In the final days leading up to the election, almost a thousand people in Summit County, Ohio received subpoenas requiring them to go down to court to prove they lived where they said they lived on their registration card in order to vote.

Why and how were they subpoena'ed?

The State Republican Party sent out a mailer to these people and used registered mail as the means of delivery. Most of the people had not been home when the mailman came and chose not to go to the post office to accept registered mail from the Republican Party.

The Party then took the names of the people who had not signed for the mailer, and then called four elderly people and convinced them to fill out challenge forms. So, these four people, filled out over 200 cards each and verified the information by signature "under the penalty of election falsification", claiming that the people weren't living where they said they were.

A raucous hearing took place at the County Board of Elections on Thursday, October 28th, five days before the election, whereupon 976 challenges were thrown out. The County Republican head, Art Arshinkoff claimed no knowledge of any of this. In an article from the Akron Beacon Journal (that's oddly enough no longer available online), Arshinkoff compared the proceedings to a ``train wreck'' and said representatives from the Ohio Republican Party should have been at the hearing to defend the lists of challenges that it prepared.

There were 35,000 challenged voters in Ohio.

A transcript of the Board hearing can be found here: http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2004/oct/ohio/boardofelections281004.pdf

So, you tell me how many people does a conspiracy take? The law says two or more. In this case, it sounds like it would take one State party operative to make a few phone calls to sucker four local people into "helping out" by commiting fraud, so the answer is five people, four of whom didn't know they were doing anything wrong.

Not only was Blackwell Chief Elections Officer for the state, he also was the co-chair of the Committee to Re-elect George Bush in Ohio. Conflict of interest much?

Add this to the litany of suspicious activity that occured throughout the country over the last few election cycles, do your homework and then try to tell me that there wasn't a concerted, illegal, and in the end, successful effort to subvert the will of "We the People" not only in Ohio, but in the whole of the United States in the 2004 Presidential Election.

First of all, you don't answer my main objection to your article, that the 2000 elections were flawed as well. That was another instance where the best polling minds in the world called the election for Al Gore. When the dust settled, the guy with fewer votes managed to get into office

Simply not true. Most polls showed a pretty easy Bush win in 2000 up until the final weekend when (a) the ancient Bush DUI story was magicaly rediscovered (talk about political dirty tricks and press complicty!) and (b) Gore went on a major campaign swing while Bush got complacent and stopped campaigning.

As for the second half, that's the way our Founding Father's set it up--in short, it's purely Constitutional. And we should praise their foresight and wisdom: otherwise every president would be elected by the citizens of New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, L.A. and San Franciso, and that's not representative democracy.

<<In the final days leading up to the election, almost a thousand people in Summit County, Ohio received subpoenas requiring them to go down to court to prove they lived where they said they lived on their registration card in order to vote.>>

No, no one was "subpoenaed." (Nice use of that loaded legal term.) All you had to do was respond to the mailing to prove that the registered address was real. This is a perfectly legal remedy to rampant voter fraud of phantom voters from nonexistent addresses--a particular specialty of Democrats, by the way.

My mom grew up in Chicago but hasn't lived there since 1960. She says she has no doubt that she has still "voted" in every election since.

To claim Kennedy had distorted facts, and than fail to acknowledege the obvious distortions of this article is appalling.

What are the "obvious distortions" in this article?

For some reason this is Mr. Manjoo's personal schtick, to tell those of us who are worried about what happened in Ohio not to worry. Everything's okay, he says, over and over. But I for one have lost my trust in his credibility. For almost all the facts he states there are others that can be offered as counter arguments. He sets himself as the final arbiter of the truth by declaring Kennedy's views as an "opinion" and his views as "reality." To which I answer, "Oh really?"

And speaking of reality versus illusion, the far more serious fairy tale folks are telling themselves right now is that every vote counts. The Republican party got away with a coup in 2000. Why wouldn't they try it again? And with the Diebold machine leakier than the levees in New Orleans, what's not to worry about. Unless hey, you'd really prefer a Republican monarchy.

I am cancelling my subscription --- this time it will not be renewed. Your appalling lead article saying RFK's arguments are baseless is one of the worst I have read on your pages.

I was in Ohio on election day and saw first hand what the Republican party did at the polling place where I was assigned-- disabled and old people who didn't get their absentee ballots, the sign-carrying anti-gay African Americans paid by Dobson, provisional ballots used with abandon. My daughter had her vote thrown out because of the latter.

I fully agree with Robert Kennedy's summary. You who doubt the tenacity and reckless abuse of people's rights by the Republican party in general and this administration in particular are living in la-la land. You are probably frightened to think that this could be done right under our noses with so little outrage from the the citizenry and the media; but it is you, the media we have trusted, that has done more to undermine real democracy in this country by your failure to do your job. This Manjoo piece is just another example.

My subscription may not expire for a few months, but I will block you from my screen. Shame on you for complicity.