Kerry 2004 redux

According to RFK Jr., writing in Rolling Stone, the 2004 presidential election was not quite what it was officially determined to be. Indeed, despite claims to the contrary in leading publications like NYT and WaPo, "indications [have] continued to emerge that something deeply troubling [took] place in 2004". RFK lists some of the troubles. They include "malfunctioning machines" and "shredding". It seems that "as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast".

And in one of the key battleground states:

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.

Any election will have its "anomalies," but:

[W]hat is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.

This confirms what many of us have long suspected. Something was rotten in '04 election. The legitimacy of its outcome is still in doubt. The second Bush term may very well be the product of fraud.

RFK's article is quite long, but it's absolutely a must-read. It's a thoughtful, argumentative piece backed up by sound research and analysis (and detailed documentation). It may not persuade closed minds to reconsider their prejudices, but it seems to me that an open and honest evaluation of what really happened back in 2004 is long overdue.

American democracy deserves no less.