To those of you wanting "solid evidence" of malfeasance in the 2004 election: You aren't gonna get it.

Look at the Valerie Plame affair. The strongest charge against Libby is obstruction. That means he successfully blocked the prosecutors from finding out the "whole truth." We will never know significantly more than we know now.

I just don't understand why people find it so hard to believe that the election was stolen. Forget for a moment that there is insufficient evidence to support the claim. Please someone address this question:

What was stopping them from trying?

Given the unprecedented power the Republicans had going into the election, Democrats and Independents simply didn't have the necessary access to find anything, nor the necessary majority in Congress to do anything, if in fact they ever found any "evidence."

I just wish someone would tell me why there is any reason for me to "trust" that the Republicans didn't steal this election. They had the motive, the means--the election was there for the taking. It's no worse than lying about weapons of mass destruction. Just because the evidence is thin, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

"Just because the evidence is thin, doesn't mean it didn't happen."

Just because I cannot produce the green cheese that the moon is made of doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Look, people, quit acting like manjoo is the enemy. Read his damn article before foaming at the mouth. Many of us in the reality based world like to base our decisions and views on verifiable facts, not conjecture, hand waving and hysteria.

Do I think the Republicans "stole" the election? Yes. And the Dems made it easy, because they are pathetic. Do I think this is the only election that has ever been stolen? Hell no, and the dems have probably stolen more of them.

I would like Mr. Manjoo to comment on the latest claims from "the Free Press, a muckraking lefty Web site" that the recent outcome of the referendums election in Ohio was fixed. These were voting reforms and four were defeated despite pre-election polls from the Columbus Dispatch ahead of time they would pass.

From Huffington Post:

ISSUE 1 ($2 Billion State Bond initiative)

PRE-POLLING: 53% Yes, 27% No, 20% Undecided

FINAL RESULT: 54% Yes, 45% No

ISSUE 2 (Allow easier absentee balloting)

PRE-POLLING: 59% Yes, 33% No, 9% Undecided

FINAL RESULT: 36% Yes, 63% No

ISSUE 3 (Revise campaign contribution limits)

PRE-POLLING: 61% Yes, 25% No, 14% Undecided

FINAL RESULT: 33% Yes, 66% No

ISSUE 4 (Ind. Comm. to draw Congressional Districts)

PRE-POLLING: 31% Yes, 45% No, 25% Undecided

FINAL RESULT: 30% Yes, 69% No

ISSUE 5 (Ind. Board instead of Sec. of State to oversee elections)

PRE-POLLING: 41% Yes, 43% No, 16% Undecided

FINAL RESULT: 29% Yes, 70% No

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