My dear old Dad will be voting Democrat for the first time ever next week: He passed away in July.
Dark humor, I know (Well, I laughed anyway), but it’s my contribution to the real problem about so-called election interference.
A county clerk said last week that she participated in a briefing with high-level security officials and learned there are confirmed attempts to disrupt the election, but here’s her key point: The attacks are NOT on the actual election results, which have more safeguards against tampering than McDonald’s has burgers.
The attacks are designed to undermine confidence in the election process and call the count into question.
So we hear about how Democrats vote early and often, in part by using the names of the dearly departed. Republicans draw unfair voting district lines and throw roadblocks in the way of persons of color voting. The Russians interfere with the election process, or the Chinese manipulate the election, or Diebold programmed extra Republican votes into the system, or stray absentee ballots are being filled out for Democrats and dropped into the box.
All of these myths contribute to the thought that whoever wins next week, they didn’t rise to power legitimately because nefarious forces manipulated the numbers.
I’ve spent 45 years or so hanging around with the people who are charged with ensuring a fair and accurate tally of the votes, and I have seen no sign that they do anything beyond tallying votes fairly and accurately. More often than not, efforts by lawyers and partisans to change the tally only confirm how fair and accurate the counting was. As technology advances, more and more recounts are showing that on Election Night the clerks got it dead on.
So, when the numbers come in, wail and gnash your teeth all you like about voters’ foolish choices — as a libertarian, I do all the time — but put aside any notions that Republicans or Democrats or Russians or the tooth fairy manipulated the system so that the people’s choices were foiled. That doesn’t happen. Really. (And the effectiveness of the efforts to destroy voter confidence is reflected in the way I had to add “Really” to my statement and in the way you argue with my assertion.)
When the numbers add up, you can be confident they’re true, and if you don’t like the results, it’s not because of outside manipulation. We brought this upon ourselves.
