Cracking the Cone of Silence on Election Fraud

Crossposted at Dailykos and the Truth 2 Power Project.

Scoop Independent News has a report up on the RFK Jr. Rolling Stone Article which rebuts both Salon an Mother's Jones and asks the question - why do so-called "liberal" outlets find it so hard to support Kennedy?

The prevailing silence on election fraud 2004 was interrupted June 1 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his article Was the 2004 Election Stolen? He argues clearly and forcefully that the 2004 election was stolen, basing his analysis and evidence on events and outcomes in the state of Ohio. Had Kerry won the Ohio race, he would be president today. Hence, the theft of Ohio was the theft of the election.

Kennedy relied on far more than his own record of activism and a name representing decades of political prominence. The well written and thoroughly documented article in Rolling Stone Magazine makes a number of assertions, each backed up with references to evidence linked within the body the article. Kennedy is unambiguous in his claim that the 2004 election was stolen by the Republicans.

I have to quibble here, Kennedy is unambiguous that they tried to steal it -- not that their efforts were the deciding factor. It very well could have been, but truly proving that will take a far more exhaustive investigation than any that has taken place so far. This is a point with Scoop itself admits later in the piece.

This is a remarkable political event. The legitimacy of a sitting president is being challenged by a socially and politically active member of America’s best known political family. In addition, the challenger, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is a consistent advocate for a wide variety of liberal causes. From promoting greater economic justice to protection of the global environment, Kennedy has been there for liberals. Just eleven days after the article appeared, Associated Press ran a major story with an even handed discussion of the 2004 election in Ohio and New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert ran a strongly worded column supporting Kennedy. How odd it is that Kennedy’s bold assertion and well documented case met with a carping attack from Salon Magazine, a self styled journal for open minded progressives.

Yes, it is strange. Odd even, but that is exactly what happened. Although that doesn't neccesarily mean it's the result of a C-O-N-spiracy.

Journalist Greg Palast, NYU professor and author Mark Crispin Miller, Steven Freeman, PhD, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of The Free Press, plus internet researchers like TruthIsAll have commented frequently with substantial evidence and great passion. In effect, they have been forced into a corporate media burka. Even the supposedly liberal Daily KOS eschews any reference to claims of a stolen election in 2004.

Salon has long been a credible media outlet, and even broke the story of Henry Hyde's affair just as he was beginnnig impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton - for having an affair. But on this subject, they seem to have been lost in the wilderness.

... it is surprising to find that since before the 2004 election, Salon has published articles that have the back handed effect of legitimizing the Bush election and presidency by dismissing substantive arguments concerning election fraud. Motives are not the issue here. The net result is the main concern. When questions are raised about the election, Salon’s initial article attacking Kennedy provides the Republicans and those accused of theft with an ideal cover. After all, even Salon Magazine says the election was legitimate, is the putative response from the media savvy of the right when challenged with the facts of massive voter disenfranchisement and the unbelievable statistical anomalies surrounding the exit polls and vote count.

Although Farhad Manjoo, Salon’s Technology and Business staff writer has produced several articles on problems with voting machines in the past, lately he is best known for challenging those who claim election fraud in 2004. In fact, Manjoo went so far as to dismiss a Greg Palast-BBC expose of Florida Republican voter suppression efforts before the 2004 election. This is a writer who the right hates to love.

It's right here that Scoop hits the nail on the head - the end result of unreasonable skeptism against election fraud is that is provides political cover for the incompetent and/or malfeasance which may or may not have occured.

But even before Manjoo, that Liberal bastion Mother Jones was well into the election fraud dismissing act.

Recounting Ohio, Was Ohio stolen? You might not like the answer, by Mark Hertsgaard is the precursor for Manjoo’s recent epistle against the Kennedy article. The article appeared in the November/December 2005 issue.

The article is a review of three early books claiming a stolen election: Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?: Essential Documents By Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, and Steve Rosenfeld; What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election; and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) By Mark Crispin Miller.

Hertsgaard begins with a stunning assertion to anyone who chooses to read or is familiar with the three publications or the authors: “The source for much of the skeptics' case is The Free Press, an online news service based in Columbus.” In the article he comments on his low regard for the general quality of evidence among those who claim fraud. Yet he fails to provide one single shred of evidence, even of the Fox News kind (“some say”), to support this claim. Think about it. Congressman John Conyers, D, MI, is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. He is a veteran of the Nixon impeachment hearings, the Civil rights movement, and countless other political battles over his 40 plus year political career. Why and how would he fall under he spell of The Free Press editor Bob Fitrakis and company?

