Conspiracy Theories

Yesterday I linked to an interview on the Huffington Post about election fraud. Today a top post on the Democratic Underground is on the same subject.

Small wonder! Republicans build the voting machines, Republicans write the secret software, Republicans count and compile the totals. The Republican machines allow no auditing of the vote totals they report. So Republicans have the ability to "win" elections, regardless of the will of the voters. There is compelling evidence that they have done just that.

This has become the accepted wisdom in some circles in the Democratic Party. It has its roots in the 2000 election. When Gore's supporters were looking for more votes they were stymied in districts where electronic voting machines were used. Rather than producing punched cards where each card could be individually challenged, the officials pressed some keys and repeated the original figures.

Skip forward to the 2004 election. The site ElectoralVote.com had a state-by-state breakdown based on the average of the most recent polls. It showed Bush ahead most of the time from Labor Day through the day before the election. In fact, Bush did slightly poorer than this site predicted. Two states that had shown weak support for Bush voted for Kerry. Bush did not win and Kerry states.

Now, this should be proof that the election was fair and honest.

The trouble is that the anti-Bush people were so committed and so insular (the Kerry support tended to come from high-concentrated areas) that they could not believe their loss. While polls in general had shown Bush winning, they had done some picking and choosing on which polls they believed. Combined with flawed exit poll results, they decided that they must have won.

The trouble was that every place that had the new machines with no audit trail Kerry did better than expected. The places Bush did best had punch cards. For a couple of months in 2004 some Democrats insisted that tabulating software on equipment 10-20 years old must be the problem. Never mind that these machines counted auditable punched cards.

In 2005, Republicans lost two contested governor's races and voter reform measures in Ohio and California were defeated. Somehow that became more proof. The governor's races weren't important. The California measures were supported by Arnold Schwarzenegger so they don't count. Only the Ohio ballot issues count, mainly because they were supported by the left (and only by the left) and because an early poll showed them ahead.

This isn't much evidence to build a conspiracy theory on but there we are. The disturbing thing is how often this is being repeated.

Some of it is Bush Derangement Syndrome. The Bush-haters will put nothing past him:

Get real! We are speaking here of a pack of scoundrels who have lied to the public in order to launch an illegal war costing tens of thousands of innocent lives, who have openly violated treaties and condoned war crimes, who have suspended the civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, who have absconded with the national treasury and have put our children and their children in permanent hock, who have sullied the good name and reputation of the United States before the community of nations. In the face of such manifest evil, stolen elections are moral chump change

Some of it is a simple refusal to accept that the nation as a whole does not share "blue state" values. Some of it is the bubble that the left lives in. While they complain about the right, they have their own echo chambers - places like the DailyKos, the Democratic Underground, and the Huffington Post. All of these sites push conspiracy theories.

There is a price to pay for this. Last week NBC correspondent Tucker Carleson was writing about Katrina conspiracy theories and said this:

False theories like this terrorize you, make you suspicious and angry. In the end they make your life less happy.

The corrosive effects of election conspiracy theories do not help the Democrats. They still have a major problem with their message but the conspiracy mongers are telling them that their message is fine, they just need to fight harder. Candidates who try a more moderate message are treated as traitors.

This will help the Republicans win elections but it also produces long-term discord. It is difficult to govern when the other side refuses to accept your legitimacy.