Dr. Steve Schwartz, a University of Washington medical researcher, created this blog to discuss campus issues, and it soon expanded to a wider range of subjects. Although he’s no longer with us, a contributor still posts articles that readers may find informative, interesting, or simply entertaining and funny (read statement of purpose here). Use the search term “handbill.us” to find this page on the internet. To scroll back to older posts, click on ←Previous Entries halfway down this page.
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Suspicion doesn’t make something a fact
This is so obvious, and so basic, we all should be able to agree on it. Suspicion isn’t fact, and determining something is a fact requires proof. That’s how our legal system works, and that’s how nearly all of us conduct our day-to-day affairs.
A police officer may suspect you of drunk driving, but the arrest isn’t valid if you hadn’t been drinking and weren’t impaired. A retail manager may suspect you of shoplifting, but you’re not a thief if you paid for the items. A neighbor may suspect you of stealing his political yard sign, but the wind knocking it over and blowing it away doesn’t make you a trespasser. In all these cases, a third party’s suspicion doesn’t make a person guilty, and everyone understands that.
A partisan election board may suspect voting fraud, but bare suspicion isn’t grounds to reject an election result. There’s a well-defined legal process for conducting elections, disputing results, and finalizing a result by a statutory deadline. There’s also a very basic principle in our system that people don’t get to pick and choose which laws to obey; they’re bound by all of them, and the law applies to everyone, and all the time.
Along those lines, a Georgia state judge has ruled that county election officials “cannot delay or decline to certify election results, … dealing a blow to an effort by conservatives … to reject results based on a suspicion of fraud or abuse” (story here). The law requires that elections be certified by a certain date. Any challenges must be pursued within the legal framework of the election laws. And mere suspicion of voting fraud or irregularities is never enough to uphold a challenge.
How would you like it, if a judge found you guilty, based on nothing more than a cop’s, store employee’s, or neighbor’s suspicion? How would you like it, if the candidate of your choice was denied taking office, based on nothing more than the partisan opposition’s suspicion the election wasn’t fair? Finding a person guilty requires evidence. So does refusing to recognize and abide by an election result.