Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Strong Evidence That the 2004 Election Was Stolen
At Rolling Stone.
Stunningly strong evidence, actually. Not conclusive by any stretch of the imagination, but far stronger than what would be requried to force an investigation.
I did not seriously think that the results of the 2004 election were in doubt. In 2000 I hung on every news report about the count for months, long after the recount had ended. It's always been clear that the 2000 decision was made on doubful grounds. But I believed that we simply and honestly lost in 2004.
After reading Kennedy's piece, I do not believe that any more. Now I don't know what to believe.
If Kennedy is right about even 25% of this, everyone in the country, Democrat and Republican, should be outraged and demanding an investigation. In fact, the evidence that Kennedy marshals is so strong that that I frankly have a hard time believing it. Unless he's leaving out extraordinarily strong considerations on the other side of the argument, then this is basically an open and shut case--a hand-recount must be done of every ballot in Ohio immediately. As Kennedy notes, if a recount is not ordered by November 2 of this year, the Republican Secretary of State--a man strongly implicated in the alleged electoral theft--will be allowed to order that the ballots be shredded.
My conclusion is that Kennedy is likely to be wrong about much of this, or must be leaving out extremely important data. But we won't know whether that's true without a serious national discussion about this, and that probably won't happen unless the media gets off its collective butt and starts reporting on the story.
At Rolling Stone.
Stunningly strong evidence, actually. Not conclusive by any stretch of the imagination, but far stronger than what would be requried to force an investigation.
I did not seriously think that the results of the 2004 election were in doubt. In 2000 I hung on every news report about the count for months, long after the recount had ended. It's always been clear that the 2000 decision was made on doubful grounds. But I believed that we simply and honestly lost in 2004.
After reading Kennedy's piece, I do not believe that any more. Now I don't know what to believe.
If Kennedy is right about even 25% of this, everyone in the country, Democrat and Republican, should be outraged and demanding an investigation. In fact, the evidence that Kennedy marshals is so strong that that I frankly have a hard time believing it. Unless he's leaving out extraordinarily strong considerations on the other side of the argument, then this is basically an open and shut case--a hand-recount must be done of every ballot in Ohio immediately. As Kennedy notes, if a recount is not ordered by November 2 of this year, the Republican Secretary of State--a man strongly implicated in the alleged electoral theft--will be allowed to order that the ballots be shredded.
My conclusion is that Kennedy is likely to be wrong about much of this, or must be leaving out extremely important data. But we won't know whether that's true without a serious national discussion about this, and that probably won't happen unless the media gets off its collective butt and starts reporting on the story.
posted by Winston Smith at
3:26 PM
4 Comments:
Argggh. Even Mother Jones didn't want this one. Roundup here. I understand the Slate article is considered definitive.
There is an article in salon on this:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/index_np.html
I don't agree with some of this analysis, either. (Some of the statistics really are as odd as Kennedy claims.) But it is a useful second opinion.
The math weblog "Good Math, Bad Math" has a good analysis of what's wrong with Kennedy's math. GMBM things there is plenty of other evidence of problems with the 2004 election, but that Kennedy's doing more harm than good with his bad math.
Yeah, looks like the Kennedy piece is a mostly false alarm.
Though the anti-Democratic and anti-democratic electoral shenanigans of the Ohio Secretary of State do remind one that there are powerful Katherine Harris-esque elements of the GOP who just don't give a damn about democracy.
Too bad Kennedy didn't just write about THOSE. They're shocking enough by themselves.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home