Similarly I've seen the exact same hyper-skeptism specifically of Fitrakis. Not because of the quality of his information, but simply because the information came from him. It's Dismissal by Association.

He goes on to characterize Fitrakis, and by association Conyers and Miller, as “unabashedly left-wing and happy to meld journalism with activism.” To simplify, he implies that they will mislead in order to make their point. Before he ever considers the evidence offered in any of the three books, Hertsgaard engages in the cheapest argument of all, guilt by false association. This journalistic drive by attack on the credibility of Conyers, Miller and Fitrakis results in an unintended but clear consequence for Hertsgaard; the complete demolition of his credibility as a reviewer of the books or arguments therein.

But what about the facts?

Hertsgaard indicates little, if any knowledge of the considerable amount of work done on exit polls by Steven Freeman, PhD, Ron Baiman, PhD and the team at the Election Archive.Org, (formerly USCountsVotes) and the internet poster TruthIsAll He also brings forward the “reluctant Bush responder” argument to explain why the exit polls showing Kerry a winner were wrong. This had been largely discredited at the time and pollster John Zogby calls this reasoning “preposterous” (see footnote 36 ). Hertsgaard then reasons backwards and implies that a partial recount in New Hampshire, which failed to find fraud, somehow shows that all the work regarding exit polls is invalid without any support other than his assertion.

The apogee of Hertsgaard’s illogic is achieved in his citation of a lawyer for the Ohio Democratic Party. This is his kill shot, his moment of Zen when he offers us the dilemma that will cause us to fall down and worship in his temple of superior understanding:

As for the larger argument that Ohio was stolen, O'Grady says, "That point of view relies on the assumption that the entire Republican Party is conspiratorial and the entire Democratic Party is as dumb as rocks. And I don't buy that."

There is so much obviously wrong with this type of false choice, it is stretches the mind to uncomfortable limits. The “entire Republican” party does not have to be “conspiratorial” to advance a tenable fraud hypothesis regarding Ohio. Nor does the “entire Democratic Party” need to be “dumb as rocks.” The use of this type of over generalization says much more about Mr. O’Grady’s state of mind at the time he uttered this and the author’s weak sense of logic and argumentation than it does about election fraud. It is a disappointing display of ignorance to even include this in the discussion of a topic as serious as this.

Not so coincidentally this very arguement is identical to one I received on Dkos just two days ago.

I got it. They are all against the truth. They have all been blinded by the light and cannot see the truth like you can. I got it.

Or, just maybe, they all agree with me, that RFK Jr's recent publication is not new news, but is simply a compilation of available speculation that does not prove that the election was stolen. It's not news to compile old news into a new shiny package like he did, no matter how much you want to promote the story.

Either you are right, and the whole MSM is in the conspiracy, or you are wrong, and I am right.

I am comfortable with that. I know who's right.

Yeah, I'm sure "You Know You're Right" -- (Nirvana). This same type of presumption is displayed in the Manjoo article.

Farhad Manjoo shows his hand very early in the response to the Kennedy article. In the forth paragraph, the twin smoking guns appear:

I scoured his Rolling Stone article for some novel story or statistic or theory that would prove, finally, that George W. Bush was not the true victor. But nothing here is new. If you've spent time on Democratic Underground or have read Mark Crispin Miller's "Fooled Again," you're already familiar with everything Kennedy has to say.

Manjoo’s scouring is a fool’s errand. Proof is the first smoking gun. This is a transparent ploy that would be apparent to the tens of thousands of high school debaters who hold each other to higher standards of reasoning and evidence than the editor of Salon applies. You cannot prove a claim like Kennedy’s without a thorough investigation. There has been no thorough investigation and beyond any doubt whatsoever, the author knows that.

Therefore, the author is arguing from a false premise that he knows is false. In the scouring exercise, it must have been apparent that Kennedy did not claim to prove that the election was stolen. Kennedy amassed impressive arguments and evidence and made a judgment, his right and obligation as an involved citizen and political figure. Yet he is faulted by one of Salon’s favorites as claiming to have done something he never claimed to do.

But although there hasn't been a thorough investigation, there has been some investigation of these claims and issues.

