I'm falling into the same old trap of wanting to have everything in order before posting anything, so here is a more or less random assortment of links worth following on the question of fraud in the 2004 election:

Radagast is doing a mighty job: data, data, data, data and yet more data, plus a whole bunch of links and a summary of the Ohio and New Hampshire recounts.

More data here, and a visual representation of same here.

Around the blogosphere: Sean Carroll, Lawrence Lessig, Brad Friedman, Eliot Gelwan and Kevin Drum -- inter, of course, many alia.

Media matters points out that mainstream media has given the question scant attention; indeed, articles like this and this seem mainly designed to throw around the phrase "conspiracy theory" enough that it will start to stick. Better coverage at the New Standard, but they're hardly mainstream, and Consortium News are part of the choir they're preaching to. Kudos to the principled exception to that rule, Keith Olbermann.

Miscellaneous: Schneier on the problems with e-voting, Buzzflash reports that RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie wants to eliminate exit polls, and the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project has some calm and presumably competent analysis.

Finally, LooterScibby at MyDD.com has a good argument indicating that I owe John Kerry another apology. We'll see.

[Update: the spousal unit points out that, if Looter's right, we may well not see. Looter's argument is that, by conceding, Kerry did not compromise any of the efforts to validate the vote but he did take the focus off himself: rather than "Kerry the sore loser", the story is the vote. This could be true even if Kerry does not have any further obvious, public involvement in vote counting/checking or the push for free and fair elections. It's certainly the sort of canny move I'd expect from a long-serving Senator, and fits much more closely with my (pre-tantrum) assessment of Kerry's character. Dave Johnson of Seeing The Forest makes the point that holding off on the concession might have made a stronger point that it was a close election and did not give Smirky the mandate he keeps claiming. I frankly think that any win, any margin at all, would have been viewed by the Republican party (at least, the far-right faction that seems to have taken over) as a license to print money and turn the social justice clock back a century or two; there was no avoiding the smug talk of "mandates" and "the will of the people". I was bitterly disappointed when Kerry conceded, but I'm beginning to think I was wrong about that too. Will I ever be right about anything again?]