That reference was made to Manjoo citing, without criticism, the Hertsgaard Mother Jones article, apparently on the basis of the claimed title for Hertsgaard of "investigative journalist". A link was provided in my letter below of some of the discrediting of Hertsgaard's "investigation". Manjoo could have cited investigative reporter Greg Palast, who early on concluded Ohio was stolen by vote "spoilage", a phenomenon that does not show up in recounts (nor does voter suppression, vote alterion, etc) because it occurs prior to the initial count.

I see now that page 349 seems to explain Manjoo's motivation: to distance himself from what he fears might not contain enough evidence or proof but the book thanks Manjoo explicitly. I now feel both more disappointed in, and also sympathetic to, Manjoo. Disappointed because he does not honestly admit that he's afraid to even attempt to make the case that irregularities impacted the election result, becfause of the built-in reality that half of the country is seriously at risk to be opposed to him NO MATTER HOW STRONG THE EVIDENCE. Well, not half, maybe 37%, and dropping....

If Manjoo thinks he can help push along election integrity without the fuel of injustice caused by distortion in results from those irregularities (because that will trigger partisan backlash from the other side) he is seriously mistaken. The truth should not be suppressed: the results as reported have no basis for confidence, and were distorted to an extent that is subject to debate since most of the data and so forth is deliberately kept secret. However, keeping our heads stuck in the sand when it comes to disproportionate impact against Democrats while simultaneously calling for reform is a very difficult acrobatic act to pull off.

It would be better, if one lives in fear of partisan backlash, to talk about the shenanigans but simply leave out the name of the state and the parties involved. To say up front that if I tell you which party benefited up to half of you will stop listening, but we all tend to agree that a fair system is needed. i.e. not one which is perfect but one with checks and balances and a low reward for cheaters. The present electronic systems feature very high rewards for cheaters able to move a few electrons.

If manjoo remains serious about election reform, he should resign from the circular firing squad, and concentrate his efforts elsewhere. he can civilly and professionally distinguish himself from those that believe the facts show the election was altered in outcome, but still admit as to how we just don't know what the margin was, and that not knowing, together with the secret vote counting, is intolerable in a democracy "of the people, by the people and for the people" which can not possibly or logically feature hiding the election "ball" from the people themselves.

A poster here accuses Manjoo of being "deeply lazy." I don't think Manjoo is lazy. I think he's looking for some hard proof. And in the absence of some, he's asking tough, but fair questions about this entire issue.

As for being deeply lazy, one of Manjoo's points more than makes the case that Mark Crispin Miller is guilty of that which the poster accuses Manjoo. Miller could not even get one of the basic facts about Ohio correct; one that concerned the 19,000 votes in Miami County. He stated they all went to Bush. Well, oops, those votes actually went to Bush AND KERRY. And their distribution was in line with the final percentages for that county. It's a heluva mistake to make. One that sounds deeply lazy to me.

And Miller is also guilty of the sin of omission. As Manjoo points out, he fails to tell us in his description of the incident in Warren County that the press is always barred from voter tallies in that county. Makes the 'reporters thrown out' claim seem a bit specious, doesn't it?

And Miller complains of "pedantic over-analysis of specific claims." Well, excuse me. If Karl Rove made that statement about his role in the Valerie Plame affair, everyone here roasting Manjoo would be up in arms. And rightly so. Specific claims -- and their so-called 'over-analysis' -- are the backbone of any honest investigation which seeks the truth.

This is my third post on this subject (and hopefully my last) and I still have yet to hear anyone give credible evidence as to the election being stolen in Ohio. All I have ever read on this subject is based on conjecture and what boils down to, in many cases, dubious claims. And I wish some people here would hold people like Mark Crispin Miller to the same standards of accuracy with which they would hold many folks in the Bush administration. Because, quite frankly, it's deeply lazy not to.

"Farhad Manjoo of Salon" is cited in the Acknowledgments as one of the people to whom Mark Crispin Miller "owe[s] an incalculable debt of thanks".

So maybe Joan Walsh didn't know this when she assigned the book review to Manjoo; Manjoo should have seen it and should have refused the assignment.

That he took the assignment anyway shows that his journalistic ethics are, shall we say, thinner than a butterfly ballot.