If Manjoo’s scouring had been a little more thorough he would have found the following pertinent history. Conyers went to Ohio to investigate the election. He had a limited staff under very difficult circumstances and received no cooperation; either from the Republicans who run the state of Ohio or major media concerns who sponsored the exit polls yet refuse to widely release the raw data. While he was doing this, his counterpart, Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio, was with fellow Republicans in Washington, DC, readying a veritable Soviet show trial to demonstrate that the election was legitimate. The results of the Conyers efforts are published and available. The results of Ney’s efforts are an embarrassment Ney’s key witness was the head of a supposedly non partisan voting rights group created just days before the hearings. The group was headed by the “National Election Counsel to Bush-Cheney '04.” Apparently Manjoo was too involved scouring Rolling Stone to notice the larger picture.

The second smoking gun in paragraph four of the Salon article is Hertsgaardian in its presentation: “If you've spent time on Democratic Underground or have read Mark Crispin Miller's Fooled Again, you're already familiar with everything Kennedy has to say.” In another replica of Hertsgaard’s rhetoric, the author performs guilt by association with unsupported assertion maneuver. This equals, perhaps surpasses Mark Hertsgaard’s claim that Fitrakis and Miller were the sole source for the Conyers committee report on Ohio.

Ah, we've found the culplut - those crazy DUers did it.

What is www.DemocraticUnderground.Com? The author has already told us in paragraph two:

Then there are the legions of activists, academics, bloggers and others who've devoted their post-Nov. 2 lives to unearthing every morsel of data that might suggest the vote was rigged; their theories, factoids, and mountains of purportedly conclusive data likely take up several buildings' worth of hard-drive space in Google's server farms.

Here is the predicate for the association of Kennedy’s ideas with those of the internet forum. Legions are not defined. Does the author mean 100, 500, 1000? There is no estimate on the number of election fraud researchers and activists on Democratic Underground (DU) but 100 would certainly be pushing the number.

Ok, ok, but what about the evidence? What about the Exit Poll discrepancy? What about the Caging? The rejection of registration forms and provisional ballots? The lack of voting machines in key democratic areas and the incredibly long lines which causee so many voters to turn away in frustration? How well does Salon do when they aren't engaged in character assasination?

Warren Mitofsky had egg on his face after his exit polls showing a clear Kerry victory were unintentionally released at critical points throughout Election Day. He went so far as to issue a final poll the day after the election which incorporated the actual vote count. Not surprisingly, Bush won that heat.

Manjoo tries to counter the significant evidence of election fraud presented by Steven Freeman, PhD, US Counts Votes, and others who claim the exit poll victory for Kerry was more reliable than the obviously tainted vote count in Ohio and elsewhere. He resurrects the “reluctant Bush responder” hypothesis. Bush voters were somehow ashamed of their votes and didn’t reveal them to exit poll workers. This argument was characterized by polling exert John Zogby as “preposterous” (see footnote 36). In addition, it has been dismissed by academics and spreadsheet wielding internet bloggers. Nevertheless, he persists.

In one of the saddest displays of feeble argumentation, Manjoo offers the following as an explanation of the exit polls showing a Kerry victory.

…a political scientist at Bard College, explained to me, the numbers Kennedy cites fit the theory that Kerry voters were more likely to respond to pollsters than Bush voters. For instance, in the Bush strongholds -- where the average completion rate (of exit poll surveys) was 56 percent -- it's possible that only 53 percent of those who voted for Bush were willing to be polled, while people who voted for Kerry participated at a higher 59 percent rate. Meanwhile, in the Kerry strongholds, where Mitofsky found a 53 percent average completion rate, it's possible that Bush voters participated 50 percent of the time, while Kerry voters were willing to be interviewed 56 percent of the time. In this scenario, the averages work out to the same ones Kennedy cited: a 56 percent average response rate in Bush strongholds, and a 53 percent average response rate in Kerry strongholds. But in both Bush strongholds and Kerry strongholds, Kerry voters would have been responding at a higher rate, skewing the poll toward Kerry.

This critical paragraph consists of simple verbal calculations, plus or minus three. There is nothing else there except Manjoo’s words surrounding numbers which conveniently counter the statistical and mathematical analyses Kennedy cites. This is simply amazing. Meaningless words and numbers are produced to refute Kennedy’s sources without any basis whatsoever. None. The run on sentences above are based entirely on the phrase “it’s possible.” In that case, it’s also possible that the sentence was generated by a trance medium working for Salon who generated exactly what was needed to discredit Kennedy at the moment of inquiry.

Ok, but how does Scoop explain what Manjoo said about the various down-ticket races and Kennedy's "mistake" involving the very similar result of 2000?

