Whatever his aim, RFK Jr. does not appear intent on fixing the problem. He's more content to take us through a hit parade of the most popular, and the most dismissible, theories purporting to show that John Kerry won Ohio, theories that have been swirling about the blogosphere ever since the race was called. I scoured his Rolling Stone article for some novel story or statistic or theory that would prove, finally, that George W. Bush was not the true victor. But nothing here is new. If you've spent time on Democratic Underground or have read Mark Crispin Miller's "Fooled Again," you're already familiar with everything Kennedy has to say.

If you do read Kennedy's article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data. The first salient omission comes in paragraph five, when Kennedy writes, "In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots." To back up that assertion, Kennedy cites "Democracy at Risk," the report the Democrats released last June.

That report does indeed point out that many people -- 26 percent -- who first registered in 2004 did not find their names on the voter rolls at polling places. What Kennedy doesn't say, though, is that the same study found no significant difference in the share of Kerry voters and Bush voters who came to the polls and didn't find their names listed. The Democrats' report says that 4.2 percent of Kerry voters were forced to cast a "provisional" ballot and that 4.1 percent of Bush voters were made to do the same -- a stat that lowers the heat on Kennedy's claim of "astounding" partisanship. Such techniques are evident throughout Kennedy's article. He presents a barrage of seemingly important, apparently damning data to show that Kerry won the race. It's only when you dig into his claims that you see what thin ice he's on....

Certainly you can find some good in Kennedy's report. His section on Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's right-wing secretary of state, nicely sums up the reasons why people have been suspicious of the voting process in the state. Blackwell, Kennedy notes, "had broad powers to interpret and implement state and federal election laws -- setting standards for everything from the processing of voter registration to the conduct of official recounts." There's no argument that he used those powers for partisan gain. As Kennedy documents, in the months prior to the election, Blackwell issued a series of arbitrary and capricious voting and registration rules that could well have disenfranchised many people in the state. But to prove Blackwell stole the state for Bush, Kennedy's got to do more than show instances of Blackwell's mischief. He's got to outline where Blackwell's actions could possibly have added up to enough votes to put the wrong man in office. In that, he fails. In the following pages, I match Kennedy's claims with the reality of the 2004 election.... --more

Complication of the election integrity issue works to the advantage of the status quo; which is to say, the increasing use of paperless, unauditable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. More complications abound as critics of the status quo attempt to prove that past, and presumably future, elections were and will be fraudulent.

In fact, the controversy can be reduced to two simple questions:

1. Can defenders of the status quo prove that the 2004 (and also the 2000 and 2002) elections were fair and accurate?

2. Can defenders of the status quo refute the critics?

The answer to the first question is simple and straightforward: they cannot, because the DREs (and also the central compiling computers) were designed to exclude proof. The software is secret, and thus closed to inspection and validation, and there is no independent record of the votes against which the totals can be verified. (Running the same computations again is not a “recount”). Moreover, computing experts have found, and demonstrated, numerous “holes” in the machines through which voting totals can be finagled, and reports of still more flaws continue to come in.

The response of the private election industry and the Republicans to demands of proof are (1) “trust us,” (2) ad hominem attacks on the critics. (“Sore losers,” “conspiracy theorists,” “get over it!”). And finally (with the collaboration of the mainstream media) (3) no response. There are no substantive proofs of validity because, once again, the machines are designed to exclude them.

Regarding the second question, every now and then an attempt is made to refute the critics. The most recent of note was published last Friday in Salon.com, and was written by Farhad Manjoo,  who has made something of a career out of debunking the critics. Whenever an important critique of the electoral status quo is published, by John Conyers’ committee, by Mark Crispin Miller, or most recently by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., we can generally count on a rebuttal by Manjoo. Last week, he did not disappoint us.

Manjoo’s latest was a pathetically weak piece of work which, due to its flaws, only serves to strengthen the case of its target, the RFK article. Or so I shall argue in the remainder of this essay.

At the outset, I should note that with all due respect to Robert Kennedy Jr., I must hope that he is wrong and the Manjoo is right. If so, then the Democrats have an excellent chance of regaining control of at least one house of Congress in the November election, and with it oversight of the Bush Administration. But if Kennedy is right about the ability of the Republicans to “fix” elections, then it may be impossible to budge the GOP from power, whatever might be the will of the voters. False optimism is the enemy of reform.


To begin, let’s address a few minor points, which can be dispatched quite briefly.

Is Kennedy just rehashing old complaints?  Manjoo writes: “If you've spent time on Democratic Underground or have read Mark Crispin Miller's "Fooled Again," you're already familiar with everything [sic] Kennedy has to say.” [My emphasis, EP]  Because Miller is about to publish a rebuttal of this claim, I would prefer to let him reply in his own behalf. However, having read the books by Conyers, Fitrakis and Wasserman, and Mark Crispin Miller, I am willing to stipulate that most of what Kennedy presents is “old stuff”, however this time with the added advantage of scrupulous documentation.

But so what? Those “old stories” are no less substantial for being “old.” On the contrary, after a year and a half of examination and criticism, they still stand up. For this reason, the “old” possesses an advantage over the “new.”


Were the Ohio (and other) anomalies nothing more than expected “screw-ups’ and coincidences found in all elections? If so, then these anomalies would be expected to work, approximately evenly, to the advantage and disadvantage of both sides. They did not. Almost all of the alleged “screw-ups” and “coincidences” worked to the advantage of Bush. Typical of defenders of the Ohio outcome, Manjoo also points out that individual anomalies were not sufficient to alter the outcome of the Ohio election. But he fails to address obvious rejoinder: the cumulative effect of several anomalies (by no means all of them) were quite enough.


Manjoo has nothing whatever to say about paperless Direct Electronic Recording (DRE) machines.  He presumably says nothing because he can say nothing that can advance his case for the validity of the 2004 election. So there is not a word in his article about secret source codes, lack of independent paper record, impossibility of auditing, or the GOP partisanship of the manufacturers and code-writers. Even if DREs in Ohio in 2004 (and elsewhere, and in 2002 and 2000) were 100% honest and accurate, there is no reason whatever to know this and an abundance of evidence (statistical, circumstantial and anecdotal) indicating that they were "fixed." As I noted at the outset, "Trust us," and ad hominem attacks on the critics are not evidence. And the silence of the media (not to mention the Democrats) about this compelling issue is deafening.


Now to some more substantial issues:... --more

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