See, when a real newspaper (or station) like CNN or the New York Times or The Washington Post do a story, they fact check. Facts are these really difficult things to get for many bloggers because they have an agenda. Always. Like me. This whole post has an agenda behind it. I’m sick of hearing that “this election wasn’t fair” or “Bush stole the election… again!” You know why? Because I read more than the circle-jerk of blogs that always agree with me or on which I comment.
Take for instance this story from the Post (reprinted on the Seattle Times website) about the allegations of vote theft, hacked votes and phantom voters.
One by one, it pops the balloon of conspiracy surrounding the vote. It also raises an interesting point; if any of these theories were true, why isn’t their candidate saying anything? You would think that John Kerry, of all people, would see the benefit of pointing out that over 1000% of the people registered in one Ohio country voted for Bush.
But he’s not. Why? Because someone looked at why the numbers were that off.
The Ohio vote-fraud theory appears to stem from the curious ways of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. During even-numbered years, the county’s canvassing board posts vote totals that include the results from congressional districts outside the county that spill over Cuyahoga’s borders. The quirk made it look as if the county had 90,000 more votes than voters.
That’s all it took? Christ, with a truth threshold that low, maybe it’s time to start looking for Han Solo’s name in a vote register somewhere.
Oh, and in case you didn’t know, vote discrepancies are common in elections, especially national elections. Why? Because voters are stupid. They mangle ballots, they mark things twice. Not to mention that at a macro level, counting that many things accurately is pretty damn hard. An operation at that level will have a tolerance. Elections are no different. Statistically, the “anomalies” in this election are within the “anomalies” in other elections.
In other words, move on, nothing to see here.
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