American Views Abroad

 
Simply breathtaking and worth reading, in fact essential reading: Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House by Robert F. Kennedy Jr in Rolling Stone magazine at www.commondreams.org/views06/0601-34.htm.

Kennedy writes: '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.'

Further he points out how the mainstream US press passively accepted the result as a given fact, without even considering looking into any irregularities. Why? The lone journalist (a former sports report who was used to dealing with numbers) gives his take on why: 'You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble. You cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our electoral system.'

Kennedy's conclusion: 'The issue of what happened in 2004 is not an academic one. For the second election in a row, the president of the United States was selected not by the uncontested will of the people but under a cloud of dirty tricks. .... The single greatest threat to our democracy is the insecurity of our voting system. If people lose faith that their votes are accurately and faithfully recorded, they will abandon the ballot box. Nothing less is at stake here than the entire idea of a government by the people.'
- posted by Gloria @ 6:10 PM