a problem that does not exist." or B) Actually cite proven or even substantiated claims of Ohio having party-driven voter fraud or suppression? As you claim by implication in your second reply to A/T2K?