Bobby Kennedy Jr., Rolling Stone, and the fair voting crisis

I have long been a fan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s environmental activism.

Now he's taking on the issue of fair elections, with an article in Rolling Stone. [Read it.]

Will his article make a difference in the upcoming mid-term elections? I doubt it, unfortunately. But we have to appreciate every effort to get the word out.

Ever since the 2000 election fiasco, we've been reading about how voting machines are so easily rigged. But I don't get the feeling that anyone in power is really doing anything about it.

The exit polls never produced hugely different results from the "official" count until these machines -- with no paper trail or other recount provisions -- came into common use. Coincidence?

We know how easy it is to flip votes cast on those machines, especially in so-called "blue states".

And we know that the head of the Diebold voting machine company promised to deliver the crucial state of Ohio to the Bush camp in the 2004 election.

But crying foul seems somewhat futile, since the Democrats in Washington lack the power and the cojones to fix this problem.

In the meantime, however, I want to point out that the Republicans shouldn't feel secure in their control of the voting apparati. You see, all it takes is one disgruntled software engineer on the other side of the fence to foil the plan.

So let's just play fair. If not for the sake of democracy, then do it because you just never know....