Forget Florida: What About Ohio?

[GOP Corruption]

Paul Krugman follows up last week's column with some clean up in tomorrow's Times. According to studies done following the Constitutional Crisis, Gore would have won a full recount, but probably would have lost if he'd won his own legal appeals for a partial recount. In other words, tie goes to the Governor's brother. Fair enough.

What's more interesting is that Krugman refuses to touch on Ohio 2004, which is deftly covered in the August Harper's. Apparently, he's so used to being decried as shrill, even the good doctor won't go there. But Krugman's readers should.

The online version includes only excerpts (three teaser paragraphs), but you can still find the print copy on newsstands. It's a pretty damning article. It describes the carpet-bombing of techniques Ohio's governing GOP lackeys employed to steal the election: rigged machines (including hard evidence), rigged polling places (pretty good circumstantial evidence), and rigged procedures (hard evidence, including, well-documented public records).

The result is that Bush won by slightly more than 2% of the vote, or 119,000 of 5.5 million cast. Is it verifiable that the dirty tricks employed by Ohio officials made the difference? Of course it can't be. But the vast body of evidence documented by Mark Crispin Miller is enough to cause Americans to demand accountability. George W. Bush won two elections, and neither one appears to have been legal. Why don't Americans give a shit?

Oh, the name of Miller's article? "None Dare Call it Stolen." Including, apparently, even GOP bete noir Paul Krugman.