How the 2004 Presidential Election Was Stolen

It’s hard to blame the skeptics in Isabella County when I first began to notice information raising questions about what happened in Ohio in 2004. So many of us worked really hard to keep George Bush from being re-elected, spending countless hours on the phones, going door to door and all of the other old-fashioned things to get more votes than the other guy.

So it was with a great sigh of relief when we saw our local figures come in that November, 2004, Election Night and John Kerry actually got more votes than Bush by several hundred in this allegedly Republican County.

But joy turned to sorrow and disbelief when Ohio came in. How could that happen? In a stunningly detailed Rolling Stone article with more than 200 footnotes, Robert Kennedy, Jr. tells us exactly what happened and how, but much of the who is still missing. Just like on CSI, we know a crime was committed and there are some fingerprints and tell-tale clues, but this wasn’t just one crime, but a series of well-orchestrated efforts, some illegal and others unethical, to minimize Kerry votes and maximize Bush votes.

Although one could argue that is what Election Day strategy is all about, under Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican who both oversaw the counting of the votes in Ohio and chaired the re-election campaign of George W. Bush in that very same state, new meaning was given to suppressing the vote of opponents by changing rules and even rigging a recount.

Many of us had seen the questions raised about the discrepancies between the exit polls and the final tally. We heard “statistically impossible” being dismissed as sour grapes. We watched with further disbelief, as the media didn’t even bother to cover John Conyers heroic efforts to investigate and bring more information forward about the Ohio count. Many leading Democrats still dismiss concerns about election integrity, especially here in Michigan, because who wants to believe that a Presidential election could be stolen.

A week after the election, I met a young CMU student, who said he was heading to Europe, “ before it is too late.” He was convinced that the United States was hopelessly locked into a death spiral and nothing ordinary people could do could stop it. I tried to convince him that the pendulum would swing back because it always has in America.

If you haven’t read it yet, take a little time to ponder what happened in Ohio. See if the son of our greatest progressive martyr is on to something in this Rolling Stone article. Then tell me I’m wrong to be concerned about election day integrity – please.