Mythbusting

Glenn Greenwald’s got an excellent post busting the myths—already being hawked by the GOP and lapped up by the dutiful media—about yesterday’s Democratic victory. Highly recommended.

I have only one quibble, and it’s not even a quibble, really, as much as a response, to what he says here:

The basic mechanics of American democracy, imperfect and defective though they may be, still function. Chronic defeatists and conspiracy theorists -- well-intentioned though they may be -- need to re-evaluate their defeatism and conspiracy theories in light of this rather compelling evidence which undermines them (a refusal to re-evaluate one's beliefs in light of conflicting evidence is a defining attribute of the Bush movement that shouldn't be replicated).

In the sense that I believe electronic voting systems are demonstrably manipulatable (irrespective of whether they were manipulated), I guess I’m a conspiracy theorist. That is, I believe they make a conspiracy possible. To be quite honest, with the number of documented problems with voting yesterday, I wouldn’t be so quick to assert that nothing went wrong, even in the wake of electoral victories—which truly aren’t “compelling evidence” that fraud isn’t possible. If that suggests a refusal to re-evaulate my beliefs, well, so be it—but when even Ken Mehlman and Bob Novak are asking for paper ballots, I don’t think it’s totally ludicrous to be a bit cynical.

Nonetheless, I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist or a bull-headed moron, so I stand by what I’ve been saying all along: The Democrats’ first point of order should be election reform. Require voting machines meet a rigorous security standard and issue a paper trail. That’s all it takes to eradicate the doubt that fuels voting conspiracy theories.

The worst thing we could do after winning is take for granted that the scenarios laid out in films like Hacking Democracy will never happen, or never did. We went into this election with more focus than ever on possible fraud, and polls indicating a likely sweep, which made winning via dirty tricks a dubious proposition. That won’t always be the case, so let’s just get it fixed.

And then I promise to retire my tinfoil hat.