Letters to the Editor
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Get on the side of the american people Mr. Manjoo.
Bush stole the election in 2004 and in 2000, and because of people like Farhad Manjoo, who write articles in line with the bough-out media, Bush also stole our democracy and is getting away with it.
The Bush family are live long cheaters, Karl Rove is a cheater who is known since he was in college for using dirty tricks to spoil the will of the people and get his through.
The current republican party is full of cheaters, and you are a cheater too Mr. Manjoo, when you write vicious articles that let them get away.
You should be more worried about the direction that your country is taking; I believe America should stay as the example of democracy, and human rights that it was after WW2. This president destroyed America's legacy by steeling the elections twice, and people needs to wake up not let that happen again.
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What does Jann Wenner think?
First, know that this 3-year Premium subscriber will not renew, both because of Manjoo's heartbreaking excuse for journalism/punditry and because of Salon's refusal to post Mark Crispin Miller's excellent response (which interested readers can find at Huffington Post).
Does anyone else find it ironic that Rolling Stone Magazine's founder and presiding CEO is one of Salon's eight (8) outside Directors?
Thanks, Salon, for helping to make unwilling soothsayers of both Margaret Atwood and George Orwell.
Handmaid's Tale 1984, here we come.
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Whither response Salon?
Mr. Miller has responded to the factually lacking rebuttal by Manjoo. Why does Salon continue to employ someone that continues to neglect the facts of the matter and rely upon weak resources in his reporting? Manjoo's negligence is ill-serving a magazine that claims to be after the truth. I will not be continuing my subscription, I suggest others do so as well.
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Battered Wife Syndrome
On the issue of election fraud, the American press, including some like Salon, who purport to represent the views of the left remind me of a battered wife who vehemently defends the man who just finished beating her.
There has to be a psychological syndrome to explain this hysterical refusal to even consider the threat that vote fraud represents.
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Bad Math
A minor point, perhaps, but the following passage reflects failure to accurately perform a simple mathematical analysis. I cannot help but have less confidence in Mr. Manjoo's assessment as a result.
"in the Bush strongholds -- where the average completion rate was 56 percent -- it's possible that only 53 percent of those who voted for Bush were willing to be polled, while people who voted for Kerry participated at a higher 59 percent rate. Meanwhile, in the Kerry strongholds, where Mitofsky found a 53 percent average completion rate, it's possible that Bush voters participated 50 percent of the time, while Kerry voters were willing to be interviewed 56 percent of the time. In this scenario, the averages work out to the same ones Kennedy cited: a 56 percent average response rate in Bush strongholds, and a 53 percent average response rate in Kerry strongholds."
Recall that "stronghold" is defined as a precinct in which one candidate received at least 80% of the vote. Accordingly, the average overall completion rate is not simply the average of the Bush-voter and Kerry-voter completion rates. I would expect this point should be obvious to anyone truly prepared to assess the arguments in this case.
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Partisan Agendas are no excuse for poor reporting
The presumptive article of Robert Kennedy Jr. was quite successfully deflated by Mr. Farhad Manjoo and I thank him for it. He put into a concise article what I have been saying about it since first glancing over it when a friend first linked me to it.
In short the Kennedy article is poorly written, it makes a vast number of claims that are purely inaccurate, and it fails to bring anything new to the table. I was quite astonished to find that this article was published in 2006 since it seems so much like the same half baked theories I heard in the Winter of 2004 and in the Spring of 2005.
While there is need for election reform in certain areas of this country there was no vast conspiracy to put Bush in office. By all popular and substaniated claims Kerry could not have feasibly carried Ohio or any of the other lost states.
If there are any lessons to learn from the 2004 election it is that we should not trust exit pollsters until the counts are in and that in some areas voting reforms should be made to deal with problems of lost registration and long lines.
I guess Mr. Kennedy could not find a way to milk four pages out of a message that simple and non-partisan.
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Shame on you Salon
I just re-read this article, while searching on the Web for articles about the upcoming election and the likely chance for a repeat of the past two elections, aka fraud on a monumental level. I recently read Freeman and Bleifuss Was the 2004 presidential election stolen?". A much more informative and objective report than your article. Too bad Salon didn't do more thorough investigating for such a huge issue.