"None Dare Call it Stolen," Mark Crispin Miller's excellent Harper's article about the 2004 election is a must-read for all Democrats. We should be screaming from the rooftops (and at the media) about the de facto disenfranchisement that occured.
In Ohio, for example, thanks to that creepy, Katharine Harris clone, Secretary of State Kennth Blackwell, there was:
a wide discrepancy between the availability of voting machines in more minority, Democratic and urban areas, as compared to more republican, suburban and exurban areas.
snip
[In Franklin County] election officials had "decided to make do with 2,866 machines, even though the analysis showed the county needs 5,000 machines.
This is de facto disenfranchisement, whether there is a smoking gun that proves a GOP-led conspiracy behind it or not. And whatever name you put on it, these are damning facts, fellow democrats: the sort of facts that our friends on the far right would NOT be trying to hush up.
Remaining silent in the face of an unequal election process--that so clearly forced Democrats to stand in line for hours while GOP voters sailed through-- strikes me as either stupidity or defeatism.
What's more,
On September 7, based on an overzealous reading of an obscure state bylaw, he ordered county boards of elections to reject all Ohio voter-registration forms not 'printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text white," and later "attempted to limit access to provisional ballots."
Now, a lot of decent people find conspiracy theories unhelpful for a lot of good reasons. I include myself in that group. Charges that can't be proven are a waste of time. There's so much evidence of lies, wrongdoing and corruption with the Bush administration, who needs to come up with a conspiracy? But these are widely reported facts--that need to be addressed.
Unfortunately, you can't read the entire article online, but you can find it in this month's Harper's magazine. Much of the rest talks about Dirty Tricks, efforts to prevent recounts, and the media's inability to report on this correctly. All good stuff. There's clear evidence of malfeasance, whether it was "stolen" or not.
Note: A rational being diared about the article earlier-- at the end of July: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/7/30/11213/2259
I missed that, so consider this a diary a response to the reality-based dismissals of Miller (most of which from what I can tell didn't benefit from actually reading the original article).