Opus 2018-063: Election 2018: Once in a Blue Moon?

My wife is listening to all kinds of conspiracy stuff on You Tube.  Without getting into a general discussion of all the things they are saying I wanted to look at the danger of listening to the guru’s of the world and repeating what they say without thinking about it.

I was told that the Democrats are on a roll and working hard to turn the nation around.  Texas is one of their primary targets.  I have headlines about this many places but don’t usually click on the link because it would take me to the NY Times, LA Times or Washington Post and we all know what propaganda machines they are.  I will still accept that general premise that the powers of the Democrat party are out spending money trying to brainwash people and win elections.

Which brings us to a specific example.  I was told that the Democrats had brought out one million more voters in this election and Ted Cruz had better wake up or he will lose the election.  I agree with the need to wake up.  That is like one of those statements, “Is it a good idea to stop beating your wife.”  Who can argue?  It was the one million that I had trouble with.  When I tried to reason with her she almost got violent that I would question her sources.  Actually, yes, I would question her sources.  I question my sources.  I even consider carefully the words of the Bible which I consider to be the word from God.  I want to understand not just find ammunition for my theories.

Let me explain my problem.  I voted.  We voted on the regular day and the first report of the day was posted on the door.  At that point I think it said 42 Republicans had voted and 8 Democrats.  It did not look like a landside for the Democrats at that point but one little snapshot does not an election make.  So I went to the official sites by the secretary of state.  It told me that the official, final, all votes counted number of Democrats who voted for the U.S. Senate was 1,037,779.  I did not major in math but I did learn my basics before the new math came in.  What this tells me is that for there to be 1,000,000 additional Democrat voters then there were only 37,779 in the whole state before this.  That is a pretty picture but not too realistic.  So I went back to the last general election where the Democrats had around 4 millions votes for the Senate, and still lost.  Again my math is controlled by my ability to think.  Somehow it seems to me that 4 million then and 1 million now does not add up to 1 million new voters.

Maybe I am missing something, but then again, maybe I am not.  We need to remember that the conspiracy theory people are a lot like the weatherman on TV.  He may be reporting what he sees but he is usually wrong in his predictions.  He also needs to get people excited enough about what he is saying to get them to keep watching the commercials that pay his salary.  Ignoring the weather man totally can cause a rained out picnic.  Ignore the Deep State Chicken Little and you might lose your freedom.

Always keep your thinking cap on, even if it is made of tin.

homo unius libri