Another stolen election

Surely it cannot happen again?

Over at Open House Peter Tatchell looks back at the 2004 presidential election which he concludes

was marred by vote-fixing that would disgrace a banana republic.

Tatchell bases his conclusions on the research of Robert Kennedy Jnr who claimed that

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House

Added to that

Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad3 never received their ballots — or received them too late to vote4 — after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations5. A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states6, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations7. In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes8, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots9. Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment — roughly one for every 100 cast10

.

Last weeks Guardian reported that

the Republican party continues to employ operatives facing fraud accusations including one who faces criminal perjury charges.
Democrats are accusing McCain of hypocrisy after the weekend arrest of Mark Jacoby, a California Republican operative. Jacoby has been accused of voter registration fraud after registering himself to vote at two homes where he did not live.