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I, like others, was also struck by Mr. Manjoo's use of polling and voting discrepancies in the 2002 election to "prove" that similar discrepancies in the 2004 election must have been innocent happenstance! Talk about a ridiculous standard of reliability!
No, you nitwit, it's to show that there was nothing unique about '04. It's simply good investigative journalism to see how things happened in the past to see if there is then a huge discrepancy in the case being investigated. It's looking for patterns.
A perfect example of this is how people in 2000 alleged that many of the panhandle counties in Florida were "stolen" because, while they're registered heavily Democratic, they voted overwhelmingly for Bush. Conspiracy!! Until you look at presidential elections back to the '60s and see that those same counties tended to vote for the Republican candidate in all previous elections.
And I'm amazed at the lack of reading comprehension skills among people who claim to be so smart. Manjoo never says things were simply hunky-dory during the '04 election. He cites numerous examples of incompetence, stupidity and faulty assumptions. But none of that equals "stolen"--a deliberate act of theft.
Finally, note that in most newspapers the reporter does not write the headline on his article. Let's give Manjoo the benefit of the doubt on the headline of the article with its definitive "NO" and assume, as with most journalistic articles, it was written by the copy editor.
