Whether it was Salon Editors or Farhad Manjoo the headline categorically claiming that "NO" the election wasn't stolen, was ham handed at best and left little room for discussion or debate. Whether Farhad Manjoo has some history with Robert Kennedy I don't know, but the tone of his article was dismissive and condescending.

But to digress a little, since the county is in mood for amending the Constitution, why doesn't someone suggest an amendment guaranteeing the right to vote so that the when there are more shenanigan as we were treated to in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2006 then there could be a legal means to to redress grievances.

Part of the controversy here, as Joan Walsh attempts to point out, is that many of the emotionally fueled responses are conflating the issues of electoral fairness and journalistic integrity. That there were numerous attempts by Blackwell and cronies to bias the vote in Ohio is beyond serious question, and is agreed by many sources. Had Kennedy's article focussed on the qualitative aspects of those abuses, I would have applauded it. But Kennedy went beyond qualitative analysis of various dirty tricks - he tried to make a quantitative argument that there was outright fraud, and that the election could have been stolen. Having followed this controversy off and on for more than a year, I was immediately dismayed to see Kennedy using statistics and analysis which had already been shown to be questionable under even semi-rigorous review.

Manjoo's original article - and his follow up - amount to a devastating critique of Kennedy's journalistic standards and integrity. If what Manjoo says is factually correct, then Kennedy is guilty of misusing data and biasing his analysis toward his desired conclusion. He is guilty, in some sense, of what the Bush administration was guilty of in analysing WMD. There are a tremendous number of resources for each reader to use in reaching his or her own conclusion on this, but extensive, careful reading of data and statistical analysis (not polemical blog entries) is required. Start with the mystery pollster site. My conclusion, partly conditioned by my previous study, is that Manjoo is largely correct in his analysis of the claims in question.

This is important to me, because there are so many issues important to progressives which are dependent on accurate data and scientific standards of analysis. The budget deficit, social security, wage and income standards, global warming, and health care costs, to name just a few issues, are all being obfuscated with junk statistics by various powerful special interests. If us liberals and progressives are also percieved as thinking we're entitled to our own set of facts, and not just opinions, we lose the moral high ground. To have such an iconic figure as RFK jr potentially caught out casually misusing information to support his cause is not to be taken lightly. That's why this is worth more studied reaction than a two sentence flame out, regardless of your ultimate conclusion.

I was in Columbus on election day 2004 as a member of Kerry effort from

California. I can personally verify the voter disenfranchisement due to obscenely long lines. I spoke to dozens of people who stepped out of line to go to work or keep appointments. Many of them said they would return to vote in the evening. Odds are that many of them didn't. Everyone I spoke to in this situation was African-American, who trended toward Kerry 84%.

As an American citizen who has never had to wait more than a couple of minutes to vote, I was stunned to see the huge lines at the polling places in urban areas of Columbus. I am amazed by, and commend those brave citizens who stood in those lines for hours, often in the pouring rain, in order to exercise their right to vote. I don't think I could have done it. I salute you.

The officials responsible for creating such extreme obstructions to the citizenry of Ohio in the effort to exercise their constitutional right to vote, should be, simply put, in jail.

Sincerely yours,

Donovan Holden

It seems that the letters seem to show Manjoo ahead in this debate, but in his original article and in his rebuttal I think he fails to adequately rebut RFK Jr on one point, and that is the statistics of Connally voters vs. Kerry voters. Manjoo also didn't spend much time at all trying to counter the allegations of Kerry votes going to third party presidential candidates, which is also to me a strong argument that there was some fraud in the 12 rural counties cited by RFKJr.

RFKJr gives statistics that show that not only did Connally outpoll Kerry in the 12 counties cited, but that in those counties specifically the ratio of her votes to Kerry votes was skewed. If, as Manjoo argues, that the fact that lack of party affiliation listed for downticket candidates is the reason for her getting large numbers of votes from voters who would normally not vote for a candidate like her, that trend should have been reasonably constant across the state.

So it is not the absolute number of votes that matters in this case, but instead the ratio of Connally votes to Kerry votes as a function of location. If this ratio is skewed primarily in these counties but not elsewhere, then there has to be some location specific reason for this. I have always felt that this was the strongest argument RFKJr made, and I still feel that Manjoo did not have very good arguments in either his article or rebuttal to win this point.

I am in reasonable agreement with Manjoo and many of you who believe that RFKJr did not make strong arguments for some of his points, but that should not mean that we dismiss all of his conclusions outright. It seems to me that the statistics he quotes about the vote tallies in those 12 counties should not be ignored and should be investigated.

I think that both the raw data and the behavioral aspects confirm the generally "racketeer-influenced" nature of the Republican pathology: it's not that they steal elections, but that they force an unacceptable risk of loss onto the opposition.

This is similar to what the GOP-OC combine has done with real estate - the condominiumization of America's housing again forces an unacceptable risk of loss onto the disadvantaged.

It's all about percentages, actuarials and manipulating supposedly "free" markets - and Republicans certainly know how to manipulate supposedly "free" markets, from ADM to Enron - and beyond.