Bush won?

Andersonville Neighbors for Peace is organizing a forum on election fraud. The forum is to be held on April 7 at 7pm at the North Shore Baptist Church at the corner of Berwyn and Lakewood in Chicago. Speakers include Dr. Lora Chamberlain of the Illinois Progressive Democrats and Dr. Ron Baiman, author of "United States of Ukraine?" Their thesis is that fraud took place in the 2004 presidential election, and that the fraud tilted the election in favor of Geroge W. Bush.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend the forum. That same evening I'll be involved in another forum dealing with 1st Amendment rights.

Did Bush win? The initial tally in Ohio showed that Bush won by 140,000 votes. Third party candidates Nader and Badnarik requested a recount, which revealed that the margin was less than 120,000 votes. The inflated initial margin of victory was the result of numerous, significant errors, all of which somehow favored Bush.

But there is even significant doubt as to whether the 120,000 vote margin accurately reflects the intent of the Ohio electorate. There were reports of voter registration forms being improperly rejected, of voters in heavily-Democratic precincts waiting in long lines, of malfunctioning voting machinery, and of other irregularities. With nearly 6 million votes cast in Ohio, these factors could have easily changed the outcome of the election.

To those of us who have doubts about the last presidential election, our problem is that it's easy to come off looking like a kooky conspiracy theorist. Short of having a certifiably fair revote, there simply is no way to divine the intention of the electorate.

All we know for sure is that there are problems with the way we hold elections. Problems that our government doesn't seem all that eager to correct.