by Frank Cruz

Created on: January 05, 2008   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

More than a question of "can" voters trust that their votes will be counted, the real issue is whether American voters "should" trust that their votes will be accurately counted. Underpinning every core value in our American democracy is the central belief that we, as voters, are active participants in deciding the overarching question of who shall lead us as a nation. Our very self-image as a nation is deeply rooted in the belief of self-determination, whereby we willingly submit to follow a leader we have helped to choose.

That we have now reached a point in our democracy where we might question openly whether we are in fact having a fair say in choosing our leader is both concerning and depressing. As citizens of the modern world, Americans are aware of electoral frauds and stolen elections in faraway lands. That periodic chicanery by the powerful few to secure their power at the expense of the plentiful poor is not news to our citizens. Yet it is also far away from who and what we are in this country. To imagine that we might ourselves be the objects of such trickery seems so remote and unlikely that we have, until very recently, dismissed out of hand such a possibility.

Beginning with the presidential election of 2000 and again in 2004, Americans found themselves drawn to openly debating the potential for large scale vote fraud designed to thwart the collective will of the national electorate. From the conspiracy theorists urging us to look into the corporate ownership of the manufacturers of the electronic voting machines to the Internet geeks who espoused the ability to "hack" into the recording integrity of those machines, the American public was regaled with news stories, rumors and urban legends as to how this might all be quite feasible.

Adding to the collective fervor surrounding this topic was the deep division that existed among the electorate, with 51% of voters unable to fathom the thinking of the other 49%. Surely no reasonable nation could vote in that manner, in those numbers, given the starkness of the choice between the candidates for the top office in the land. With half of American voters certain that the other half was either hopelessly lost or clearly being manipulated, the existence of voting fraud became all the more believable as an explanation for the state of our national discourse.

It is unfortunate that, quite contrary to the central tenet of the voting fraud conspiracy theories, it is actually likely that the amount of fraud

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>