Manjoo has staked out an interesting position on the computerized voting conroversy. He keeps writing about it. He keeps attacking the idea that the 2004 vote was rigged. Yet when debate time comes 'round, he backs off -- claiming (I am told) that he hasn't mastered all the facts.
Too bad, because Mark Crispin Miller has attained such mastery. Go here for his fine response to Manjoo. An excerpt:
We also hear that Democrats have been reluctant to speak out about election fraud because they fear that doing so might cut down voter turnout on Election Day. By such logic, we should henceforth utter not a peep about election fraud, so that the Democratic turnout will break records. Then, when the Republicans win yet again, because they've rigged the system, how will all those Democratic voters feel? Maybe those who haven't killed themselves, or fled the country, will recover just enough to vote again. Would it then be prudent for the Democrats to talk about election fraud? Or would it still seem sensible to keep the subject under wraps?I'll close by repeating a story about the one time I spoke to Manjoo on the phone. For some reason, he asked if Joseph Cannon was my real name. I told him that he was welcome to come down and take a look at my driver's license. Only a few minutes after I hung up did the thought strike me: "Wait a minute -- a guy named Farhad Manjoo thinks that the name "Joseph Cannon" sounds odd?
The argument is idiotic, yet the people who have seriously made it -- Bernie Sanders, Markos Moulitsas, Hillary Clinton's and Chuck Schumer's people, among others -- are extremely bright. The argument, as foolish as it is, does not bespeak a low I.Q., but, I would suggest, a subtler kind of incapacity: a refusal and/or inability to face a deeply terrifying truth. The Democrats refuse to talk about election fraud because they cannot, will not, wrap their minds around the implications of what happened in 2004, and what is happening right now, and what will keep on happening until we, as a people, face the issue.
Now that I double-think about it, I suppose a truly paranoid person might wonder why he would ask a personal question of that sort. Lots of people use pseudonyms on the net, and as far as I am concerned, they are welcome to do so. Under normal circumstances, an insistence on learning a writer's real name might qualify as rude or worse. I do wish net writers would stop using silly pseudonyms, but that's just a personal bias.
At any rate, I washed my hands of Salon ages ago. Here in Los Angeles, in the '80s, the L.A. Weekly underwent a similar morph from hard-hitting political journal to trendoid "lifestyle" rag. Such things happens.
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"Manjoo" had a brief "debate" on WNYC.org with RFK, Jr. (Brian Lehrer show, if anyone wants to podcast) Statistical questions couldn't be settled in that format, and weren't pursued, but Manjoo repeatedly asserted that charging fraud detracts from the larger issue of an unreliable voting system, which he says he wants passionately to reform.
In other words, he claims to want [otherwise powerless] Democrats to work for election reform, but only if they don't claim any fraud has actually taken place. But since fraud isn't occurring (according Manjoo), why would anyone want to reform the system, and what need is there for reform? His position is absurd.
He also failed to answer callers who pointed out the ample and well-documented evidence of (at the least) *attempted* Republican fraud and voting rigging, and demanded to know why he's so thoroughly unwilling to concede that they may have succeeded at it.
Nobody asked him how many articles he himself has publishing, urging reform of the voting system, which he claims to be so passionate about doing, but I believe the answer is zero.
Listening to this guy, I had the distinct sense that he's a plant. Whatever the ultimate facts of what happened in Ohio 2004, he's intellectually dishonest, and people don't get invested in lies and evasions without a reason.
anon, what a splendid review; thanks so much.
i don't think manjoo is a plant, anymore than i think markos is a plant. miller's take - that somehow folks just don't want to believe this devastating truth - may be right. who knows?
i do know that manjoo has a huge ego and seems to be seriously ambitious. that combo typically will just go where the wind blows.
but again, you nail his major inconsistency: why would we even need to reform a system that is not being abused, or at least is so susceptible to it? i tried to ask him this question, and he was just unbelievably pompous.
like joe, i left salon's fold immediately after manjoo's mangling of the 04 results. they clearly deserve each other.
Well, according to Miller, Manjoo *did* so some decent reporting on potential sources of vote fraud in pre-election periods (if doggedly unwilling to concede that such fraud actually took place).
Manjoo's current position is rather like that of the CEO of Diebold, as quoted on Bradblog: Diebold machines are fraud-proof, because they can't be tampered with unless is actually willing to break the law. What bank would accept such assurances, for its ATMs? Would Manjoo deposit his money there? One rather doubts it....
Miller may be right about the "denial" factor. These guys just can't get their heads around it. Most of them are more than willing to concede that attempts at vote rigging took place. But to consider that it actually succeeded ... that would be conspiratorial and anti-democratic!
It's hard to follow up on this terrific post and the three trenchant comments on it. I can only offer this observation: it is more than likely that in 1930's Germany, most of the citizens could not "wrap their minds around the idea" that their government was conducting an industrial-style annihilation of Jews (and other sub-human types). Despite the obvious evidences, it was simply too unbelievable. Likewise with the vote-switching. Even many of the election-reform progressives cannot "wrap their minds around" the concept of vote-switching software.
By the way, Joe, unirealist really is my last name.
Far more than vote fraud itself, the failure of professional journalists and public intellectuals to acknowledge the basic truths about how this country is run is the story of our time, even more so when media has itself become the narrative. Here we are, after all, arguing about Farhod Manjoo.
The real nature of U.S. foreign policy; the long-standing use by the U.S. of torture; the purpose of trade agreements; the behavior of American financial elites; the function of advertising in U.S. society; American elections -- these are matters which cannot be dealt with truthfully in American media, whether "media" means the WSJ editorial page, or Talking Points Memo.
Of course, anyone inside U.S. borders can (with time and basic research skills, or access to a Barnes & Noble's) learn the truth about the world and the U.S. without going to jail or facing a cattle prod, "Patriot" Act notwithstanding. But it is effectively meaningless knowledge, because it remains outside the realm of permitted public discourse.
In some societies, knowledge is power; in the U.S., knowledge is despair. Here, we don't need military or police mechanisms of control (though such controls are no doubt in the works, as the standard of living drops and dissatisfaction grows), because the national conversation doesn't permit dangerous thoughts to emerge into the public square. 50% of the U.S. public is said to believe that GWB is in power thanks to fraud. What does that get us? Apparently, nothing, until Fox News, Bill Frist, the WSJ editorial page, Jim Lehrer announce that GWB stole the election. Short of that, the idea is a ludicrous conspiracy theory.
So thanks, Farhod Manjoo, for doing your part.
There's a terrific overview of vote suppresion and rigging in Greg Palast's new book, Armed Madness.
The beauty of his analysis is, you don't need to theorize about hacked software (which, by its very nature, is all but unprovable) to account for the exit poll results which gave Kerry a broad victory in every contested state. "Spoiled votes" in heavy minority districts were more than enough to give Bush the win, even without the unlawful purging of voter rolls (which he also documents).
Even more maddening, Palast raised a number of these issues BEFORE the 2004 election, and the stories got wide play in U.K. and throughout the world. And what did our courageous national press do? And what did Deomcrats do? Absolutely nothing.
Anonymous 6:38, that's very well said.
Anonymous 4:10, though I haven't read Palast's book analyses of the vote totals, I am troubled by the implicit suggestion that we can explain away the MONSTER in the room, just because we can't see it.
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