The Post-Election Numbers of OIP Derangement Syndrome

President Barack Obama won reelection with 332 Electoral College votes, more than 64 million actual votes, and 50.7% of the popular vote to his main opponent’s 47.5%. Those numbers and margins are higher than the last time a President was reelected, in 2004. In fact, more Americans voted for President Obama than for any other Presidential candidate except himself in 2008, and his popular-vote total might actually go up as large coastal states finish their counts.

But some people with OIP Derangement Syndrome can’t accept that reality.

In Maine, the Portland Press Herald reported, Republican party chair Charlie Webster alleged a particular sort of voter fraud:

“In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day,” he said. “Everybody has a right to vote, but nobody in (these) towns knows anyone who’s black. . . .”

When [TV host] Carrigan pressed Webster on where it happened, Webster provided no specifics or proof of his claims, but said the party would investigate further.

When asked about the issue in an interview Wednesday with the Portland Press Herald, Webster again refused to provide specifics.

But Webster did inflate his figure to “hundreds” before apologizing under criticism:

“my comments were made without proof of wrongdoing and they had the unintended consequence of casting aspersions on an entire group of Americans.”

We must note that the Obama-Biden ticket won the state of Maine in both 2008 and 2012 by over 100,000 votes.

In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia newspapers reported, Republican House Speaker Sam Smith complained, “I was told that 90 percent of the precincts in Philadelphia County turned out over 90 percent of voters. . . . It’s questionable.” The newspapers pointed out that Smith’s complaint was more than questionable; with Philadelphia showing a 60% turnout overall, Smith’s numbers were mathematically impossible. The Obama-Biden ticket won the state of Pennsylvania by over a quarter-million votes.

Before the election, Dean Chambers made a small name for himself by “unskewing” standard polls with a higher proportion of Republican voters. The polls in aggregate turned out to be right, and his website wrong. So after the election Chambers returned with a new website alleging voter fraud in four swing states, as Slate reported. All four of those states have Republican governors and legislative chambers that made a priority of voter fraud in this election year. Yet he suggests that nearly half a million fraudulent votes in those states swayed the election.

And his evidence? “Things like the 59 voting divisions of Philadelphia where Romney received zero votes.” As Slate noted, such local results are no surprise: 57 Philadelphia precincts (out of more than 1,600 in the city) gave McCain no votes in 2008. Furthermore, a zero vote count is the easiest type of fraud to expose: Chambers and his fellow sufferers simply have to find one person claiming to have voted for the Republican ticket in those precincts. The Philadelphia Inquirer went looking for such a person by starting with the very few people registered as Republican in those wards. And what did they find?

James Norris, 19, who lives down the street, is listed as a Republican in city data. But he said he’s a Democrat and voted for Obama because he thinks the president will help the middle class.

A few blocks away, Eric Sapp, a 42-year-old chef, looked skeptical when told that city data had him listed as a registered Republican. “I got to check on that,” said Sapp, who voted for Obama. . . .

Three of the 15th’s registered Republicans were listed as living in the same apartment, but the tenant there said he had never heard of them. The addresses of several others could not be found.

Will Chambers investigate the possibility of Republican Party registration fraud? I doubt it. OIP Derangement Syndrome doesn’t allow for that sort of rational thinking.