Florida in 2000. Ohio in 2004. Blackboxvoting.org. Demonstrations of vulnerability in electronic voting machines by maverick Tallahassee elections supervisor Ion Sancho (who spoke in Tampa last weekend). One of today's hottest political topics is voting, or more accurately, the mechanics of voting.
Now comes a 14,000-word, heavily footnoted and documented analysis by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about how President Bush "stole" the 2004 election in Ohio. Let's leave aside the fact that Kennedy's family knows a few things about stealing elections (see Illinois, 1960). Kennedy weaves his way through instance after instance in which Republican voters and their votes were allowed, while Democratic voters and their votes were not.
"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," Kennedy writes. "Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election."
He also criticizes "the media blackout" on the Ohio vote fraud story.
The problem with Kennedy's assessment (aside from its incredible plodding length) is that almost all of it retreads existing theories about the Ohio 2004 election, a great deal of which has been debunked by journalists and political scientists. For the hyper-interested, dig up Farhad Manjoo's rebuttal story in Salon.com. (See links for both stories below.)
Has the buzz about voting connected with voters yet? No, said Susan MacManus, a political scientist who studies elections at the University of South Florida.
"To this point, it's pretty much insider baseball. It's hard to whip people into a frenzy over it," MacManus said. "When I go out and speak to people, they think the touch screen machines are just fine."
Kennedy has written one thing with which I definitely agree: "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." And while I disagree with the idea of a massive conspiracy (beyond the normal partisan jockeying to control the terms of any election), it is true we also have done nothing to reform our national system of elections since the 2000 mess. We have left elections in the hands of more than 10,000 largely independent local officials, and left them vulnerable to fraud and conspiracy theories alike.
THE LAST WORD: In writing about the eight most important local races a few weeks back I focused on the leading candidates. One person I left out, Steven Eckstein of Tampa, took umbrage with my not mentioning him in the race for the Democratic nomination for Hillsborough County Commission against Mary Mulhern (the Planet's former arts critic). Here is an excerpt from the voice mail message he left me:
"Olá, como esta? This is Steve Eckstein. You forgot about me. I'd appreciate it if you get the facts straight. Steve Eckstein, Hillsborough County Commissioner District 1. I'm in the race, and I am ascending the political stairway to heaven. Evidently you overlooked me. But that's OK. One of the people, the St. Pete Times noticed me at that Mexican rally several weeks ago, Dale Mabry and Cypress or whatever, and Columbus, and she thought Mr. Eckstein had a lot of self confidence and sounded great. You obviously missed the boat and don't think anything of me. But that's OK, you are entitled to overlook and make mistakes because you evidently think an article that starts off 'Political Whore' is going to make a lot of logical sense and get people to read it and believe in it? My God. I would have titled it something a little bit more tasteful, but you obviously don't seem to have that much taste, but then again it's your paper and it's your article. I personally don't care if you don't put me in your article. I personally don't care if you don't vote for me. In fact, I hope you don't. I don't care. Some people with money and position and a lot more than you'll ever have, buddy, in your lifetime have said they're voting for me. I may decide not to run because personally I think this town doesn't deserve someone as good as me. That's my own decision. Anyway, I'm still running. Actually I'm flying because I'm ascending the political stairway to heaven, aka Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven.' Do I care if you call me? No. Do I care if you put me in your article? Heck no. I don't want to be in an article with the title 'Political Whore.' Do I want to be connected to that article or you? No way, buddy. No way, Jose. Adios. Qué lástima."
Kennedy's RS article can be found at www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen and the Salon rebuttal is online at www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/print.html.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2006.