Friday, June 02, 2006

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Robert F Kennedy Jr is not a rigorous thinker. His writings on autism are perfectly awful. So I'd prefer to have read about GOP election fraud from another source:
Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

... The mounting evidence that Republicans employed broad, methodical and illegal tactics in the 2004 election should raise serious alarms among news organizations. But instead of investigating allegations of wrongdoing, the press has simply accepted the result as valid. ''We're in a terrible fix,'' Rep. Conyers told me. ''We've got a media that uses its bullhorn in reverse -- to turn down the volume on this outrage rather than turning it up. That's why our citizens are not up in arms.''

The lone news anchor who seriously questioned the integrity of the 2004 election was Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. I asked him why he stood against the tide. ''I was a sports reporter, so I was used to dealing with numbers,'' he said. ''And the numbers made no sense. Kerry had an insurmountable lead in the exit polls on Election Night -- and then everything flipped.'' Olbermann believes that his journalistic colleagues fell down on the job. ''I was stunned by the lack of interest by investigative reporters,'' he said. ''The Republicans shut down Warren County, allegedly for national security purposes -- and no one covered it. Shouldn't someone have sent a camera and a few reporters out there?'
My guess is that the GOP had established a strong "ends justify the means" culture, and that their people took whatever measures were necessary. I'm not sure it required all that much coordination, all it took was a culture of victory at all costs. Was there fraud? It would be odd if there weren't - this is America after all. Was ther enough fraud to throw the election to Bush? Maybe, but I'll reserve judgment pending a more reliable source. Was it coordinated fraud? No clue.

Some of the most interesting evidence, by the way, comes from statistical analysis. The probability that all the exit polls would have erred to Kerry rather than Bush is said to be absurdly low (60,000 to 1)...

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