Letters to the Editor
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Why can't we have a real invesigation
instead of this long debate between Kennedy and Manjoo if the election was stolen or not? There were enough shenanigans going on that day by the Republicans to suppress the Democrat voters so for a lack of a better word, stolen works for now! If Karl Rove had anything to do with it, it was stolen! He has made a career out obtaining political power by cheating and defrauding the public in ways that should have put him behind bars, so why should we believe they played fair with the elections. Maybe Manjoo and Joan Walsh want us to play naive, but I’m on Kennedy’s side with this one!
How many more elections like 2000 and 2004 do we have to endure before we stop giving them the benefit of the doubt? Besides, if the Republicans were really confident they won fair and square, than what's stopping us from having a real independent investigation?
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The count is largely irrelevant
If the GOP illegally stole one vote in Ohio, there is a serious problem in the electoral system. It really doesn't matter if Bush and his band of GOP criminals stole enough votes to swing election. We know for a fact they did in Florida 2000. Whether they did or not a second time, there is no provision for overturning the offical vote count after the president is sworn in.
My reading of the evidence is that it is clear that the GOP once again engaged in both unethical and illegal tactics to improve Bush's chances in Ohio and other states in 2004. Neither in Florida 2000 nor in Ohio 2004 was anybody procescuted or, as far as I can tell, investigated for violation of election laws. The message is clear: cheating in elections works for Republicans and there no consquences.
I think Nixon must be rolling over in this grave. If he had received the same treatment as Bush, he never would have even been seriously threatened with impeachment and those who opposed him and his band of thugs would have been successfully labled as unpatriotic Viet Cong sympathizers. Watergate was a combination of illegal government spying and and illegal electioneering. Bush has admitted to illegal spying but won't be impeached for it. Nixon's illegal electionioneering was certainly not sufficient to change the outcome the 1972 election. By the standards of 2006, he committed no crimes.
I'm disappointed in Salon that you've chosen to attack the irrelevant idea that Ohio would gone for Kerry absent GOP cheating rather than focusing on the uninvestigated, unprocescuted crimes that GOP commits EVERY election cycle.
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I knew it, Ms. Walsh!
I knew Ms. Walsh would end her article with a Salon-supportive quote. And she did! It's an old journalistic trick that has been used copiously since campaign 2000 to slant every seemingly pro-Dem article into a pro-Repub one.
I'd prefer to be wrong when I expect a trick.
Sadly, this time it was not to be.
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Salon Executives - It's Time for Regime Change
Why didn't the RFK article, or a similar type of article questioning vote manipulation in Ohio, appear on Salon 2 years ago? Salon's uppity tone gives us the image that it's pioneering journalism. In fact, much of it's the same ole same ole. Hey Salon execs, how about trying something new, something that really works instead of pretending to.
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Kennedy - Salon Dispute about Who Won in Ohio
Hi,
Joan Walsh reasonably bases her, and Salon's, assessment of the Ohio election on "the available facts" to dis-"prove the election was stolen."
I would rather start the Ohio case with the eletronic voting machine. Knowing how computer software works, I can promise a candidate(as someone actually did in Ohio) to deliver the election results in his favor to the accuracy of decimal points, district by district, only on one condition: that there be no printout for later verification.
Following the Walshian logic, it is wrong to conclude that the electronic part of the voting was stolen since there is no available facts showing the software was skewed in favor of one or the other side. But is it right to regard the matter closed and move on when such a fundamental flaw remains unclarified?
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When Opinion Weighs Against Her, She Reverses the Order of the Letters
Moving the red stars up front isn't going to make the deep disappoint we have in the Salon editorial policy go away.
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Quote from an earlier writer:
...the burden of proof is on showing that this was a legal election - not that it was stolen
Well, say goodbye to the Enlightenment. Get ready to prove that you're not a witch by promptly drowning when you get tossed in the water, because, as we all know, only witches can float.
Have people gone absolutely nuts? If the election in Ohio needs to prove it was legal, then every election ever held anywhere also needs to prove it was legal. But this is as impossible as proving you're not a witch, or the killer of Nicole Simpson. No election can possibly prove it was 'legal.' Absent proof or solid evidence of fraud, we can only assume they were legal.
Requiring elections to be absolutely perfect and absolutely undisputed can only lead to the destruction of democracy itself.
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There can be legitimate disagreement about the specifics of Christian religious fascism
but to claim it doesn't exist at all in a politically significant way and to ridicule any claim to the contrary would seem to be a result of either a complete lack of awareness or an attempt to cover up the facts. If someone were simply misinformed why be so invested in the denial. It seems the facts are getting out though, there appear to be some efforts being made lately by fundamentlists to claim that actually they DO believe that people have the legal right to disagree with them. Maybe they are worried about their tax exempt status if the Republicans lose
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BTW religious fantatiscism SPECIFICALLY, in the person of Ken Blackwell the Ohio secretary of state
is likely at the very heart of the vote fraud/stolen election issue. Of course out of control corporations are a problem but the fact is they don't have enough votes on their own and would never have gotten where they are without social conservatives. BTW the alliance between big business and disgruntled, disproportionatly rural, social conservatives was EXACTLY the coalition which brought Hitler to power. They even shared many of the same issues with todays Christian right, such as an obsession with gays and general so called cultural decadence.