Then there is Manjoo’s dismissal of the significance of an obscure 2004 Democratic candidate for Ohio Supreme Court outpolling Kerry in key areas. He argues that a similar candidate in 2000 (Democrat running for Supreme Court) outpolled Gore in a similar manner. The author failed to note that Gore’s 2000 campaign abandoned Ohio in the last weeks of the campaign and that Resnick outpolling Gore was no surprise given her two term incumbency, popularity, funding level, and, of course, the fact that Gore gave up on the state. Sad but true, there is no hope for Salon. Mighty Manjoo has struck out…again.

From this a pattern of Election Fraud Denial can be seen and charted. First there's the crime of being "Under the Influence" of questionable sources.

1) Characterize those who claim 2004 was a stolen as being under the influence of “loose with the truth” fanatics. Hertsgaard did it in Mother Jones when he claimed that Congressman Conyers and the other Democrats who investigated Ohio and Miller were under the influence of the powerful Bob Fitrakis and The Free Press organization. Manjoo did the same when he varied the theme and claimed that Kennedy is now under the influence of DemocraticUnderground and Mark Crispin Miller

Don't look too closely at those pesky Exit Polls.

2) Diminish the value of the exit polls at all costs. (a) Invoke exit poll leader Warren Mitofsky’s self deprecation strategy. Have you ever heard of a major researcher suddenly diminishing his own work at the end of a long career? (b) Also resuscitate discredited explanations for the exit polls like “reluctant Bush responders” and offer those up as proof by simply saying “it’s possible” that Bush supporters were reluctant. (c) By all means, do not evaluate or interview those who have done extensive analysis on the exit polls. Simply dismiss them as “legions of activists, academics, bloggers and others who've devoted their post-Nov. 2 lives to unearthing every morsel of data that might suggest the vote was rigged…” without bothering to evaluate or mention their evidence.

And when actual facts get in the way - make up your own.

3) Offer up your own evidence that ranges from questionable to incredible. Claim that the popular Ohio Supreme Court incumbent Judge Resnick’s performance in the 2000 election compared to Gore is a valid comparison to the obscure Judge Connelly’s performance compared to Kerry. Also use soundbites like that from Democratic counsel O’Grady that simply make no sense at all.

Lastly, make sure that you point out that they haven't "proven" something they haven't even claimed.

4) And finally, always demand that those making a serious case “prove” that the election was stolen by simply ignoring that proof is established through an in depth investigation. Ignore the fact that there has been no official investigation. But don’t demand an investigation yourself. That would not be prudent.

It should be in everyone's best interest, those on the right, left and center to improve our election integrity -- but it appears there are many who would prefer to let the problems remain and fester rather than call for a serious and detailed investigation when issues come up.

I have to admit that as a California Poll worker, I find the resent allegations that election workers may have tampered with electronic voting machines involving the Bilbray/Busby election this past week to be onerous. The allegation here doesn't seem to be based on any actual evidence that tampering occured, and that is troubling.

There should be some presumption of innocence.

Election workers work very long hours for very little pay, and perform a largely thankless task. It is true that election regulations and laws just may been violated in San Diego (and franky, elsewhere) by the failure to maintain the devices in a secure location, these requirements are complicated with the need to have the polls open on-time when not all polling places are actually available to worker prior to election day. A better balance needs to be established between what we might wish to occur and what is physically possible.

In both cases, these questions must be asked and explored - without the kind of faulty logic and guilt by association employed by Salon and Mother Jones - even if the ultimate answers aren't to the liking of those asking.

Vyan

one of our very own. :)

election officials. Never, Vyan! Election transparency = election integrity. Non-transparent elections are NOT elections. Secrecy in elections = dirty elections. There can be NO OTHER presumption in a democracy. And if poll workers TAKE HOME Republican-controlled BLACK BOXES that are run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, and that have been proven to be extremely hackable, we MUST presume dirty dealings. We MUST! ANY election in these circumstances is INVALID on its face. The individual poll workers MAY be innocent of dirty dealings, but we CANNOT presume that, with hackable, secretly programmed voting machines, or indeed with a breach of security with ANY kind of voting. This is a separate matter from any other crime. This is A FUNDAMENTAL CONDITION OF DEMOCRACY, that the vote counting occur in PUBLIC VIEW with no cloud over what the votes are, who counted them and how.

