Regrets, I have a few—and going down the rabbit hole with a rather outspoken conservative friend of a friend this week is one of them. We were at a local establishment that serves adult beverages. We have a few of these places in Wisconsin.
The discussion started out simply enough: He assumed that I, as a veteran, would vote for Donald Trump. That was the last somewhat sane thing he said. Before I could escape, he unleashed a frightening statement (paraphrased here, but this is the general gist of the conversation): “Hillary Clinton is not winning, the polls are lies, and we as Americans have the right to form a well-organized militia and forcefully remove the government as it is stated in the Bill of Rights. You remember that if this election is stolen from Donald J. Trump.”
At this point I had to reach down and pick my jaw up off the floor, much like a cartoon character. There was a whole lot to unpack there.
I should have walked away at this point, but I could not. Instead I calmly and politely explained how our election system works (as he clearly did not know), and that just in Wisconsin alone you would have to bribe some of the 72 county clerks in the state to rig a statewide election—and it’s fairly certain at least one of them would go public about an attempted bribe. I also mentioned that in the last 16 years, there have been around 30 or so cases of voter fraud out of millions upon millions of votes cast. So I asked him, “Just how will the election be rigged if Trump loses?”
His response triggered the moment of realization that I should have walked away. It was time to frantically look for tin foil to make a hat so I would not be infected by whatever radio waves had gotten to him. He started with, “I don’t know how they are doing it. But they are. People have already been caught at voter fraud in several states and it is already proven that dead people are registered and have voted.”
Setting aside for a moment that he is willing to start a revolution over this “rigging” when he isn’t even clear how it’s being done and has no proof of it happening, here’s what he actually said: he has no idea how the election is rigged, but he is sure it is rigged.
Oh, do not think for a minute that he was done. He took a swig of his Bud Light and looked me in the eye like he was going to convince me I was just a clueless dumbass liberal. He started again with, “Not to mention, they are allowing illegal immigrants to vote, and that is voter fraud too.” I thought he was done, but no such luck.
“There are a lot of cities, especially in the Democrat-controlled states, where they are getting more votes than people.” At this point I excused myself, and while walking away I could hear him going on about how 50 counties in Illinois were under some sort of investigation for voter fraud. I chose to just walk out the door at this point, unable to take anymore.
How anyone can be this delusional is beyond my comprehension. But this friend of a friend is one of millions of Americans who believe Donald Trump when he says the election is rigged. Mr. Trump and his blind followers live in an alternate reality. But here’s what’s actually real: there were only 31 documented cases of voter fraud between 2000 and 2014.
To put this in perspective, the 31 incidents … come in the context of general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. In general and primary elections alone, more than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period.
Out of 1 billion ballots, there have been 31 incidents of voter fraud. We cannot get people to vote once, and these folks are worried about large numbers of people voting multiple times? The United States does not have a centralized election system. There are a myriad of processes, ballots, and machines in place across the the country. The very idea that you could rig a nationwide vote is preposterous. Throw in the fact that these so-called patriots are threatening sedition if their candidate loses, and their actions remind me of a child throwing a temper tantrum in the grocery store when they don’t get the cookies they want.
The fact of the matter is that the only kinds of voter fraud that exist are gerrymandering and voter suppression. Those are two things that the Republican Party have become very good at, and those methods are the only way they can win. They have no ideas, so to stay in power they have to tilt the playing field in their favor—and then when they lose anyway they whine, threaten, and complain. Most 2-year-olds have better manners.
The loud-mouthed friend of a friend who spouted off his conspiracy theories as if they were the gospel will not start a revolution the day after Hillary Clinton wins the election. He will get in his car and go to work, just like he does every other day of the year. Then for the next four years he will come down with Hillary Derangement Syndrome.
And it surely won’t surprise you that it has many of the same symptoms as Obama Derangement Syndrome.