Crying Wolf Over Fraud

     Election fraud happens. Electoral shenanigans are pretty much expected, and it has been said for decades now that a candidate not only has to win but win above the “margin of fraud”. The problem in tackling this is that there isn’t much objective evidence because quite often the system is set up to make it impossible to either prove or disprove that not only was there fraud, but enough fraud to flip an election. That fraud can’t be completely disproven has not stopped most people from accepting election results because not fraud could be proven.

     This is not to say that it is impossible to provide evidence of election fraud or other electoral shenanigans. Project Veritas has shown rather damning video evidence of such shenanigans—but then they tend to be the “gold standard” on the right because they will release the full unedited videos and evidence they collect for the world to examine.

     If you have actual proof of or evidence for election fraud, it should be reviewed and action taken if veritable. If something is suspicious and the suspicious withstands scrutiny, then it ought to be investigated properly. Ultimately, beyond providing evidence in your possession to people whose job it is to deal with these shenanigans, there is only so much one can do:

“Recounts will change things or they won’t.   Lawsuits will succeed or they won’t.   Fraud will be proven or it won’t.   The people whose job it is to deal with all that will deal with it. Unless you are one of these people, stop obsessing over what you can’t control and start working towards the future.”

     Some people, however, just feel the need to do something—do anything—if they merely feel that fraud has happened or so suspect shenanigans if an election doesn’t go as they “know” it would go. Crying “fraud” without proof is the political equivalent of crying wolf: Keep on doing it without providing real proof and people will not only start ignoring you even if you provide evidence, but they will dismiss anyone who makes such   claims even if verifiable.

Pictured: Accusations of Election Fraud.

     Do to the emotional investment some people have in the outcome of the election and the election not appearing to go their way, combined with the instant gratification nature of the social media echo chamber, many people have built themselves into a frothing rage with any claim of fraud—no matter how readily disproven—being taken as absolute non-falsifiable proof of fraud on a hitherto unknown level.

     Quite often, claims of fraud based on lack of knowledge or “gut-feeling” turn out to be nothing of the sort. The certainty of some people that something that seems off to them based on their limited experience with how things work, however, means that the social media echo chamber gets filled with false accusations and assertions. The belief that votes were “manufactured” or ballots “altered” for Biden based on “suspiciously high” turnout turns out to be ignorance of election day registration that happens most major elections. The idea that Republican votes were being rejected due to a felt-tip pen based conspiracy is also complete hokum.

     One of the false accusations that got attention from such people as even Donald Trump was that over 100,000 votes were added out of nowhere for Biden based on screenshots from the veritable Decision Desk HQ. This was a clerical error of unofficial results which was caught by the Decision Desk HQ and quickly corrected their reporting; the election official who made the error was contacted about this error and corrected it within 20 minutes. Yet some people still believe this debunked conspiracy.

     Worse still are the partisan media on the right who either believe all this or simply don’t care if it is true or not just as long as they get retweets, likes, and ultimately visits to their websites that earn them money.

     And all the while so many people are “crying wolf” that the actual proverbial “wolf” of real election fraud will be lost in the angry din and ignored by most people on the off chance they come across the information, even if there is actual evidence.

     To those people pushing these disproven claims of fraud: Please stop! As emotionally cathartic as it may be to not “quietly surrender” and angrily “fight”, it does more harm than good.

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