And I would make the same point about this controversy between RFK/Rolling Stone and Salon.com: Election fraud is very, very simple. If the vote takes place under non-transparent conditions, the election is invalid. The vote in 2004 took place under EGREGIOUSLY non-transparent conditions, deliberately brought about by the biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, with their so-called "Help America Vote Act," and by the electronic voting corporations, with very close ties to the Bush junta, that were funded by that infamous legislation with nearly $4 billion of our money. They deliberately set about to entirely corrupt our election system from one end of the country to the other, and they succeeded!

Nobody can prove that Bush won! Nobody! One third of the country voted without even a paper receipt to prove what happened within the black box voting machines and central tabulators, which are run on SECRET programming code. And the audit/recount controls in the rest of the country were hardly any better. The moment that optiscan ballots or other paper ballots are scanned into a secretly programmed electronic central tabulation system, the disconnect between vote and "results" occurs. It was a goddamned scam! The worst we have ever been the victims of! A dirty thieving scam to destroy our democracy!

THEN you look at the real exit polls--AFTER you review what the Anthrax Congress did to our voting system. What can we INFER from the AVAILABLE evidence in highly non-transparent, deliberately created conditions? THEN you look at the nasty, illegal, anti-black vote suppression in Ohio, and the purges of black voters from the voting rolls in Florida. And you ask yourself: Would people who broke the law in Ohio to suppress the anti-Bush vote, GIVEN NON-TRANSPARENT CONTROL OF VOTE TABULATION VIRTUALLY EVERYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY--secretly insert the few lines of SELF-ERASING programming code necessary--back at corporate headquarters, or during machine "servicing," or taking advantage of breaches of security (such as poll workers taking the black boxes home over the weekend)--to steal the election for Bush?

WOULD they? Is it likely--in non-transparent conditions? And what is the evidence that they did? What evidence CAN we have in non-transparent (not to mention deliberately created non-transparent, and hostile) conditions?

Transparent elections are not difficult. People vote, and you count the votes in public view. Why did they CREATE a non-transparent voting system--run on high speed code that only the techies back at Diebold and ES&S corporate headquarters can understand, and that one one else--not even our secretaries of state--has any access to?

YOU DO NOT PRESUME INNOCENCE IN NON-TRANSPARENT ELECTION CONDITIONS. Non-transparency = election fraud. And you can look to Ohio--the visible part--for the pattern of criminality and the utter lack of conscience.*

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*(--and also, maybe, for hope, because I suspect they had to pre-program the machines to certain percentages and formulae, which were not so easy to change on election day, and that the overt, illegal Ohio vote suppression was needed to supplement the nationwide (heaviest on the east coast and in battleground states) electronic fraud, given the size of the anti-Bush vote that day; my guesstimate, Kerry won by at least a 4% to 5% margin. What this means is that machine fraud can theoretically be overcome by big turnout.)

is that presumption that these various elections workers haven't committed fraud, without any real evidence. It's the same thing any person should be afforded.

The workers should be punished for doing what they were told.

However, it is fair to point out that the various machines were not handled in a manner that is in accordance with state regulations - the machines should be retro-actively decertified and all tallies from those machines should be invalidated, until such a time that a secure method for storage and or prevention of tampering via the memory card can be ensured. The failing in this case started at the top - with our Republican Secretary of State and Governor Shithead.

Having written five journal entries and Dkos diaries on electron fraud since the Kennedy article - I'm with you on everything else.

Vyan

election law was violated. These machines were (wrongly) certified by the SOS. But they were certified with caveats, saying that in order to be certified certain procedures must be followed, because they are hackable in a matter of minutes. Therefor we have no way of knowing that the results given are accurate. We are only asking for a manual vote count. That is all. We just want to know how the people rally voted, as opposed to accepting any old tally, no matter what kind of machine counts it. I think the diebold tsx machines are being questioned, not the pollworkers.

Salon.com. They don't call themselves a "salon" for nothing. That's where the idle rich dabble in poetry and ideas. Give me an "underground' and a "rolling stone" any day. And we do have to keep in mind that our Democratic Party leadership participated in bringing the "Iron Curtain" down over this issue, that we have corrupt Democratic as well as Republican election officials around the country (all that lavish lobbying by Diebold and brethren), and that most of our public officials, almost without exception, are now beholden to Diebold and ES&S for their power, and not to us, the people and theoretical sovereigns of this country. And don't think that doesn't carry weight at Salon and Mother Jones and during certain hours of Air America, and on leftist blogs as well. They were told to shut it down and they did. It interferes with fundraising, for one thing--people thinking "it's all rigged." I think there are some very ill motives in attacks on the election fraud evidence, and I can't imagine anyone with good motives approving of "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code in our election system--let alone code controlled by Bushite corporations. I mean, what can they be thinking?

