It's easier to believe a conspiracy than a coincidence…
www.statista.com:chart:33476:us-respondents-who-are--very--concerned-about-voter-fraud-in-the-presidential-election @ NPR:PBS News, Marist.
The noise was sudden and loud, a metallic thud, followed by the screech of breaks and a second dull thump, then silence followed by shouts and excited cries. I jumped up from the meeting table and ran outside the door of our office, which exited onto the junction just below the Catholic church in Castlebar. While I sprinted down Tucker St to my jeep, my brain was inexplicably sending me images of my father and sister standing shocked in the road. I came to a small car, with the driver sobbing in gasps, wedged sideways in the street. She had failed to yield to the right-of-way at the junction and was struck by an oncoming vehicle which sent her own car, pummelling down the narrow street, miraculously missing all the parked cars, except mine and which my girlfriend was sitting in. Once checking everyone was ok, I then turned to look up to the other car and recognised it immediately as my father’s. Both he and my sister, who he had been taking to the hospital for a check-up, were shaken but okay. Later, the attending Garda (police officer) made several attempts to understand how the vehicles owned by me and my father were the only ones damaged by the errant car — especially as neither of us knew the other was in Castlebar that day. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence’ he repeated ‘what are the chances, hah?’, perhaps thinking some sort of elaborate insurance fraud on our part. But it wasn’t. Coincidences do happen even, even as our brains ascribe meaning to otherwise random events, which seem to be unavoidably connected.
A report by eight conservative legal experts titled "Lost, Not Stolen" reviewed the 64 lawsuits taken by Donald Trump's campaign and allies, challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, and concluded that they all failed to provide evidence of widespread election fraud. The report stated that Trump was given ample opportunity to present evidence in court, but the cases failed due to lack of evidence.[1] Despite this overwhelming rejection of voter fraud, Trump has insisted the 2020 election was rigged by Democrats and he doubled down on these lies during the recent presidential election campaign, with his stated core belief that there was no way ‘Sleepy Joe’ Biden could have won more votes than him.
Distrust of the electoral process has permeated deep into the Republican party. Thus in Michigan, Delta county canvass board members Bonnie Hakkola and LeeAnne Oman, both Republicans, voted against certification of a local recall election on 14 May, after seeing nearly identical voting margins in three different races, claiming it indicated some type of fraud may have occurred. State authorities responded two days later, with a stern letter. The two individuals ultimately resigned and the results were certified.[2] [3]
Democrats have castigated any claims of likely voter fraud from Republicans, insisting instead (often with good reason) that they were nefariously carrying out the former president’s bidding, or too cowardly and stupid to do otherwise. However, the tenacity with which many people believe the 2020 election was rigged to some extent, suggests a deeper conviction is at play. The Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, applied the concept of synchronicity to describe the phenomenon of events which coincide in time and appear meaningfully related but have no discoverable causal connection.[4] It derives from a deep-rooted human instinct to see patterns, especially if they align to our world-view. Thus, many of the 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who stated in August last year that they did not believe Joe Biden's election win was legitimate, may honestly have held that view based on coincidences such as seeing nearly identical voting margins in three different races.[5]
Now, claims of voter fraud by Republicans are circulating widely online with a growing support for Stephen Spoonamore who recently gained attention for his analysis of voting patterns in the 2024 presidential election, calling for hand recounts in certain states. The technology entrepreneur is long known for his expertise in cybersecurity and his outspoken views on election integrity. Following the lack of official response to his ‘Duty to Warn Letter’ written to Kamala Harris, regarding potential fraud in the 2024 election, Spoonamore is caustic in his criticism claiming ‘I don’t think she nor the people around her fully understand the scale of abandonment, and permanent loss of trust that will result. Shame. Shame on anyone in power who claims to love democracy. Shame will surround you like the stench of a rotting limb. I hope it wakes you in your sleep from time to time’.
At the core of his election fraud claims are ‘bullet ballots’. These are the single-shot voting (or plump voting), where voters cast their vote for only one candidate, in this case Donald Trump, and did not proceed down the ticket to vote for state and local election candidates. Historically bullet ballots make less than 0.1% of the total votes, but Spoonamore claims they are greater than 5% in every swing state, and no others. This ‘impossible shift’, is solely confined to these key states and broke exactly for Trump, pushing all vote totals beyond the point of mandatory recounts (which is why only Harris could force a recount of the ballots in question). He argues that Trump benefited from about 600,000 ‘bullet ballot’ votes ‘surgically added to totals in limited jurisdictions and within only the seven swing states’, resulting in Harris loosing Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin in ‘a result too perfect for belief’. Spoonamore also says that Elon Musk conspired to facilitate this fraud, through his ‘$1M lottery for people to go online and sign a pledge to vote for Trump’, but which was in effect a vehicle to create the fake ‘bullet-ballots’. [6]
Yet, as with the 2020 election deniers, Spoonamore and his anti-Trump supporters have no actual proof — only the ‘impossible’ coincidences of the voting data. They are also seemingly resigned to their fate and no Democrat overthrow of the government is on the cards. Yet, such unresolved claims festers in civic society and widespread distrust in the democratic system hollows out the social contract which the government ultimately rests on. Even if an authentic analysis indicates otherwise, I will not be surprised to see a large portion of Democrats insist that Donald Trump is not their rightful president, based on these coincidences. As a Castlebar Garda might say, ‘what are the chances, hah?’.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/10/donald-trump-2020-election-claims-fact-check/75168089007/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/18/election-crimes-prosecution
[3] https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2024/05/15/delta-county-limbo-without-certified-recall-election-results/
[4] "synchronicity (n.)". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. July 2023 [1986]. doi:10.1093/OED/5261833623.
[5] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-think-2020-election-illegitimate/index.html
[6] https://substack.com/home/post/p-151721941