I think part of the problem with Manjoo's article is the attitude expressed in a headline that even the article itself does not really support.** Instead of a big headline blaring a certainty ("Was the 2004 election stolen? No"), how about a headline like "Was the 2004 election stolen? We can't be sure."

Manjoo seems to have his mind made up to nitpick RFK Jr's. Rolling Stone article, to poke holes in a fashion that comes across as haughty and dismissive. It's almost as if he takes RFK Jr.'s article as a personal affront to his own previous (ill-drawn) conclusions.

No matter what the editor's confidence in Manjoo may be, the fact that the readers of Salon have no confidence in him at all on this issue should lead them to assign other writers to cover this story. Manjoo simply appears incapable of addressing the issue fairly. His conclusion that we can know that election 2004 was absolutely not stolen is no more supportable than the conclusion of others who say that we know for certain that it was. And besides, the conclsuion drawn by RFK Jr. is not certainty that the election was stolen. The conclusion he draws is this:

The issue of what happened in 2004 is not an academic one. For the second election in a row, the president of the United States was selected not by the uncontested will of the people but under a cloud of dirty tricks. Given the scope of the GOP machinations, we simply cannot be certain that the right man now occupies the Oval Office -- which means, in effect, that we have been deprived of our faith in democracy itself.

In other words, Manjoo has set up a strawman just so he could knock it down. He has lost the confidence of the readers. He should no longer be assigned to this issue.

**Quote: To date, dozens of experts, both independently and as part of several research panels, have spent countless hours examining 2004's presidential election, especially the race in Ohio. Many of them have concluded that the election there strains conventional notions of what a democracy ought to look like; very little about that race was fair, clean or competent. Way back in January 2005, a panel headed by Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan reported that it had found enough irregularities in Ohio to call into question the state election results and the entire presidential vote. A report by the Democratic Party released last year found "evidence of voter confusion, voter suppression, and negligence and incompetence of election officials."

Count me as another subscriber who isn't interested in supporting a mag that headlines this right-wing drivel.

Why is Manjoo still on your payroll? You are pissing me off!

I can't say for certain that Manjoo is correct, but he appears to be using the tools of reason and logic with detailed references to make his points. I do know that if Manjoo had found compelling evidence that the election was rigged that he would be sitting on a major story, which would in all likelihood make his career.

It takes a certain degree of paranoia to assume that Salon is in the business of hiring right-wing shills to deceive its readers. It is however perfectly credible that Rolling Stone would publish a known controversialist with little credibility to hype a largely discredited conspiracy theory in the hope of increased sales.

I would suggest that one way to tell good journalism from bad is that good journalism occasionally presents the readers with stories containing truths that they would really rather not hear. The sort of stories that cause numerous readers to write in demanding to cancel their subscription. This would suggest to me that the publication is trying to prioritize truth over pandering to their readership.

Nothing new. Well duh, thats because the theft has not changed. We may not have all the facts yet but it is quite clear what went on in Ohio and also I will always remember Diebold's owner and contributor to Bush who stated he would deliver Ohio & the election to Bush. Even though he changed his story after the remark, do not believer he changed his goal.

Thank you Mr. Kennedy for writing this story & making everyone aware of what did happen.

Off to the meat grinder with you.

Here are my 2 main problems with Mr. Manjoo's article:

1. As others have pointed out, Robert Kennedy's article did not claim to prove that the 2004 election was stolen, but to show that there were enough substantive questions and unexplained discrepancies to support the need for a full investigation by legal authorities and mainstream journalists. Mr. Manjoo's response is to essentially say that since his questions aren't incontrovertible answers, they have no credibility. It's rather like saying that if you can't prove the nature of a phenomenon, then there's no justification in doing scientific research on it -- in fact, exactly the opposite is true! While Mr. Manjoo makes some apparently good criticisms of some of Mr. Kennedy's assertions, it doesn't change the overall conclusion: there are legitimate questions about the fairness of the 2004 Presidential election, and there should be a full, public investigation (with subpoena powers) to determine what really happened.

2. 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!

The claims made in RFK's extensive piece in Rolling Stone are, if only taken as claims, still overwhelm and I do not see how one of your Salon writers, usually much less ready to "headline" a dismissal of a point of view than others, can so easily dismiss the overall finding of the article that a REAL SERIOUS investigation is very important to clearing the air for a large number of enraged and disenchanted voters.

To my mind voter disenchantment is a cancer upon our electoral system, it has been for nearly a generation, and in 2004, after four years of Bush, Howard Dean, gave many voters a feeling that their personal hard work and effort could break the stale cynical state of the backroom political process returning American's hope for a better, more people focused, less corporate, just and healthy nation. Coming from nowhere to become a national name, using the internet with help from a technically savvy bunch of upstarts, he made it to Iowa and changed the way campaigns would be run in the future. 2004 was polled as being the highest voter turnout for President in American history, and I assume partially, because Dean's forces followed him to back the winner in the Primary. This November, if Manjoo's view that the 2004 election was not as badly slanted as RFK states, remains unchallenged, the banner numbers we'd seen in the recent past elections may be a thing of the past.

Is Farhhad Manjoo implying that the reason voters feel disenchanted is not because, after the unpresidented 2000 appointment of the President by the Supreme Court, we watched dumbfounded 4 years later, on election eve as Kerry lost, though an overwhelming amount of pundits and exit polls spoke to the contrary? Or is he blaming John Conyers, Barbara Boxer, Mark Krispin Miller, Howard Dean, John Edwards and now RFK Junior for our renewed cynicism, by asking questions as to why something smelled rotten in Ohio, and thus making voters suspicious, ruining our faith in our votes being counted for our intended candidate, and making one wonder whether we would even be able or allowed to vote in the future if it wasn't OK with those that held power?

I think most Salon readers would agree that the real possibility that an investigation into this subject is considerably dim even if the opposition wins back the House in November, as there are so many other dire policies that need to be stopped, investigated or pointed out as unconstitutional, but I don't think even FM can deny, that the administration has a record of, and has in fact constituted an agenda, to put in place key adversaries to ensure their continued rule both in the courts and at the state, local and private level, to administer elections, especially in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 as current and past court cases are revealing still to this day.

It is my feeling that RFK, Jr's high profile compilation should be pointed to as a high profile milestone that we should look to as a template to avoid any further errosion in our faith that our votes are being counted and are not manipulated or suppressed to encourage a specific partisan outcome. I'd felt a glow of confidence when Barbara Boxer stood up in the Senate to ask for hearings on the 2004 election. She may not have been given much time as we had lost our voice in Washington by then, but the fact that we had both Houses (Conyers bringing it up in the House) representing what many of us found to be a questionable outcome for reasons far beyond mere partisanship, went a long way to giving us hope that it would not happen again. Manjoo's article worries me in it's ignorance as to how important the truth about this issue is to so many voters decisions as to whether to even bother next time around.

Would the writer prefer we give short shrift to all this evidence before careful appropriate legal scrutiny or is he saying ignoring it is going to make the crimes committed less prevalent and make voters more willing to pull the handle even if it RFK's accusations are, as he states, somewhat true? I personally believe, either way, Farhad Manjoo's attitude is one this administration would like to see perpetuated.