Election denialism is hurting the conservative cause
It’s always a treat to pay tribute to my favorite novel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Special thanks to John Pryor (“Making your voice count and every vote accurately counted,” Feb. 10) and his “committee,” who showed up en masse at the Feb. 28 Board of Supervisors meeting, for giving me this opportunity to retell Mark Twain’s story within his novel, “The Royal Nonesuch.”
The Royal Nonesuch is a traveling show produced by the novel’s chief rapscallions, the Duke and the Dauphin, in their efforts to fleece a fictional Arkansas Mississippi River town. On the show’s first night in town, the audience gets comically duped. Not to be made fools of alone, they rave about the show so that it sells out another night, to the rest of the town, so that in the end, all were duped.
How does that resemble Pryor’s committee, “Citizens’ Committee for Election Integrity?” Well, they, and many others were duped into thinking the 2020 election was rigged. You’ve heard this story once or twice or a thousand times, so I won’t retell that, but more recently, on Feb. 28, our local contingent of election deniers showed up at the BOS meeting to demand the Board not extend a contract with Dominion Voting Systems despite a thorough presentation by Aimee Espinosa, elections division director, on why this is important to the county and why Dominion is part of the solution, not a part of any fraud.
Much like Twain’s “Royal Nonesuch,” the crowd at the BOS meeting was rowdy, heckling, shouting and disrupting often. It didn’t dissuade them that Fox News, key perpetrators of the Royal Nonesuch or the Big Lie, whatever you want to call it, recently admitted they mislead their viewers because they didn’t want to lose them to more extreme media outlets. Fox’s Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others were all in on the lie — as proven by their own messages and emails — but that doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter that Republican election officials in battleground states found no evidence of widespread fraud, or that Dominion and other vote-tabulating equipment have been used for decades, or that the same equipment was used in 2016, or that Republican candidates continue to win most elections in Kern. It doesn’t matter to them because though they suspect they may have been duped, it’s still hard to accept, especially from those sources they trusted.
Like the audience from opening night of the Royal Nonesuch, the election deniers in the BOS chambers want the BOS and the rest of us to buy that ticket too, to go down that rabbit hole with them. But how about this for an alternative, election deniers? Come out of that rabbit hole. We’ve all been fooled before and contrary to the Who’s lyrics, we will be fooled again. Don’t double down. Let’s move on.
It matters. Election denialism is hurting the conservative cause. According to one journal (CAP, Nov. 22, 2022), 44 percent of voters like me stated their primary issue this past election was whether the candidate was an election denier. We collectively voted against those candidates and they primarily lost. For people like me, it matters that election deniers refuse to accept election results. It wasn’t that votes were mailed in, or that Dominion machines were used, or that ID cards weren’t required. It only mattered that if their guy doesn’t win, it must be rigged.
John Pryor’s coalition is helping their candidates lose elections. Maybe that explains why conservative Supervisor Zack Scrivner chose to silence the deniers, break the tie and continue the Dominion contract until 2025. Supervisor Scrivner, probably the most conservative supervisor on the Board, seems to understand this denialism doesn’t help the Republican brand (or good government).
Supervisor Jeff Flores joined supervisors Scrivner and Leticia Perez in voting to continue the contract with Dominion and against delaying the extension, stating “I’m not getting into this election denialism. I just want to improve our Elections Division and be the best we can and we are taking steps to do just that.”
Maybe I understand John Pryor’s position. As a former risk manager, he frequently writes in The Californian about risk management issues. In my career managing operations, we frequently poked fun at risk managers, who, by nature risk-averse, were always concerned the more we “operations” guys did, the greater the risk. Do nothing and there’ll be no risk, we’d joke. Same with voting; the fewer people voting, the less risk of fraud. Sorry, John, but the answer isn’t to do less or have fewer people vote. And John, please don’t take offense at my comments herein. A healthy democracy requires a robust debate and let’s just accept we’re part of that debate.
“The fools in town are on our side, and that’s a majority in any town,” Twain quips and Carlson presumes. How else can you explain the latest duping, where Carlson, with the assistance of our own Kevin McCarthy (Our modern day Duke and Dauphin?) performs today’s version of a magic act, making the violence of Jan. 6 disappear under the illusion of “transparency.” It’s fun to be tricked by magic, but regarding this magic, drama and soap opera we call news these days, it feels so much better to be like Huck and see the con for what it is.