But I DO think that SOME Dems/liberals/leftists who pooh-pooh election fraud (or outright attack it) may have good motives--for instance, they may be obsessed with the issues (war, torture, spying, extralegal presidential power, theft by the rich), and it's hard to blame them for that, except that they're overlooking the obvious, how the Bush junta can thwart the will of the people with impunity. Or they are genuinely concerned that the facts about our election system will suppress voter turnout, the very thing we need to overcome the 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" that Bushites are getting from their bought and paid for electronic voting corporations. This concerns me as well, and I've thought long and hard about it. My conclusion: Our country is sick unto death from lack of the truth. We MUST tell people the truth. And if we believe in democracy--and believe in the American people, as I fervently do--if we can get the truth to them, and inform them of what we know, THEY will solve the problem. That's how it should be.

Also, it is utterly useless to go on as we are--suffering defeat after defeat in rigged elections--while Bush/Rove and their war profiteering corporate news monopolies create the "hate gays, hate Mexicans, kill Arabs" narrative for their miraculous "comeback" in November. We can't win, and we won't win, in non-transparent, Diebold/ES&S-controlled elections. At best, we might get a few more seats in Congress--where some transparency still exists, and where it doesn't matter much to the Bushites--but I'm beginning to think they're just going to do a 60/40 flip on us*, and to hell with us and our hopes for democracy. Who is there, what is there, to stop them?

Only the people. Only the people, once they understand the mechanism of control, and rise up to throw Diebold/ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor.'

---------

*(--they got away with it in Ohio last year, on the election reform initiatives, which had a 60/40 pre-election lead, and got flipped over by the machines into a 60/40 defeat on election day. The machines and their masters are now controlling election policy! I think this was a test-run of all rigging all the time--whatever percentage they desire, in whatever contest. Not an anomaly.

See Bob Koehler (on the Ohio initiatives--Title: "Poll Shock" 11/24/05)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col321.htm

Koehler's latest: "Trust us: Take this box and stuff it" (3/16/06)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col337.htm

More Koehler:
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk )

to undermine the election fraud issue.

the fence is dubious, attacking a call to investigate is downright dirty.

In 2000, the Bush campaign showed a willingness to use any means necessary to ensure that the State of Florida's electoral votes went to Bush. The stunts they pulled at various stages in the game are are well documented. Katherine Harris played a major part in this effort. It's like a ball game where the referee is also playing for the home team.

If the 2000 election had been run in a fair and transparent way, with all votes recorded in line with voters intentions, then I have no doubt that Gore would have won Florida.

Now, Bush hated that Gore got more votes than him. Hated it. He also hated how the Florida election was so close they had to spend 9 weeks on recounts and legal challenges - and then get the Republican-controlled US Supreme Court to step in. Bush-Rove knew that they could not afford to have a similar situation in 2004. Therefore they concluded it was necessary to double their efforts to deliver swing states into the Red column.

For sure a lot of dirty stuff went on in Ohio, Florida and other swing states in 2004. Well documented in all the reports cited above. In Ohio - Kenneth Blackwell took the Katherine Harris playbook and added several new chapters. But that doesn't mean we can prove beyond all doubt that Kerry should have won Ohio and the Presidency.

But then again - nobody can prove that Bush won the election legitimately. Nobody can prove that he won the popular vote. The fact is we don't know what would have been the outcome of a clean and fair election in November 2004.

If you love America - if you believe in the Constitution and the basic principles of democracy - this a reason to be very alarmed and very afraid!

For me - getting clean elections is the number one political issue in America right now. But for most people - there are other issues that are more important, or at least salient on a daily basis - like Iraq, the deficit, jobs, gas prices ...

I can see it's difficult for Democratic candidates to focus on the issue of electoral integrity - because then it looks like they don't believe they can win, or they are accusing their opponent of cheating. And then there is the real danger that nobody will pay attention to what they have to say on other issues.

But I for one would like to see this issue much higher on the national political agenda.

The lack of public confidence in elections is a real threat to democracy in America. If people don't trust that their votes will be counted properly, then why would they wait in line for 3 or more hours to cast their vote?

Recently the New York Times called on Kenneth Blackwell to stand aside as Secretary of State while he is also a candidate for Governor of Ohio. I want to see every elected Democrat in the country standing up and speaking out on this issue!