Isn't the real issue that we can't agree and we can't definitively "prove" it either way?

When in history was it so clouded, with so many huge and blaring anomalies to find a way to justify?

When has a secretary of state so blatantly broken and/or misinterpreted the rules in favor of one party, prior to 2000?

Has their been ballot stuffing and all that jazz? Sure, from the very beginning.

Has it ever been on a large enough scale that an entire state's results comes under a cloud?

There's something happening here.

And doesn't this just make it all the more crucial that we have voting apparatus in place that allows us to verify the votes that are cast - i.e., paper backup?

While we're arguing here, Florida is enacting laws that make it illegal to try to recount electronic votes. Yes, in direct violation of HAVA, and they haven't been challenged, while New York has been singled out for not having yet conformed with HAVA requirements.

And Diebold is running around the country blatantly ignoring states' rules, getting sued, but always returning and somehow getting their crap installed.

There's something happening here.

Enough of this argument and the conservative trolls here.

Whatever you believe, we need to be able to trust in our elections. We can't do that right now. We can't rely on our secretaries of state to play fair. We can't recount e-votes. We can't get everyone to the polls. States are enacting voter registration rules that amount to poll taxes or disenfranchisement of people who move, students, young people, minorities, democrats. And the voting machines are owned by partisans and have proprietary software and hardware that is subject to tampering.

Whether all this amounts to a stolen election is not the point. The point is that it is a broken system. The point is that if we don't take each of these threats to a proper election seriously, we will never have another election with any semblance of reliability.

...or do the majority of "Editor's Picks" here support Manjoo's position?

And does that sort of thing seem to be happening with increased frequency at Salon?

The arguments between RFK Jr. and Mr. Manjoo miss the point.

As another poster said, the core issue is making sure there is a right to vote and to have your voted counted correctly. This may require independent oversight of all voting machine companies as well as laws which give recourse to the public should the machinery be tampered with or prove faulty. Of course, it has to be stronger than current, much ignored laws against hiring contractors convicted of defrauding the government.

Problems with voting machines are legendary. Whether the machine is political like Daley's (vote early and vote often!)or mechanical like Diebold's, unless there is a trail to follow, it it impossible to know who affected what. Of greatest danger is allowing a private interest to own the code that determines how votes are assigned. Should that private interest be invested in one candidate over another, a code could be written that tips the scales yet falls within the allowable margin of error.

Here in SF a few years ago boxes of uncounted ballots were found in the Bay. No good explanation ever floated to the surface. Last week there was a classified ad through Kelly Services asking for people to deliver and pick up voting machines using their own trucks. So much for secure voting.

The left is understandably aggrieved at Farhad Manjoo's demolition of one its silliest obsessions, the wholly fabricated vote-fraud issue.

Let's looks again at a sentence from RFK Jr.'s article:

"The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina."

That means the exit polls were wrong. Period. Kerry was not competitive in either state; nobody thought he was; the actual results showed that he wasn't.

In 2000, the networks immediately projected Gore victories in states he ultimately won by three or four points. Bush blow-out states in the South, where he won by double-digit margins, were somehow "too close to call" for an hour or more. Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana attempted to launch an investigation, but got nowhere.

Last election, early exit poll results were leaked to the mainstream media (see if you can guess by whom) that showed enormous Kerry leads in almost all battleground states (roughly twenty points in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and New Hampshire--Kerry actually won those states by one to three points). Kerry was, as Kennedy's embarrassing admission confirms, running neck-and-neck in uncontested Bush landslide states.

That means the exit polls were wrong.

Dick Morris and Michael Barone were stunned by the early exits, but their own data, confirmed by the raw vote as it came in, led them to the conclusion that the exits had been "slammed" by Democrat operatives. This constitutes the elephant in the parlor for the left. The infallible exit polls were spectacularly, absurdly, preposterously WRONG. Continue to rave about imaginary vote fraud if you must, but, please, be intellectually responsible and try to account for Kerry's surreal margins in close states. If slamming is ruled out, it can't be done, incidentally.

So-called statisticians continue to demonstrate the theory of Garbage in, garbage out. Watching someone toss twenty consecutive heads and announcing that a 1-in-1,048,576 shot just came in isn't good enough. You need to examine the coin. When it turns out be two-headed, you've learned something you should have known before you made yourself look ridiculous.

Of course the elections were stolen. A little more effort on the part of those who come to their spurious conclusions, effort going beyond mere "armchair journalism' is what is needed here. Surely the subject is serious enough to merit this?

This is not about Right or Left. This is about Truth. If the Right were invested in the truth, they would take the numerous reports of improprieties seriously enough to lay these "rumors" to rest. They're afraid. And they should be. So one can understand their position.

What's difficult to get is Salon.com, a supposed bastion of the Left taking such a stance, without a serious, credible effort at finding out the Truth. Now that is tragic. As an insult to voters, all Americans and the Left, it is beyond the pale. WHAT I'VE DESCRIBED AS A NEW LOW FOR SALON.COM

In Ohio, there were numerous reports of exit polls, (normally very accurate) which did not tally with election results. Then there was the fact that our voting machines were all built by a company with strong ties to Republicans interests. United Teachers of Dade, with people on their lists receiving emails about uncounted ballots at polling stations while the vote was called for Bush. Reports of people who went to vote and for one reason or another was turned away. Electronic experts' conclusions on how easily the electronic machines could be tampered with. Conscientious citizens working overtime on the recount who had counts suppressed while Katherine Harris engaged in shenanigans.

But of course, Salon.com knew all this, right?

RIGHT.

What say we do this over? Once more, with feeling. Or I should say, true, honest effort. Is that too much to ask?