... is that democrats couldn't run a decent campaign. The incumbent was a manipulative, smirking, arrogant, incoherent frat boy and should have been fucking demolished at the polls. Instead, democrats field shitty candidates who keep hiring loser campaign advisors who are so incompetent they not only can't anticipate the type of character assassinations the GOP will trot out (despite a history of 20 years of Karl Rove at the helm of countless campaigns), but when those character assassinations bloom into existence, they have not a fucking clue as to how their candidates should defend themselves.

Get a fucking clue instead of whining about stolen elections. Bush should have been beaten by at least a 10 point margin and it is the fault of the DEMOCRATS that it didn't happen. And stop bellyaching that it means the Democratic Party needs to become more radical. The Democratic Party needs to become merely competent.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com and http://www.blackboxvoting.org are both fascinating resources for e-voting shenanigans.

Did you know a chimpanzee -a zoo animal - can be trained to hack Diebold's e-voting machines? Watch the videotape!

No paper trail? Although Diebold's e-voting machines HAVE PRINTERS INSTALLED? Talk about mountains of bullshit. Honestly, a violent revolution is called for when there's this kind of bullshit...

Interesting that salon.com and Farhad Manjoo have such a sour attitude, nay, a predetermined outcome for this story.

If the votes aren't counted accurately, then people have no duty to obey the falsely-elected leaders nor to pay taxes for their corporate wars.

A letter writer named Karen a few pages back says Salon did not question RFK Jr's hoohah about autism. Is this so? If so, shame on Salon. You do more than a disservice to your readers if this is true; you actually help perpetuate a lie that has repercussions for the health of the general public. The thimerasol/autism link is pure bunkum. How many MDs do you know who withhold vaccines from their children? They love their children as much as everyone else does, and if they thought for a minute that pharmaceutical companies were involved in a scheme to cause a neurological damage to children to preserve profit, you'd see the entire medical community advising the public not to immunize children.

Do your homework. RFK Jr is a half-baked child of legacy, as oblivious to responsibilty as GW Bush is. Both he and Bush believe their opinion makes it so, and why not? They've got legions of fans propping them up and cheering them on.

Try to be a little more discriminating when it comes to rich guys from famous families and their opinions on science, 'kay? It's kneejerking at its finest to decry one rich dope's backing of creationism and take the other rich dope at his word about autism because the other rich dope happens to be a democrat.

Correction:

Al Gore had the popular vote in 2000.

Cheers

H.B. 262 passed in May of 2004, outlaws e-voting machines in Ohio. The deadline is Jan. 2006. In July of 2004, Blackwell cancelled a 100 millon dollar contract with Diebold for their electronic voting machines.

Gordon, what is your point about Blackwell and Diebold stock?

"No one has mentioned the fact that Manjoo amply lays out all his sources with connecting links (he even warns you when the file is huge) so that you can verify his sources, and at the same time Kennedy does no such thing."

Remove the star. This person obviously didn't even bother to read the originating article at rollingstone.com:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

As you can plainly see the article is extensively sourced and footnoted.

Where are your footnotes? Your rebuttals are based upon testimonials, inuendo and ad-hominem dismissals of a quite distinguished group of academicians. You've got to do better than this Boyo.

The sad truth that Mr. Manjoo tries to deflect through his many recontructed events vis a vis the Robert Kenedy article is that indeed, the election was stolen. He is a journalist trying, hoping that the better angels of the world will take us away from the truth that the country and the administration are fraudulant and have careened us down a negative path that has resulted in the death and maiming of it's own citizens and innocents abroad and disengendered us to peoples the world over. I am afraid it is true, and that the arguments Manjoo lays out do not refute very soundly those of Mr. Kennedy, a truth teller and I would add, an excellent candidate for POTUS in 08 or 2012.

Paul Mindell

Venice, CA

This person obviously didn't even bother to read the originating article at rollingstone.com ...

Perhaps, but the dead-tree version of RS, which I read, does not have links, for obvious technological reasons. You have to take it on faith that Kennedy cites the sources fairly. And as Manjoo has pointed out, Kennedy cherry-picks the facts that suit his purposes while ignoring those that don't--all within the same report.

My point stands

And what really pisses me off is that this piece of shit journalism will, in all likelihood, be embraced by the corporate mainstream news media as further proof that the 2004 election was, for the most part, "fair and balanced", which will serve to reassure their viewing audience prior to their tuning into the next showing of American Idol in which they will be anxious to cast their vote. Of course, the mainstream news media will not have had time to justify their reasoning or conclusion, probably alotting just a 15- or 30 second time slot at most in which they will simply reference the title of the piece as offering sufficient proof. (Break for commercial.)

Good God, what's happening to our country?!

Under the current system, campaigns already ignore "entire regions" of the country, in favor of a handful of contested states. Such a system constitutes an invitation to election fraud, by placing national elections within a handful of precincts in a single state. You suggest that rural Americans would be ignored in a democratic system. I doubt that would happen in this age of electronic media; but is it not far more unjust that most big cities and states are irrelevant in national elections (e.g., California in 2000 and 2004)?

In re votes carrying unequal weight among the states, California had 33.9 million people according to the 2000 census, while Wyoming had less than 500,000. In 2000, California had 54 electoral votes, which equals one vote for every 628,000 people. Wyoming had three electoral votes, which equals one vote for every 167,000 people. Thus, Wyoming voters enjoyed nearly four times the per capita electoral weight of California voters.

Using the same method of calculation, a vote for Bush Jr. in North Dakota, together with a vote for Bush Jr. in South Dakota, carried roughly three times the weight of any two Gore votes in California in 2000. As a matter of fact, there are sixteen small red states west of the Mississippi whose combined population is less than California's. Yet those sixteen states commanded 81 electoral votes in 2000, compared to California's 54.

When you consider that the electoral college is a reflection of each state's respective congressional representation, you will more clearly understand why Congress spends so much of its time worrying about abortion, gay marriage, and the other concerns of the bible belt, and so little time addressing the fiasco in Iraq and the failure to catch Osama bin-Forgotten, not to mention little things like health insurance, global warming, etc.