Vote fraud in black box voting is a huge issue.

Partisanship by voting administrators (Secretaries of States) is a gaping hole in Democracy.

I find it strange Salon needs to censor Bobby Kennedy who has more authority in his little finger that every single Salon writer put together times ten.

This article is crap and undeserving of front page status, just whose side is Salon on? Is this a liberal magazine? Or has The New Republic syndrome happened here too?

Tim Johnson

Chicago, IL

Before even reading this article, I can't get over the dishonesty with which Salon and Manjoo approach it. Take the first sentence of the deck: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues that new evidence proves that Bush stole the election." But no, he doesn't. He only says that he's convinced by the evidence, and that we don't really know whether the right man is in the White House, and that's a far cry from saying the theft is "proven." But it's a lot easier for you to dismiss his article if you distort it first. And, for god's sake, just look at the headline: "Was the 2004 election stolen? No." Excuse me?? How the hell do you know? If you think the evidence is weak, you could say "Probably not" or "Not based on this evidence" or even "Fat chance," but you can't just say "No," if for no other reason than the obvious fact that you can't prove a negative. Absent a real criminal investigation, NOBODY knows; all we can do is examine the evidence and speculate. So why your bullshit? It's reflective, though, of Manjoo's odd belief (as a previous letter writer wisely pointed out) that if there exists any plausible explanation for an irregularity, no matter how improbable, then the argument for corruption thereby falls apart. That's just illogical. I'd be a lot more persuaded by Manjoo's arguments if he (and Salon) seemed fairminded about the subject, but unfortunately that's not the case.

Such a system constitutes an invitation to election fraud, by placing national elections within a handful of precincts in a single state. ... is it not far more unjust that most big cities and states are irrelevant in national elections (e.g., California in 2000 and 2004)?

OK, let's stop and think now. You're worried about the potential for fraud within a "handful of precincts in a single state" but apparently don't think that's even easier to engineer in only one or two princincts in a single city?

And you don't seem concerned about all those "red" voters in "blue" states who have their votes nullified by the big cities within their states. Look at that famous red/blue map and look at "blue" states like New York, Illinois and California. County by country, they're mostly red, yet those states electoral votes go "blue" because of the popoulations of one or two large cities within those states.

In short, you're highly selective in your worrying about whose votes get "counted" and whose don't.

...and if you believe that, I am really looking forward to selling you some oceanfront property in Arizona.

Farhad Manjoo has been covering this story with the same carved in stone mind-set since the first reports of election malfeasance rolled in on election day 11/2/04. It seems his mind was made up from day one and that no amount of evidence or new revelations since has caused him the slightest consternation or reason to reexamine any of his happy conclusions. It's nice to be absolutely certain that the GOP was not responsible for the overwhelming number of discrepancies seeming to only favor candidate Bush.

It's good to know that only in America are exit polls useless and constantly wrong (whoops! I forgot- they were NOT wrong on Election Day 2000 in Florida were they Farhad?). I guess the reason they were quietly turned off mid-day on Election Day 2002- because of "computer problems"- also makes perfect sense to him. And the fact that they were all wrong again in 2004, coincidentally where it counted the most, only goes to further prove his theory that there’s no there there?

So just what are the odds that virtually every voting anomaly everywhere always benefited Bush? I guess it's just more coincidence that every screw-up or error pretty much benefited the party that we now know has been responsible over at least the last five years for more outright thievery and corruption than any other time in American history. No, we should just set that fact aside and assume Bush got extremely lucky- twice.

Salon, don't you think it's time to replace a true-believer in GOP honesty- Farhad Manjoo- with someone a little less certain, and a little more skeptical of the circumstances surrounding these last THREE elections? Someone who is lot more willing to look at the evidence rather than just use it as an exercise in preconceived and poorly written dismissals of the whole matter.

One gets the sense that even if we had video-taped evidence of election fraud, Farhad would still be dismissive. He is that certain of the GOP's intrinsic goodness- making him at minimum, given recent history, a very inadequate reporter for this story.

First, I want to take a moment to go back and talk about what Salon used to be like. It used to be a bastion of left-leaning (albeit not too far) journalism, journalism that was researched well and edited carefully. Ahh, those were the days.

Now that I'm done with that and evidently Salon is, too ...

Farhad Manjoo's opinion on this subject will never change. He's misinterpreted, rather obtusely, the RKJ article, to yet again make his 'point' about the elections. You don't really have to read past the amazingly, unbelievably (ah, adverbs) title of the article to know how poorly argued it will be. Seriously, the person(s) who wrote earlier about the "No!" ... please ... they are all right. What a stupid, asinine thing to do as a headline. Oooh so shocking! Ooh so amateur in the world of journalism! Oooh so lame!

Why don't you make your next article headline: "Salon's Journalistic and Editorial Talent? Gone!" That would be exciting.

Farhad Manjoo, unless psychic, cannot say positively that the election was stolen or not stolen or if I bought eggs on the day of the election. He does not know. And, most of the evidence supports the strong possibility that, indeed, there was a very unusually large amount of voter fraud, the same kind of voter fraud, in different states. Which I think stretches coincidence so far ... well, it's preposterous.

As to the eggs I may have bought, Senator, I cannot recall precisely.

The huge amount of voter fraud that we absolutely KNOW occurred has led me to doubt my government and the elections, etc. and so on. Very rightly so. I'd be an idiot if I wasn't worried and disgusted by the whole thing.

That appeared to me to be the point of the RKJ article. A point which was not really argued at Salon at all. Mr. Manjoo argued something else, because he couldn't possibly argue that the majority of Americans feel all warm and snuggly about their election process at the moment.

As to Salon itself ... I used to love to come here. My visits to this site have fallen off precipitously in the last year or so. It's because the online journal isn't what it was.

This article, for instance ... if you had, perhaps, another piece running with this one, disagreeing with it, or well, anyone else writing it, someone with, say, some kind of professional standard about looking at both sides, I'd be much happier, I admit.

I don't mind reading about viewpoints that do not agree with mine. But, I get enough biased, poorly researched, 'cherry-picked' facts on the mainstream news. I need better stuff here. I used to get that. I don't anymore. I don't know yet whether I'll be taking my Barbies and going home, but I have started looking elsewhere to get good news. Grieve is pretty much the only one remaining that I trust and enjoy at this point.