Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Earlier today on the Irregular Times front page, Jim issued a request for any actual evidence of vote suppression against Ron Paul in the New Hampshire primary election this week.

I didn’t think that I’d see any concrete evidence, so I was surprised when I came across this bit of news from the Ron Paul Forums. Someone only identified as mlingley made the following specific claim:

“My mom, aunt, and dad all voted for RP today in my hometown, My mom and aunt both work passing out ballots, and checking them off. I just looked at the politico map and it says their town has ZERO votes for Ron. Now i know that there isn’t corruption on voting in that little town, so where they reported it must be. What do I do, anyone know???

Originally Posted by sstjean View Post
This was posted to ronpaul-801 tonight: “This town numbers are wrong wrong wrong on this map. I am from Sutton originally and my parents and one aunt all voted for Ron Paul today and Sutton says 0. So this is wrong. This is a town that had 20 people counting the ballots and I have no reason to believe that they cheated. Small town and I was born and raised there. The real numbers will come in by morning. The electronic machines in the big towns are the ones we have to worry about.”

So, here’s one specific piece of evidence: Someone in Sutton, New Hampshire alleges that their mother, father and aunt all voted for Ron Paul, but no votes for Ron Paul were shown for Sutton.

A reader of the Ron Paul Forums reacts, “This is fabulous We’re gonna have to check every county in every state”. How would this be fabulous for a Ron Paul supporter? Do they want there to be voter suppression? Of course, there is a definition of the word “fabulous” that does not mean something good.

There are a couple of obvious problems with this supposed evidence, however. First, mlingley is anonymous. Second, mlingley cannot know who his or her relatives really voted for. They could have just told mlingley that they voted for Ron Paul, and actually voted for someone else.

As it is, the Ron Paul Forums now claims, without any more citation than mlingley’s original claim, that “apperantly this issue was adressed and the vote totals where changed, someone sent me a pm saying this I didnt confirm it, so check for yourselves, lol”.

Check it for yourselves indeed. So far, the evidence for anti-Paul skullduggery isn’t even skin deep.