Perhaps not since the assassination of John F. Kennedy 41 years ago has there been so much chatter of a vast conspiracy as there has been since Election Day.
Zipping along the information super highway, there are charges that a cabal may have stolen the election of 2004 by changing enough votes this year to again make George W. Bush president.
Yes, there were glitches in this year's election, but some credit has to be given that close to 120 million Americans voted in one day, a logistical feat. When aren't there glitches?
Just think of a past local experience with election machines possibly not recording votes for one Auburn City Council candidate in the 1990s?
But was there enough fraud to switch votes in some states so that instead of registering blue for the Electoral College they registered red? Were there enough glitches to show that the election's 3.5 million plurality for the president was tinkered with enough to swing the numbers enough to have Sen. John F. Kerry winning the popular vote?
If you believe enough of the stuff floating in the ether of the Internet your answer has to be "yes." There are numerous arguments made that exit polls varied, in some states, too much from the reported vote to think that the actual voting machines might be right. But, factually, there is no hard proof of massive vote tally fraud.
Instead of having to prove that the election was stolen, they demand that proof be given that the election was legit. They, in essence, charge that they not be held accountable for their charges but that their proofless arguments be disproved. It reminds one of the old "gotcha" line for politicians: "Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?" It's an incendiary charge that puts the pressure on the accused to respond, not the accuser to back up their proof.
But does this mean that some of the problems the conspiracy theorists raise are not worth reviewing? Far from it. One would have hoped after the hanging chads fiasco of four years ago that we would have national, standardized changes in voting procedures to lessen the chances for questioning election legitimacy.
While Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to avoid another Florida, they left much decision-making up to states and localities, thinking that local control was how best to handle the issue.
The problem is that this move to not have national uniformity only allows for wild charges on the legitimacy of winners to be advanced during future national elections. Congress needs to take over the implementation of HAVA so that our elections are not ridiculed to sound as if they were run no better than a third world banana republic.
Guy Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn. He can be e-mailed at cozguytho@aol.com
Yes, there were glitches in this year's election, but some credit has to be given that close to 120 million Americans voted in one day, a logistical feat. When aren't there glitches?
Just think of a past local experience with election machines possibly not recording votes for one Auburn City Council candidate in the 1990s?
But was there enough fraud to switch votes in some states so that instead of registering blue for the Electoral College they registered red? Were there enough glitches to show that the election's 3.5 million plurality for the president was tinkered with enough to swing the numbers enough to have Sen. John F. Kerry winning the popular vote?
If you believe enough of the stuff floating in the ether of the Internet your answer has to be "yes." There are numerous arguments made that exit polls varied, in some states, too much from the reported vote to think that the actual voting machines might be right. But, factually, there is no hard proof of massive vote tally fraud.
Instead of having to prove that the election was stolen, they demand that proof be given that the election was legit. They, in essence, charge that they not be held accountable for their charges but that their proofless arguments be disproved. It reminds one of the old "gotcha" line for politicians: "Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?" It's an incendiary charge that puts the pressure on the accused to respond, not the accuser to back up their proof.
But does this mean that some of the problems the conspiracy theorists raise are not worth reviewing? Far from it. One would have hoped after the hanging chads fiasco of four years ago that we would have national, standardized changes in voting procedures to lessen the chances for questioning election legitimacy.
While Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to avoid another Florida, they left much decision-making up to states and localities, thinking that local control was how best to handle the issue.
The problem is that this move to not have national uniformity only allows for wild charges on the legitimacy of winners to be advanced during future national elections. Congress needs to take over the implementation of HAVA so that our elections are not ridiculed to sound as if they were run no better than a third world banana republic.
Guy Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn. He can be e-mailed at cozguytho@aol.com
The Citizens' Say
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