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Ignore for a moment Mr. Manjoo's weak arguments and tenuous grasp on the facts. Kennedy is writing in defense of a representative democracy. It is clear to all--even to Mr. Manjoo, if you read between the lines of his opening paragraphs--that the Voting Rights Act was violated in Ohio, and that many citizens of that state were unfairly deprived of their right to cast their vote and/or have their vote counted as required by that law. The Department of Justice under acting White House Counsel Al Gonzales has done nothing to address the voter rights issues which arose in that state. The state of Ohio used the Voting Rights Act violations as an excuse to enact draconian legislation which will only disenfranchise more voters in elections to come. The Department of Justice, which rubber stamped approval of Georgia's Poll Tax/Voter ID is unlikely to bat an eye at Ohio's new laws any more than they objected to Blackwell's arbitrary rulings about which votes would be counted (recall that the standard of federal law is that if voter intent can be determined, it must be counted).
Kennedy took a position, which was that a conspiracy existed to deprive a large number of citizens of their right to vote in order to change the outcome of an election. He then presented evidence to suggest that the conspiracy may have had the intended effect. However, whether a sufficient number of votes were discarded or changed to effect the outcome, the very fact that such a conspiracy existed is grounds for alarm. For, if such efforts are not prevented, eventually elections become meaningless shams, as we in the South know all too well, since such election fraud has been the status quo here since Reconstruction.
When Mr. Manjoo takes the opposite position, he sounds like a high school kid who has been given the thankless job of defending the indefensible in a debate. The fact that he clutches at proofs like Warren Mitofsky's so called "Reluctant Responder Theory" makes his piece even more pitiful. I am hard pressed to understand why so many otherwise sane people can not recognize what happened in Ohio. I am reminded of the decision which Marlowe makes at the end of "Heart of Darkness", to lie to Kurtz's fiancee, and how he thinks that it would be "Too dark" if she were to know the truth. I wonder are people who have not grown up, as southerners have, alienated from governments whose officials often are selected through election fraud and voter intimidation afraid to admit the possibility that the Republican Party may have imported strategies from south of the Maxon-Dixon Line for use in northern elections like the one in Ohio 2004? If so, they need to get over their fear, accept the truth and start acting like grown ups. Being told "everything is alright, hush now, child" by people like Mr. Manjoo or Al Franken or John Kerry is not what our democracy needs.
