Another Drunk Kennedy?

Alchohol or drug abuse is about the only justification that I can come up with for this latest Kennedy fantasy (it runs in the family, you know), this time from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:

Environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of the late New York Senator, is charging the Republican party with stealing the 2004 election.

In a cover story for Rolling Stone Magazine, due to hit the stands tomorrow, Kennedy says Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters -- the overwhelming majority of them Democratic -- from casting ballots or having their votes counted on election night.

Given that the election was decided by a mere 118,607, Kennedy theorizes that the alleged stolen votes would have been enough to have put John F. Kerry in the White House.

In his article "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?," Kennedy presents evidence of outright fraud that may have shifted more than 80,000 rural votes from Kerry to Bush.

The primary culprit behind the widespread barriers to voting, Kennedy charges, was Ken Blackwell, now the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, who allegedly used his powers as secretary of state to purge tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, create long lines in Democratic precincts, and oversee a rigged recount.

Kennedy's article points out that CNN had predicted Kerry would defeat Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.

Using the research facilities of Rolling Stone, Kennedy spent four months investigating the 2004 election, focusing on Ohio. He interviewed dozens of election officials, pollsters, candidates, voter advocates, and political scientists, and reviewed reports by federal officials, statisticians, voter advocates and journalists.

The "research facilities of Rolling Stone"? What is that - the communal bong? Kennedy has obviously taken bad polls (remember how far off the exit polls were in 2004 election?) and has run them through his fevered brain to come up with this detestable Dem campaign slur against Ken Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State who is now the Republican candidate for governor.

Nice try, Bobby. Call us back when you sober up.

UPDATE: Captain Ed reminds us of what some polling researchers found when they looked into the errors that were found in the 2004 exit polling:

Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International found that the Democratic challenger's supporters were more likely than President Bush's supporters to participate in exit polls interviews. They also found that more errors occurred in exit polls conducted by younger interviewers, and about half of the interviewers were 34 or under. ...

They noted that in a number of precincts, interviewers were kept 50 feet or more away from polling places, potentially skewing results toward people motivated to go out of their way to participate in exit polls. They also found suggestions that interviewers may not have carefully followed rules for selecting voters at random, which may have skewed results.

Bobby's entire foundation for his argument is that exit polls are "exquisitely accurate". Not if people don't want to participate. Sorry, Bobby.