Was the 2004 election stolen?

June 4, 2006

Well, was it? There are, to be sure, several major blogs that follow rigged voting machines and purged voter rolls much closer than I do, but the issue is of particular significance this week because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written a thorough report for Rolling Stone in which he makes the case that Republicans in Ohio “mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004.” In effect, Kennedy said, John Kerry won Ohio, or would have if the GOP hadn’t cheated.

I’ve read the article, and the accompanying 74 footnotes, and I remain a skeptic. Some of Kennedy’s sources are a little shaky, and his over-reliance on voter exit polls brings his conclusions into question. Kennedy makes an excellent and persuasive case that Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) played fast and loose with the rules, and arbitrarily pushed voting standards that contributed to statewide irregularities, but one dubious state official does not a stolen election make.

There’s a lot of talk in response to the article about whether to embrace “conspiracy theories.” I’ve come to hate the phrase because it’s lost all meaning — one side uses it to dismiss the arguments of the other without considering the merit of the charges. Once something is labeled a “conspiracy theory,” the discussion is apparently supposed to end. Kennedy is right when he noted early on that, “Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush’s victory as nut cases in ‘tinfoil hats.'”

That said, I’m not suspicious of the argument because it suggests a “conspiracy”; I’m suspicious of the argument because I’m not sure it holds up to close scrutiny.

There’s no shortage of opinions out there. After reading Kennedy’s piece, I recommend checking out Michael J.W. Stickings and Jane Hamsher, who tend to agree with Kennedy, The Editors, who were unimpressed, and Salon’s Farhad Manjoo, who does a point-by-point take down of the Rolling Stone article.

Just to be clear, I enthusiastically support a reform of the election process and have little doubt that improprieties in Florida in 2000 amounted to serious electoral fraud. I’m just not sold on Ohio’s electoral votes being stolen.

Take a look at Kennedy’s and Manjoo’s work, decide for yourself, and let me know what you think.

Another article of extreme claims with dubious footnotes. Why is anyone surprised?

-jjf

  • On the subject of voting fraud, stolen elections and disenfranchisement, we can learn from the past to glean answers for the for future–such paper receipts for electronic voting.

    Here’s another example: In 2000 Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was the head of Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida; in 2004 Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was the head of Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio; allowing any official to be responsible for conducting elections and counting votes to also be a campaign official should not be tolerated–ever again!

  • I’d say that – as with many elections – it’s probably a little of both. Whether the outright thefts were actually enough to account for the loss of Ohio is debatable, of course, but that it could get to that point isn’t.

    Democrats have been far too lazy and limp with regard to campaigns and elections. Granted it’s hard to place what we used to call “poll watchers” looking over the shoulders of election officials, especially when that “official” happens to b a pre-programmed Diebold machine, but we bear some responsibility for allowing this to happen. All mail-in ballots are convenient, but they really leave the hen house unguarded. Canada uses pencil-paper ballots, so does Japan, so does all of Europe. The fault lies within us.

    Not that there wasn’t fraud even under the old system. When I was working for San Francisco politicians (late ’50s, early ’60s) I was told that the voting machines of that day – the kind where you pull levers down for each vote and those get added to a counter at the back when you pull the big lever to let yourself out of the booth – could easily be manipulated after the polls closed. It was risky, but it could be done.

    There was something about those earlier paper ballots which gave voters confidence. You had the suspicious “poll watchers” supplied by each party – far cry from today’s poll watchers, those who just collect unofficial exit polls and are amazed when the actual results come out otherwise. You also had three people counting the paper ballots at each polling station and again where they were collected at city city hall or the county courthouse. My mother often wouldn’t get home from counting those ballots till sunrise, but it was worth it to know your vote counted.

    Nobody seems to give a damn anymore. At least not enough to “waste” time getting involved.

  • I have to disagree with your comment about an “over-reliance on voter exit polls” because that really is central to the task of determining if election results are valid. For decades now, voter exit polls have been shown to be very reliable and have gotten even more reliable as the years have gone by. But suddenly Bush comes along and the polls are not reliable anymore?

    One example (although not the same as it involves pre-election polls rather than voter exit polls) comes from Ohio again and the referendums that were on the ballot to try and fix the election laws to prevent fraud. On the ballot were many other items and for every item except the 4 items on election fraud, the pre-election polls were extremely accurate. How can that happen unless there is fraud involved? See http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002015.htm and http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002030.htm for more details.

