Was the 2004 Election Stolen? - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote an article for Rolling Stone that sums up an extensive investigation into allegations of fraud and disenfranchisement in Ohio in the 2004 Presidential election. The article is very long and well-referenced (208 citations) and well worth the time it will take you to read it.

Kennedy alleges that the GOP used a variety of tactics to prevent people from voting for Kerry, to disqualify ballots from Democratic voters, to shift votes from Kerry to other candidates and to avoid recounting the votes. At the center of the controversy is Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of State. He served as the Chief Elections Officer, overseeing the elections process for the state, and as the co-chair of the Committee to Re-elect George Bush in Ohio, a clear conflict of interest. Blackwell is now the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio. If he wins this fall, we can expect more of the same from Ohio in 2008.

One of the many sources that the article draws from is the report from the Congressional investigation led by John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan. You can get the report here (see the PDF link at the bottom) or you can buy it in book form: What Went Wrong In Ohio: The Conyers Report On The 2004 Presidential Election. The report concludes that there were significant problems. "We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards." To refresh your memory, the Ohio election was decided by 118,601 votes. The win in Ohio gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to win the election. If even a few of the allegations of the article and the report are true, then Bush was not the rightful winner of the 2004 election.

I tip my hat to EdB at Wonderwinds.com for pointing the article out. I highly recommend that you take the time to read this article all the way through. I knew that there were some rumblings about problems in Ohio, but when I see all the evidence laid out like this, it's pretty shocking. If you read the article and the government report and still want more information on the issue, Wikipedia has a very long article about it.