The 30% Dead Enders are pulling out all the stops on the Mighty Wurlitzer to discredit RFK Jr.'s analysis of the 2004 election results in Ohio. Besides attacking the messenger (he's a Kennedy, you know, so that's all you need to know) and misdirection head fakes (Democrats do it too!) the prevalent talking point "proof" meme is that NPR has already "debunked" RFK's report. Here's what they are referring to:

One last thing: There also was a session called, "Who Really Won the Election 2004?" This was an opportunity for the cyber-active bloggers who think the Ohio vote was somehow fraudulent to present their best case. They didn't. Their presentations were confusing, if not incoherent to this listener, and they all seemed to boil down to one complaint: namely, that the vote totals didn't match the exit polls. The problem with that argument is that if you can give good reasons why the exit polls were wrong in Ohio (and there are many), their entire complaint disappears.

Hmm, a bunch of bloggers gave some incoherent presentations about exit polls at some conference a couple of weeks ago, and RFK isn't even mentioned. Yes, this blows RFK Jr.'s boat right out of the water, along with his thoroughly researched and documented (208 footnotes) report.

You'd think these guys would get tired of making themselves look so foolish (WMD found! Global Warming is fake! Murtha is a liar and a traitor! Bush is the greatest president in history! RFK is a barking moonbat!).

At any rate, the Mrs. asks a good question re. the RFK Jr. report. Let's say it's all accurate and true, she posits. What is anybody going to do about it? Excellent question. Unfortunately the answer is nothing, just as it was in 2000.

What we should be talking about is how the 2000 election was a wake-up call to fix these problems, and instead we get the lame "Helping America Vote Act" which appears to mainly benefit manufacturers of electronic black-box voting machines that make the problem even worse (Diebold CEO: I promise to deliver the state of Ohio to Bush!).

In 2003, Rep. Rush Holt and then Sen. Bob Graham introduced the "Voter Confidence Act" that would require, among other things, a voter verifiable paper audit trail on all voting machines. It died in some committee. Implementing even parts of it might have prevented some of the problems in 2004. Holt keeps plugging away, though, and introduced in again in 2005.

He and Sen. Barack Obama also introduced the "Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2005". You can read more about both bills and Holt's efforts here.

These two acts are simple fixes that would solve 90% of the problems. Which leaves only one question: why doesn't the Republican controlled Congress want this problem solved?