  • I kind of agree with Ed. Was there a concerted effort to slant the playing field? Undoubtedly. Was it illegal? In some case, almost certainly. Was it enough to change the outcome? We’ll never know.

    But that’s almost beside the point, isn’t it? The question isn’t so much whether they actually rigged the election, it’s the degree to which they attempted it. I have no doubt they did everything they thought they could get away with.

    Personally, I’d prefer a paper ballot and a week long election. I also don’t understand why an election has to be done on a single day. What’s the rush? Keep the polls open for a week, and count the paper ballots as they come in.

  • Aww, c’mon kids, we can always trust the Fascists, er , the Republicans to be straightforward, honest people.
    McCarthy, Nixon, HW Bush, Reagan, W Bush, Delay, Frist, all upstanding citizens, who would never manipulate us in order to seize power.

    “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…..”

    I’m paying attention to Toto when he barks from now on….

  • Kennedy’s piece is most valuable because it pulls together pretty much everything we know so far about election fraud. I didn’t find anything new but I didn’t expect to.

    But here’s what was illuminating: I returned to the November 12, 2001 NYTimes article about what the media consortium found when they recounted Florida’s votes. Remember that? The first half of the article was about how there was no doubt that Bush had won. Then a paragraph was snuck in towards the end — most people don’t read that far — which indicated Gore would have won by a large number of votes if all counties had in fact been recounted. You can say (and it’s true) that Gore made a tactical error there. But you can also say, more frighteningly, that one has to wonder what the hell the Supreme Court was doing when it stopped the recount.

    Howell Raines (remember?) when asked later why he, then editor of the Times, buried the lead of that story. He said it was because we were “at war” and the Times didn’t want to challenge “the President” at such a time.

    After being reminded of that, my feeling is that no amount of investigation is too much when it comes to the voting system. As one caller to a talk show this morning said the burden should be on the states and federal government to demonstrate that elections are honest and unmanipulated. The burden shouldn’t be on the voter. If that were true, if the states had to prove their system would work accurately, Diebold’s machines would have been ruled out long since and recounts would not be stopped.

  • As both sides play loose with the “truth,” we surely will never really know if the election was “stolen.” But perhaps that is part of the point — elections are supposed to be pretty clear cut. That Rethug shenanigans make such an unambiguous determination impossible shows they accomplished their goal. Whether everything Kennedy alleges is true or not, I think there are many things, legal and illegal, that make it likely Ohio should have been a Kerry win. Much like in Florida in 2000 where, even recounting issues aside, there is every reason to believe that Gore was favored by a majority of those who attempted to make their choice known (and either were prevented or did so inaccurately).

  • Add together the phonejamming by Tobin and co. in NH, the illegal contributions in Ohio, the various little actions here and there, well documented in the Conyers report, and you have enough evidence to see that across the board, there was an effort to shave a little here and there, by engaging in small illegalities that when and if discovered, noone would make a fuss over, and noone would piece together. But people have pieced them together, and when you see them all in one place, you realize the importance of each one. It’s not a conspiracy – I agree with CB on that – but there is no way you cant call this a concerted Republican team effort, not to steal an election, but to make sure that if it was close (as it was expected to be) that these little games would manage to tip the balance in one place enough to give the election Bush.

  • I don’t know about the “shakiness” of Kennedy’s sources. Which ones do you consider shaky, exactly?

    That said, the thing that brings me over to the “conspiracy theory” side is that fact that nearly *every* discrepancy benefitted one side – bush. While that’s not impossible, it’s statistically very, very, very, very unlikely.

    You’d have to be a real coincidence theorist to NOT believe that somebody had their thumb on the scale.

  • A report by a voting rights group regarding allegations of voter fraud, intimidation and suppression during the 2004 presidential election has found that “paid Democrat operatives were far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression activities than were their Republican counterparts during the 2004 presidential election.”

    The report by the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund found that thousands “were disenfranchised by illegal votes cast and a coordinated effort by members of certain ‘nonpartisan’ organizations to rig the election system through voter registration fraud in more than a dozen states.”

