Voting & Vaccines
What do vote counting and vaccinations have in common? They are both the victims of crazy conspiracy theories.
Some people believe that vote tabulation machines are being manipulated to somehow give the results that “they” (mostly Democrats) want to happen. Those folks believe that voting machines mysteriously refuse to count Trump votes or instead change the marked ballot to Biden. This sleight of hand happens even when down ballot Republicans win their races. In fact, it is used as proof instead of the obvious that Trump is less popular to voters than other Republicans.
Between the need to stop mail-in voting, drop boxes, and to count the ballots by hand, the luddites are sending us back to the 19th century. I never voted in an election where the votes were hand counted. In 1971 when I voted for the first time, the machine I used was the old lever-based system.
I went into the voting booth, manipulated a big lever to close the curtain, then pulled down small levers next to candidates’ names to vote for them. When finished, I pulled the big lever again and the curtain would open and my choices for office would be recorded in the back of the voting machine. There was no paper ballot.
Indeed, that was fraught with possible irregularities. At the end of the night, the precent officials would look at the back of the machines and write down the tabulated numbers and telephone them into election officials. They would be tabulated, and a winner would be declared.
Today’s modern tabulations accurately count the vote, and our election officials have the paper ballots in case a re-count is needed. Counting the ballots by hand is just rife to have errors. How are they keeping track of running totals?
It is conspiracy theories run amuck. All because one person can’t believe he could lose. In less than a decade, the United States has gone from a country where our elections were always considered fair to one where nearly half the population would rather cling to make believe than accept the truth.
Similarly, vaccines are modern miracles. Those of us who can remember childhood diseases such as measles and mumps, know what a Godsend a simple shot can be. It has been demonstrated to us again with Covid.
Four years ago, our nation shut down with what could very well be a deadly disease. Once vaccines hit the market, we quickly returned to normalcy. In days gone by, smallpox swept communities periodically. Polio kept people indoors as it spread through communities. That all ended with vaccines.
Now because of conspiracies and bad information, children are not receiving their vaccines. Needless illness and possibly death is once again facing us as we roar back to the early 1900s as if we want to see our children suffer.
There is nothing clever or smart about allowing irrationality to be substituted for common sense. There is no empirical evidence to support the claims on either vaccination or voting.
