Letters to the Editor
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Two cents from an Ohio voter
I live in Ohio (Cleveland area) and voted in the 2004 election. I vote in a racially integrated inner-ring suburb, with many black voters and I did not see anything remotely approaching "fraud".
However, it is worth noting that Ohio elections, the whole system for putting voters on and taking them off the voter rolls, the management of polling places and voting booths, the Board of Elections and so on, have been in disarray for years. This is not new and it did not suddenly occur with the Presidential elections. Many of the gross incompetents (patronage appointees) in on the Board of Elections are Democrats.
We skated past prior election problems because the vote wasn't very close or heavily contested, but many of ther same problems have been around for years, even decades.
In 2002 and 2003, I lived and voted in Florida. I moved back to Ohio, and in March of '04, I registered to vote. I knew I had plenty of time to enroll by the November election, but my concern was to vote on local community issues during the summer. Despite my efforts to register (following the strict and sometimes arcane rules), somehow when I turned up to vote locally in the summer, my registration was "lost". Because voting is very important to me, I took this seriously and followed up with many calls to the BOE, only to discover that because they were utterly incompetent and badly run, they were unable to keep up with simply regular registrations, and 2004 was a Presidental election year. With the efforts of both Dems and Republicans to register many new voters, they were utterly swamped. They had fallen months behind in putting registered voters on the records. Grossly incompetent? yes. Conspiracy? no.
I did see long lines at the polls, but I took this as evidence of a deep voter interest, which was abscent in many recent elections where I often heard the comment "what does it matter? both candidates are almost alike" and so on. I think heavy voter turnout is a GOOD THING, as is particpation in the democratic process. I wish that the voting process accomodated this, but remember that most recent elections and most local initiatives have light turnout. I wish that the system could expand easily for elections that are this heavily contested and interesting, but unfortunately it's a tired old patronage system, with quaint antique technolgy (punch cards with chads, etc.).
While it's a fact that long lines (and we had heavy rain as well) are discouraging to poor and working class voters who can't easily take off work to vote, or spend 4 hours in a line to do so, and that I suspect that the wealthy, entrenched politicos are aware of this fact, I can't honestly say this is a "conspiracy". I think it has always been easier in the US to vote if you are well off, if you can take time off work (with pay) to go vote, if you have the luxury of being well read and educated on the issues. Even if you have an umbrella.
What I learned in civics class is that in a democracy, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. When you lose, the proper response is NOT whining, but a determination to win the next election, i.e., "Just wait 'til next year (or next election)".
If you truly think the system is unfair, then work to change it. Get rid of the Electoral college. Make registration simpler. Insist that states have a uniform, incorruptible form of voting procedure, whether that's computers or punch cards or whatever. The 2004 election is over and done with, Bush is most of the way through his term and there is no way to turn back the clock and put John Kerry in his place. Accept this.
Just wait 'til next time.
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Stolen Elections?
Mr. Kennedy does a dis-service to progessives and leftists alike: without concrete proof everything else is lefty catterwalling. It is one thing to wish something were true, election theft, and another to actually prove it. The standard ought to be one the is legally provable in our legal system. Furthermore, there's not much difference between leftist complaints of election theft and rightist abhorance of gay marriage; both appeal to their constituencies in an election cycle that will make a difference for both sides.
I would much rather see progressives re-frame this election in terms of Republican failures which I need not itemize as I think we all have a sense of what they are--stolen elections are not one of them. To convince the majority to vote with us, we should concentrate on those issues which resonate and hyperventilate.
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What a depressing "response"
Manjoo missed the point of the RFK article, and Salon appears, as he appears, loath to simply admit it.
The point of the article was not "I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that absent massive interference with the operation of the electoral system, John Kerry would have won." The point of the article was "There is a mountain of evidence that massive interference with the operation of the electoral system, to the point where it certainly seems possible that its scale may have been adequate to change the result."
In the rush to plan "debunker," Manjoo aimed at the wrong target, as others have pointed out. His response is to say, "You cannot prove the result was changed," which was never the premise. Why Salon chose to adopt this particular editorial position, of harping on the accuracy or inaccuracy of things Kennedy never said, rather than picking up and running with the large number of inarguably true things that he did say, is baffling to me, but smacks of sensationalism and traffic-provoking blog bait.
Joan's response earlier, suggesting that an election isn't stolen if it's stolen by regular plain old methods of minority vote suppression, shed a little light on the unfortunate lack of coherent analysis that Salon has brought to this issue, whatever you think of the ultimate question of whether the election in Ohio would or would not have turned out differently if conducted fairly -- which it seems fairly obvious it was not, thanks to Blackwell and others.
Salon seems to have taken its eye off the ball in an effort to get attention for itself, and that is a very unfortunate and very disappointing development.