Dean gives news conference, omits news

Howard Dean and the Democrats have released their report - Democracy at Risk: The Ohio Election - on the 2004 Ohio Presidential election. You all remember, the election that had the likes of Keith Olberman and Jim " is there any greater imperative than to reverse this crime and reestablish democracy in America" Lampley hyperventilating about the stolen election? That had the Democratic Underground lunatic fringe screaming and yelling, furious at Kerry for giving up when the election was obviously fraudulent?

Well, they have, as I say, released their report. And given a press conference.

And neglected to mention the key passage from the report (page 10:)

I. The statistical study of precinct-level data does not suggest the occurrence of widespread fraud that systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.
• The tendency to vote for Kerry in 2004 was the same as the tendency to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002 (Hagan). That the pattern of voting for Kerry is so similar to the pattern of voting for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002 is, in the opinion of the team’s political science experts, strong evidence against the claim that widespread fraud systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.
• Kerry’s support across precincts also increased with the support for Eric Fingerhut, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, and decreased with the support for Issue 1 (ballot initiative opposing same-sex marriage) and increased with the proportion of African American votes. Again this is the pattern that would be expected and is not consistent with claims of widespread fraud that misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.

And then, on Page 20:

Despite the problems on Election Day, there is no evidence from our survey that John Kerry won the state of Ohio. Two (2) percent of voters who went to the polls on Election Day decided to leave their polling locations due to the long lines. This resulted in approximately 129,543 lost votes. However, these potential voters would have divided evenly between George Bush and John Kerry. A smaller group of potential voters (0.08 percent) were not given ballots at all due to registration challenges. These approximately 4,798 voters favored Kerry, according to the poll (extreme sample size caution). Finally, a third group of voters (equivalent to 0.83 percent of the voting population) did not go to the polls at all because they did not receive their absentee ballots, or had heard about long lines, registration challenges, and confusing polling sites. We do not know the voting preferences of these approximately 47,979 voters. However, even if they had all chosen Kerry, his overall gain of 52,777 votes would not have erased Bush’s 118,000 vote margin in the state.

Son-of-a-gun. Looks like President Bush really won, huh? Who'd a thunk it?