[PRINT this page] [E-MAIL a friend] [send us feedback] [home]
Kerry Suspects Election 2004 Was Stolen

based on a report by Robert Parry. November 6, 2005

Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, has told acquaintances over the past year that he suspects that the election was stolen, but that he didn’t challenge the official results because he lacked hard proof and anticipated a firestorm of criticism if he pressed the point.

“Kerry heard all the disquieting stories” about voting irregularities in Ohio and other states, said Jonathan Winer, a longtime Kerry adviser and a former deputy assistant secretary of state. “But he didn’t have the evidence to do more.”

In an interview with me, Winer said the “disquieting stuff” that troubled Kerry included reports that touch-screen systems had malfunctioned in such a way that voters who tried to vote for Kerry saw their votes switched to Bush. Kerry also was upset with reports that Ohio’s Republican election officials shorted Democratic strongholds on voting machines, Winer said.

Democratic activists also cited the disparity between exit polls, which showed Kerry winning by about 3 percentage points nationwide and carrying key swing states, and the official count, which flipped the results giving Bush wins in most swing states and a national popular vote margin of about 3 percent.

Kerry appears to have weighed how he would look if he made accusations about possible hi-tech hijinks affecting the outcome of a presidential election. Pundits surely would have put him on the couch as a delusional conspiracy theorist.

But Kerry’s decision not to fight has left millions of Americans wondering if their democratic birthright has been stolen – along with the last two presidential elections.


You have been reading excerpts from "Kerry Suspects Election 2004 Was Stolen" by Robert Parry. You can read the entire piece here: tinyurl.com/9d2yg. Thanks to Robert Parry and Consortium News. We visit consortiumnews.com often and we hope you will too.

Powered by Blogger