NEW YORK, NY (KNX) -- 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.
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