I wrote this Monday about budding conspiracy theories regarding the election:
- Unexpected, jarring events — such as Sen. John Kerry's relatively decisive loss to President Bush in last week's election — can cause a cognitive dissonance that some seek to explain by denying "apparent" reality rather than coming to terms with the meaning of that reality.
....Similar "anomalies" from 2000: perhaps then they are just "anomalies," just as "Bush's bulge" had a rather prosaic explanation. Rural Southern Democrats voting for Bush in an election that was set up along value lines of "us" vs. "them"? Sounds like the rural Southern Democrats went with "us," just as social conservatives across the nation did in overwhelming numbers: those who cited values as their top priority (22%) voted for Bush over Kerry by 80 to 18 percent. And cultural conservatives turned out in greater numbers this time over 2000, for example, 5% higher in Ohio.
Various mainstream media have been picking up the theme and saying remarkably similar things over the last couple of days. The Washington Post weighs in today:
- Even as Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign is steadfastly refusing to challenge the results of the presidential election, the bloggers and the mortally wounded party loyalists and the spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists are filling the Internet with head-turning allegations. There is the one about more ballots cast than registered voters in the big Ohio county anchored by Cleveland. There are claims that a suspicious number of Florida counties ended up with Bush vote totals that were far larger than the number of registered Republican voters. And then there is the one that might be the most popular of all: the exit polls that showed Kerry winning big weren't wrong — they were right.
....Ultimately, none of the most popular theories holds up to close scrutiny. And the people who most stand to benefit from the conspiracy theories — the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee — are not biting.
....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 outside the county from congressional districts that spill over Cuyahoga's borders. The quirk made it look as if the county had 90,000 more votes than voters.
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