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Farhad Manjoo goes to great length to attack Robert Kennedy's arguments surrounding the theft of the 2004 election, but he utterly fails to show cause why anyone should trust an election process in which the unverifiable count is done in secret by unauditable machines supplied by political partisans who have pledged to bring victory to one of the candidates. Golly, guess who "won"!
The only surprise should be that Americans have not rioted in the streets. (Maybe the French aren't so lame after all. They are not afraid to take a visible stand or to make demands of their government.) Such a small thing to demand: verifiable elections. Why should anyone be branded a nut case for questioning results that cannot be verified? It's not like politicians or their partisans are above reproach; they've amply demonstrated that they are not.
Manjoo would have us take it on some twisted faith that our elections are completely honest and calls us conspiracy theorists if we dare ask for proof. That's a typical right-wing smear tactic, and by using it Manjoo shows his true colors as well as his total lack of interest in real democracy. What if the evidence suggested that Democrats had stolen the election? Would Manjoo accept the results on faith? Would he label angry Republicans as conspiracy theorists?
And just because the evidence "isn't new" doesn't mean it isn't true. Exit polls may not lie, but politicians and their partisan supporters surely do, and if Manjoo cannot point to verifiable proof that Bush won the election - which indeed he cannot do - then there is just as much reason to listen to him as there is to believe the election "results": none at all.
One question remains in my mind: When will the US again enjoy truly transparent and verifiable elections? The people demand to know.
Oh, and one more: Why, exactly, did Salon run with Manjoo's screed?
