Greg Palast's conspiracism isn't helpful …

I've read Palast's books and greatly admire the guy. You might say I'm a fan.

But, on the issue of yesterday's still-too-close-to-call vote in Mexico, he's apparently decided that there's rampant institutional fraud taking place -- aided by the Evil Ones in the Bush administration -- and he's not going to let a bunch of pesky facts get in the way of that narrative.

The problem with that is that he's sending progressives to bark up the wrong tree; as the Institute for Policy Studies' Chuck Collins, an observer with the Global Exchange delegation, reports on the front page, the real issues to watch -- and let's hope any irregularities aren't enough to sway the outcome -- are vote-buying by party operatives, local officials telling poor, rural voters that they'll lose access to public services if they don't vote "correctly" and various forms of voter intimidation.

The last thing anyone needs in what is shaping up to be a hyper-charged post-balloting environment is a bunch of conspiracy theories about the Mexican electoral institutions themselves.

And that's just what Palast's been peddling. Consider this ominous-sounding but substance-free report from Friday:

George Bush's operatives have plans to jigger with the upcoming elections. I'm not talking about the November '06 vote in the USA (though they have plans for that, too). I'm talking about the election this Sunday in Mexico for their Presidency.

It begins with an FBI document marked, "Counterterrorism" and "Foreign Intelligence Collection" and "Secret." Date: "9/17/2001," six days after the attack on the World Trade towers. It's nice to know the feds got right on the ball, if a little late.

What does this have to do with jiggering Mexico's election? Hold that thought.

This document is what's called a "guidance" memo for using a private contractor to provide databases on dangerous foreigners. Good idea. [...]

All the target nations had one thing in common besides a lack of terrorists: each had a left-leaning presidential candidate or a left-leaning president in office. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, bete noir of the Bush Administration, was facing a recall vote. In Mexico, the anti-Bush Mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was (and is) leading the race for the Presidency.

Most provocative is the contractor to whom this no-bid contract was handed: ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Georgia. ChoicePoint is the database company that created a list for Governor Jeb Bush of Florida of voters to scrub from voter rolls before the 2000 election...

In Mexico this Sunday, we can expect to see the same: challenges of Obrador voters in a race, the polls say, is too close to call. Not that Mexico's rulers need lessons from the Bush Administration on how to mess with elections.[…]

How the US' purloined "counterterrorism" lists will be used, we don't know.

Do you notice what's missing here? An actual allegation. Palast throws the name ChoicePoint out there -- a bogeyman for the left if ever there was one -- but doesn't connect it in any way with Mexico's electoral authorities. Remember, his excellent reporting on ChoicePoint's involvement in the 2000 Florida vote revealed that Katherine Harris had ordered the company to purge tens of thousands of voters from the official voter rolls, most of whom turned out to be eligible African-American voters. Nothing like that in this case.

Mexican authorities actually arrested the ChoicePoint operatives for creating the list in question, but Palast says, bizarrely, that the arrests simply proved that "Mexico's attorney general did [it] to avoid his party from looking too much the stooge of its Washington patron." Huh?