More War on Facts

Really REALLY wish we could get to the point where we THINK about what we say before we say it.  As I mentioned earlier, one person I know asserted that she witnessed Democratic workers "literally dragging vegetative people into the polling places".  One of my friends helpfully found some statistics and determined that the number of people in a persistent vegetative state in this country is somewhere around 25,000, and in this election unless they're all in the same state, and drag every last one of them in to vote for a candidate, it would not have made any difference in the outcome.

Now the answer to that is, of course, "But this is just one example of what Democrats will do to steal elections", but really, I think I've already pretty effectively pointed out that if this were happening on any kind of regular basis, we'd be hearing reports of it through official channels, not merely on right wing blogs.

Another argument was from noted intellectual light-weight Victoria Jackson, who asserts (rather without proof) that there are whole bags of military members' votes which were "delivered too late to be counted" and "would have changed the election".  I wrote a long response to this (below), but one of my friends pointed out even more cogently, ballots are counted if they're delivered late, they're only not counted if you VOTE late.  If your ballots are postmarked or otherwise provably sent by the deadline, they will be counted, and if that changes the results of the election, then that change will be made official.

My response, however, relates to the "think before you speak" aspect of this, again even assuming that what she says about the votes is true.

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Wow, Victoria Jackson is one crazy conspiracy theorist. Her latest assertion is that there was this large group of overseas military ballots which arrived a day late, and which would have changed the election.

Let's take this one piece at a time. First, even if these ballots exist, none of the supposed reports on them has an accurate count of how they voted, these articles just ASSUME that every active military person voted for Romney.

But more importantly, as of last year (the most recent for which I can quickly find numbers), there were 1.5 million active military members. Total, not just overseas, this includes large numbers of people serving here on American soil, who were perfectly capable of casting their ballots in the normal way. But for the moment, let's stipulate the almost certainly false assumption that A) every single one of them intended to vote, B) every single one of those votes was in some mysterious shipment that arrived a day late to be counted, and C) every single one of those votes was a vote for Gov. Romney. (And by the way, on assumption C, I already know this is false, I know several active military members who report having voted to reelect President Obama. But I digress.)

As of right now, Obama's lead in the popular vote is 2.8 million votes. So even assuming all of the "insanely in VJ's favor" assumptions are made, the lead for Obama would still be 1.3 million votes.

Now, there are certain flaws with my argument. FIrst, not all ballots have been counted yet, Florida is still not certified, there are still absentee ballots and provisional ballots and the like being counted across the nation. So that 2.8 million vote lead may change.

Second, of course we don't elect on the popular vote, we elect on the electoral college, and it's certainly possible that you can find a way to surgically apply those 1.5 million military votes to key states in such a way as to change the results of those states, and thus, the election.

But even for a moment assuming (again, almost certainly fallaciously) that all of the un-counted ballots fell in exactly the states they'd need to in order to flip electoral college votes around and provide a win for Romney... didn't we just get done watching Donald Trump talk about what a travesty of justice it was that Obama won when (at the time he was posting, with only very preliminary numbers in) Romney was leading in the popular vote?

Not to say that it would be improper to win that way, it's the way our system works, but let's be honest here: There's a long set of assumptions which have to all break in the most favorable way possible, for Victoria Jackson's conspiracy theory du jour to have any merit at all.

If you're going to buy into a conspiracy theory to try to claim that your side didn't lose the election, at least come up with one that fits the facts and for which there's some reasonable evidence. A conspiracy theory that takes one small unfortunate fact (if it is even true) and then relies heavily on extremely favorable assumptions in order to come to your pet conclusion doesn't mean you got screwed, it means you don't understand critical thought.

Go away, Victoria Jackson. Join Donald Trump in the land of "people who can't feed themselves without drooling flecks of angry spittle on their shirt front" and leave the people who understand actual evidence to deal with important things like elections.