In a race all concede was close all along, Salon allows (via King Kaufman) as to how predicting a Kerry win makes it onto the list of "worst calls" in its 10 year history? EXCUSE ME? Hoping/predicting a Kerry win was an irresponsible blooper of some sort?? Please, if you can't even Believe you *might* win, you surely will never win.

At the same time, we are also treated to Farhad Manjoo's inexplicable bashing of Democratic Underground and Mark Crispin Miller. Recognizing we might be somewhat puzzled as to why he is "somewhat excercised" by Miller's election fraud expose "Fooled Again", he suggests it is Miller's incredible national book tour or some radio appearances that justify his ire. Failing to cite or discuss the evidence at all, Manjoo characterizes the book's evidence as insufficient but fails to say what evidence would be sufficient, in his mind.

There is tremendous internet energy being devoted to the issue of election irregularities and the fact that the last four or so years have transformed american elections into institutions of secret corporate vote counting, on trade secret software and hardware. No American citizen not owing a duty of loyalty to a machine vendor is allowed to witness the counting or even obtain information on it. Results are simply reported, and that's all the information we will ever get. This alone, i.e. the nondisclosure of data and methods of counting, means that there is NO BASIS FOR CONFIDENCE in elections whatsoever. You can not, for example, get a simple speeding or drunk driving conviction without disclosing the data and workings of the radar gun or breathalyzer, if the defense requests it. The emperor has no clothes on American elections.

Manjoo implicitly claims that these conditions of absolute secrecy as to vote counting simply would not be abused, sold to the highest bidder, or subject to undisclosed errors. Manjoo in fact defends the election results when there is literally NO RATIONAL BASIS upon which one can come to an INDEPENDENT conclusion that the elections were proper. Indeed, the exit polls say Kerry won by over 3 million votes.

Putting secret vote counting together with the exit polls is abundant evidence and cause for an investigation. Though Manjoo technically calls for one, and even says our elections are a "national emergency", his case makes little or no sense because of his denial of any substantial harm to Kerry. he is running head on into a "no harm, no foul" defense, assuming he's serious about election integrity.

Here's the rub: either there's no evidence any results changed (probably because of data and counting secrecy), or else there's some evidence but not enough "to change the result" as they like to day. If there is enough evidence to change the result, then one is a "partisan, sour grapes loserman" who may well engender opposition from the opposition party.

Thus, the more evidence there is that irregularities are damaging our election, the less one is able to talk about it and the more opposition one incurs.

Mark Crispin Miller has done a creditable job of amassing substantial evidence, and that evidence is building every day and greater than any single book could contain. Manjoo's approach of (in prior articles) appearing concerned about possible harms of electronic voting and then lambasting those who gather the evidence of those harms because he is fearful that the case won't be convincing enough to those Miller calls Busheviks, puts election reform into a serious quandary: How to reform without pointing to any harm, when any distortion of our election system hurts a particular political candidate or measure and is therefore partisan by definition. Posing as more responsible than Miller, Manjoo is in fact recklessly putting election reform into a Catch-22 that will be extraordinarily difficult to escape from. The only hope will be the attack on secret vote counting, on the grounds that it is wrong regardless, but nevertheless Manjoo's restriction on the scope of debate is a serious hampering of the discussion for election reform, because if the election problems don't change results, the media has never cared enough to cover the issue.

Finally, Manjoo's citing of Hertsgaard's Mother Jones article is deeply lazy. Hertsgaard claims to be an "investigative reporter" and yet is happy to simply cite an election vendor (i.e. a secret vote counter) in response to an allegation, and consider that sufficient to resolve the issue. As our system is not based on trust but on checks and balances, the fact that Manjoo and Hertsgaard could accept this shallow level of lazy reporting that reveals fundamental deficiencies in their understanding of elections as a whole and how electronic voting revolutionizes them and eliminates their checks and balances without so much as an act of the legislature consciously doing so. Many more problems with the Mother Jones article are within this Democratic Underground thread below. Instead of discrimination based on one's identity as a DU poster, I'd suggest a serious investigation into the facts and arguments pointed out by TimeForChange and LandShark in the link below.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x401123