    Source

  • CB: given J. Kenneth Blackwell’s entire political history as a far right operative, you are still so naive as to believe he couldn’t do this? You also must have never had any involvement with state-level government, or you would know the vast influence the Secretary of State (in any state) has in setting the rules, appointing the committees, hiring the investigators, and running the entire system. It really only takes one bad apple to make the whole barrel suspect when the bad apple is the guy in charge of running the system. This guy is knee deep in all the corruption going on in the Ohio GOP, and you think he has clean hands in this???

    Puh-leeze.

  • The American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund is headed by people that have worked on Bush election campaigns. I do not see them as “fair and unbiased” let alone credible.

    Florida voted for Gore in 2000 but Jeb/Harris made sure that did not stand. Ohio’s economy going into the 2004 vote was in shambles with high unemployment levels. That alone should have guaranteed the state voting against the incumbent. The pre-election surveys and voter exit polls supported this thesis. Unless an independent auditor can show that the people of Ohio really did vote for Bush, I have to believe that the vote was stolen again. Of course this is impossible because the republican leaders of the state instituted an electronic system devoid of a paper trail. Sure wish I could file my forms to the IRS that way.

  • Im with you Tom. Blackwell is a frightening example of what is wrong with the system, and how it stays wrong.

  • Like many conspiracy theories, there seems to be enough evidence to prove and disprove as well as to minimize and attempt to discredit the other side. Don’t get me wrong: this debate is about very serious and ongoing issues. But for me, the key word in my last sentence is “ongoing”. For Democrats, progressives, and liberals, we need to not just fixate on whether there is enough proof to convict. When we have it like we did in New Hampshire, then do it! Otherwise, let’s be as sure of our facts as we possibly can be, but move on to prevent this from happening again. The most important lesson I ever learned from Chicago politics is that you anticipate foul play, prepare for it, and deal with it. Don’t just whine about it and leave it there.

  • Phonatic – I emphatically agree. That was the fundamental theme in the Burton machine of San Francisco politics … at least it was way back when. Don’t intimidate potential Republican voters, but definitely DO intimidate Republican party operatives. Dominate them. To borrow a line from Nixon’s campaign manager: make them wish they’d never put their sorry faces in the political arena. “Politics ain’t beanbag.”

  • I’ll never forget the look on Judy Woodruff’s face when she was ready to call Ohio for Kerry. If there was ever a moment in broadcasting when the reaction was ” what the hell is going on here’ it was then for me. I’m no conspiracy buff but I’m still convinced something happened to the vote in Ohio.

  • One thing I’ll say for RFK Jr., he has a knack for picking subjects where emotional pseudo certainty already runs high. The nice thing about starting with an unshakable premise is that once you have made the mental leap to remain uncoupled from reality you can always find plenty of evidence to support your position.

    Not to pick on anyone in particular, but consider the “what are the odds?” type argument above. If you actually look at the citations, then go a step further and look at the source materials that some of the citations rely on you will find that, in fact, not ever single discrepency did break for Bush. But RFK says it did, and that, in of itself, becomes still more ‘evidence’ for something someone already believes to be true…

    Do political parties try to tilt the voting process in their favor? Undoubtedly. Sometimes the attempts are simple and direct (like an add pointing your opponent’s base to an independant). Sometimes they are more nasty and legally dubious. But did the repugs perfect them to the point where the popular vote in 2004 is wrong, or at least the Ohio vote? Sorry, in the reality based community, it is still a leap of faith. Just because some folks are willing to bypass demonstrable facts and figures and announce that it is so does not, alas, mean that it is in fact so.

    If time and more study proves them right. Good for them, they can shout “niener-niener!” and go through life on more gigantic leaps of faith. Personally, years have Bushco have pretty much convinced me that I, personally, would be a lot happier with grownups in charge who are willing to base US policy, domestic and otherwise, on the real evidence before us, not formulate them in a bubble, certain that they already know everything they need to.

    -jjf

  • I don’t know if the election in Ohio was stolen in the sense of a conspiracy. I do know that I was in Cleveland a week before the election I could tell that the Republicans were pushing hard to get out poll watchers–asking attorneys–not to assure that citizens were deined the right to vote, but to challenge and basically make it difficult for certain inidividuals to vote. I know this is a fact as my sister who is an attorney was asked by and volunteer to work as a poll watcher for the Republicans–sadly, it was her delight to think she would keep people who did not worship the Republican faith from voting.

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