In 2006, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thought he was on to something big. In an article for Rolling Stone, he argued that the 2004 election had been rigged to guarantee a George W. Bush victory, wrongly denying Democratic candidate John Kerry his place in the Oval Office. Citing research from a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, Kennedy argued that a discrepancy between exit polls and actual vote counts, along with voter disenfranchisement in Ohio, constituted likely proof of a concerted effort to unlawfully install Bush in office.
“Despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004,” Kennedy wrote.
In fact, there was no media blackout, and 2004 election conspiracy theories were, if anything, somewhat mainstream. Mother Jones published a story about them in November 2005, and Christopher Hitchens did so in…
