Monday, June 19, 2006 10:27 a.m. EDT Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 2004 Voter Theft Theory Debunked
Cleveland's leading newspaper has checked out a new article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claiming that Republicans "stole" the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, and concluded that Kennedy's story is "nonsense." In the June 15 issue of Rolling Stone, under the headline "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" Kennedy writes: "A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes." But the Cleveland Plain Dealer regarded as anything but a conservative newspaper headlines a June 18 article: "Rest assured, we checked out Election 2004 thoroughly," and states: "There was no shortage of mistakes made in vote counting. There were voters who should have been registered but weren't, polling places with lines that were too long and without enough voting machines, and decisions from [Secretary of State Ken] Blackwell that appeared to be partisan. "All these mistakes and misjudgments took votes from both candidates, but probably more from Kerry. But they didn't add up to nearly enough votes to swing Ohio from Bush to Kerry. "The mistakes were bipartisan in nature and not a result of Republican chicanery." The Plain Dealer article by Ted Diadiun points to several instances when Kennedy "ignored" the facts, including: "In his online footnotes, Kennedy refers no less than a half-dozen times to a five-month-long post-election investigation commissioned by the Democratic National Committee called `Democracy at Risk.' "Somehow he never gets around to quoting the DNC investigative team's conclusion that `The statistical study of precinct-level data does not suggest the occurrence of widespread fraud that systemically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush." The newspaper also notes: "Kennedy saw conspiracy in a Franklin County foul-up that resulted in far too few voting machines at a polling place in a heavily black area that would presumably vote mainly for Kerry. "But he didn't tell his readers that the chairman of the Franklin County elections board, who oversaw the county's voting machine allocation, was a black man who also chairs the county Democratic Party. Not a likely candidate to steal votes for Bush." Plain Dealer Metro Editor Jean Dubail said this about the Kennedy article: "My first reaction after reading the thing was how little actual news there was in it." Carl Weiser, government and public affairs editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer, expressed similar sentiments: "I read it and nothing in there was really new. The folks who know Ohio elections best checked into it and found there was no conspiracy." And a story by Farhad Manjoo on the Web site Salon.com another news source that's far from conservative states: "If you do read Kennedy's article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretations and his deliberate omission of key bits of data." The Plain Dealer concludes: "The less somebody knows about the 2004 Ohio election and the father away from Ohio he is, the more likely he is to find merit in that Rolling Stone piece. And since our audience is right here in Northeast Ohio, I'm sure that most of you have already figured out that it's nonsense." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! Groups gets a make over. See the new email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/mDk17A/lOaOAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
