Know Our Audience: Who Tends to Reject Election Fraud Outright?

[IndyOp]

Watching Mark Crispin Miller on C-SPAN today I was struck by the defensiveness of callers who stated that they had not read his book or his website, and then immediately dismissed him as 'pathetic', as a 'fraud', as a 'phony'. If someone read his Harpers article or his book, "Fooled Again" and then decided not to believe that any election fraud occurred (or) that there was not enough election fraud to warrant a major investigation -- then that would be reasonable.

The reactions we get when discussing election fraud, however, are often not rational - they are often emotional - people react from their gut instead of considering the evidence.

It helps me to try and understand why different groups of people are resistant to even thinking about this issue - so I can better frame my 'points' when talking and writing about election fraud. (Note: If you have read tons of information and simply don't believe there was evidence of election fraud serious enough to warrant investigation - then you aren't a person who is 'resisting' you simply have different information than I or a different opinion than I. Peace be unto you.)

Below is my list of reasons why some people tend to reject election fraud outright, please respond with reasons why you think people are resistant to discussing this issue:

1. Some resist discussing election fraud simply because the election is long over and stories about all forms of fraud were *not* repeatedly in the media - and if it hasn't shown up in the corporate/mainstream media then it isn't real. That is what my Mom and Dad said about Watergate right up until the day Nixon confessed.

2. Some resist discussing election fraud because they don't understand the technology and therefore don't understand how few people it would take to rig/steal an election on virtually any/all types of voting machines. It took me weeks of reading last November/December to learn all of the terminology and start to understand this very important information.

3. Some people don't understand that an election could have been stolen even if the margin between winner & loser was large. High-tech fraud means that people can steal elections big - moving 10% or 15% or more of the votes. And remember that 'rigged' has the same effect as 'stolen during or after vote casting'.

4. Loss is shameful and we don't want to go over that ground again: If we had had a great candidate who ran a great race and we had just worked hard enough on their behalf then we would have won BIG. Don't want to be called a sore loser do you? How can you tell the difference between 'lost' and 'stolen' unless you investigate 'stolen'?

5. One of my favs: If there is *any other* explanation for the result of an election - anything other than fraud - then fraud did not happen. Occam's Razor is sometimes just simplistic thinking in a world in which most events are impacted by more than one causal factor. The issues on the ballot might have been poorly written and there might have been election fraud; the campaign could have been better and there might have been election fraud; the Dem might have won and there might have been election fraud. We need a system that anticipates, minimizes, and investigates fraud in every election.

6. Some resist discussing election fraud via high-tech means because they find evidence of low-tech fraud compelling and disturbing (like voter intimidation, destruction of registration forms, providing too few machines for precincts that are unlikely to vote right and so forth). It is compelling and disturbing, and so is high-tech fraud and they can be used in combination.

7. Many Dems don't want to believe that they could've been fooled - that it was stolen out from beneath them and they did not know. It is painful to admit. It hit me like an f'ing ton of bricks last November 3rd & 4th. I felt tremendous guilt about not having educated myself and done something about the potential for fraud before the 2004 election.

8. I want to believe that I live in a Democracy and that my vote counts, that I have some control over my fate, that my leaders care what I think. If the votes aren't being counted then we have to face a sinister alternative: Our perception of our country, our government, and our lives is wrong.Scary stuff, but not as dangerous as living in an illusion, though.

9. From DU'er Glitch: People with a vested interest in politics, people who have been working very hard in or even around politics, whether they are progressive or conservative or moderate, democrat or republican or green or libertarian, would have to face a reality that everything political that they have invested in, their time or money or even professional lives, is being made, indeed may already be, irrelevant. No matter how brilliant they are, no matter hard they work, someone like Bush will win the office, because his backers own the count. Nothing that they do or say or pay politically will ever matter if the votes aren't counted. Everybody who has made a career trying to get Democrats to be more Progressive can kiss off all their life's work. This is a painful thing to do, so they would rather embrace an illusion that their work still has meaning. And all the people who work so hard to get out the vote have to face the probability that their efforts, the time they didn't have but volunteered anyway, and I am among them so I can tell you this does hurt, is for nothing. These people fight very hard against the idea that the elections are stolen, because they see their job of getting out the vote even harder if no one trusts the system. To which I answer: the only solution is to fix the system and prove that it is fixed, denying it is broken will not bring back the trust.

10. Many, otherwise fair-minded Repubs are resistant because their personal definition of being Republican is that they are the party of 'morality' - so they could not possibly being doing anything immoral.

11. Many Repubs have 'business psyche' -- e.g. the rules of business and politics are 'different' from other realms of life. Business ethics: Do anything you can get away with. Political ethics: Do anything you can get away with and reassure yourself that it is really for the masses' own good (they just don't understand that you are doing it for their own good).

12. Of course, some folks (maybe less than a dozen) don't want to discuss it because they DID it.

=================================================

On Edit: The most useful thing you can do for a friend who 'won't consider the issue', IMHO: Show them the Solarbus video compilation! It includes: Votergate; Invisible Ballots; Electile Dysfunction trailer; Video the Vote - Ohio, 2004; The Daily Show and more! <http://www.solarbus.org/election/cd>. You can also burn CD's with the videos for FREE and give them away - great stocking stuffers!