Well, what do ya know? There's a reason to believe.

The Keith Olbermann group had its genesis in the aftermath of the 2004 election, when a group of DUers deeply disturbed about the blantant irregularities in the 2004 "election" of GW Bush over John Kerry came together in the Election Reform group, noticing KO was the only one in the national media acknowledging that Ohio's results and process were seriously suspect, under SOS Ken Blackwell.

We became a clan whose focus on the election questions became leavened by our increasing appreciation of Keith's approach to the serious topics as well as his sense of humor. We became tremendous friends and colleagues and in addition to having incredible community also worked on serious fronts regarding the opacity of electronic voting at the time.

Now, things have moved to where the scrutiny of elections has brought things to the point we had hoped for but never really expected: rigorously validated vote tabulation, on the precinct and county level. We dreamed of a day when hand-marked paper ballots would be the standard, and felt that as important a cause it was, it would likely never happen.

But then Republicans started crying foul, attributing losses to imagined and unsubstantiable fraud, and demanded hand-counted audits, and unwittingly furthered the agenda of truly verifiable voting. We now have the more secure voting and tabulation process that we insisted was crucial to democracy, even though it felt at the time that we were shouting into the wind.

So, I find once again that I believe in the possibility of an enduring democracy, with a functional electoral system.

And to all the friends, compatriots, and more that I met here, 18 years ago, hello out there, and cheers!