Bobby Kennedy Jr’s article in Rolling Stone Magazine is causing quite a stir among Democrats, including the local ones at Horsesass.org, the local Daily Kos lite blog.  These lovely examples of fairness will consistently label the right wingers as cry babies when they complain about the fraud and flaws in the King County Elections Department, usually over the same issues they take outrage on in Ohio.  Yes their gloating and whining over this piece sounds notably (but familiarly) hypocritical.

The piece by Kennedy is really nothing new.  At it’s heart it is a rehash of the same stuff we have heard ad naseum when Kerry lost in 2004.  It is weak on new facts making it just another rerun.

In other words, like a Michael Moore film, it is unlikely to convince anyone who did not already believe it, and serves no purpose except maybe to rekindle the hatred of those suffer from Post Traumatic Election Loss Syndrome., whereby you embrace the belief that it is always easier to blame your loss on the other guy cheating then it is to concede that you may actually be in the minority and accept that you lost.

Simply put, they are sore losers.

My usual reaction is to tell them to get over it, which is strangely enough the same thing they told Dino Rossi when Christine Gregoire was handed the Governor’s mansion despite all the flaws in the local election process.

Captain Ed has a great blog on all the flaws in the piece:

Tinfoil Hats On Parade

Bobby Kennedy Jr has a turgid expose at Rolling Stone which purports to blow the lid off the 2004 presidential election by claiming that 350,000 Ohio voters were prevented from reaching the polling stations. This, unsurprisingly, has excited the entire port side of the blogosphere. However, when one begins to read through the argument, supported by a slew of citations but no evidence at all, it sounds like a very tired rehash of all the conspiracy theories we heard between November 2004 and January 2005, when the Electoral College made the results final.

Kennedy’s lead argument gives readers enough excuse to stop on the first page. He argues that exit polls are "exquisitely accurate", and therefore since the pollsters are infallible, their early returns must have been the truth:

And really that is the essence of the argument I have seen all over the web.  The exit polls were right, so the results are flawed or cheated.

Read more at the Captain’s site, including why this logic is spurious at best.

But his summary bears repeating here, for it encapsulates the real issue:

I note that Kennedy never once mentions Wisconsin, where real election-day dirty tricks and voter fraud occurred and actually resulted in prosecution. Perhaps that’s because voter fraud that benefits Democrats fails to interest Kennedy. I look forward to his expose on the 1960 election that made his uncle President.

And as the local reaction proves, that is a valid argument.  They rarely take serious any complaints about Democrats committing fraud, even when proven.

Consider this example:

Voter fraud case traced to Defiance County registrations volunteer

124 registrations falsified, allegedly for crack cocaine

Mary Poppins. Jeffrey Dahmer. Janet Jackson. Chad Staton.

Defiance County elections officials were confident the first three hadn’t moved to their small community. But the fourth one lived there, and - in exchange for crack cocaine - tried to falsely submit the first three names and more than 100 others onto the county’s voter registration rolls, police said.

Now Mr. Staton, 22, of Defiance, faces a felony charge of false registration in a case that has quickly gained national attention as part of a hotly contested presidential battle that’s attracted a flurry of new voter registrations across the country - and a flurry of complaints of voter registration fraud.

Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick said that Mr. Staton was working on behalf of a Toledo woman, Georgianne Pitts, to register new voters. She, in turn, was working on behalf of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which was formed by the NAACP in 2000 to register new voters.

Sheriff Westrick said that Pitts, 41, of Toledo, admitted she gave Mr. Staton crack cocaine in lieu of cash for supplying her with completed voter registration forms. The sheriff declined to say how much crack cocaine Pitts supplied Mr. Staton, or to say whether Pitts knew that the forms Mr. Staton gave her were falsified.

"That remains under investigation," he said.

Here we see clear proof of a conspiracy to commit premeditated deliberate fraud.

So the local liberal reaction?  Pooh Pooh.  No big deal.  Insert a non factual accusations that this guy was a small fry, the Republicans cheat big, so they are worse.  Oh, and don’t forget biased reporting (it was featured on MSNBC’s Abrams Report).  Etc.  Excuse.  Evasion.  Rationalization. 

The liberals want their cake and they want to eat it to.

I wish they would attach this much outrage to fixing the problems in Seattle with King County Elections.

But any suggestion that there is a problem, or any specific suggestions are met with lame accusations of disenfranchisement, which makes no sense at all.  How is it disenfranchising to eliminate fraud and illegal votes?  Riddle me that one Batman.  And the local solution is to go to all mail voting, which amplifies the chances of voter fraud.  Perfect.

Apparently it is disenfranchising voters to:

• Require ID to ensure a voter is who they say they are
• Prevent non-residents from voting
• Enforce residency regulations for registrations
• Purge the voter rolls of illegal votes
• Prevent dead people from voting
• Prevent people from voting twice

It is not disenfranchisement to mail overseas military ballots late though, that’s just a goof.

Oops.  Call KVI radio and ask host Bryan Suits about being disenfranchised.  He still cannot find out where his military absentee ballot is even though he mailed it in on time while in Iraq.

The Democratic philosophy is apparently to err on the side of fraud…unless they lose of course.  Then they cry fraud…the very fraud they endorse and enable by failing to advocate voter reform that actually makes the system integral.

Linked to:  Stop the ACLU, Woman Honor Thyself, Stray Dog, MacBros, Imagine Kitty, Colbert Report

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