Something odd happened at my caucus that showed the amount of suspicion

[pnwmom]

that had already infected Bernie's campaign back in March.

We all had to wait outside for almost an hour before they let us in. (And this was March -- when it's usually raining. Did I say how much I hate caucuses? They tell you to come at a certain time but don't open the doors for another hour.) Anyway, I didn't want to stand in a line that long, but I noticed a bench against a wall -- the only one -- and there was a spot available. A few feet away from the bench was a table where they were passing out Bernie stuff.

So though my precinct was split almost evenly between the two candidates, I found myself sitting in a corner of Bernie world. All of a sudden, some Bernie leader is telling everyone in our area to take cell phone photos of our ballots. I didn't know why, but I dutifully did it. Then I learned that they wanted the photos as proof.

Proof that we never needed. When we got inside, we sat around long tables where careful volunteers sat and deliberately counted, and recounted, and recounted, the ballots from our table. There was absolutely no reason for our cell phone photos of our ballots. (Though maybe now I should print mine out and frame it.)

The whole system was time-consuming, unrepresentative, elitist, frustrating, amateurish, and slow. But it was obvious all the party volunteers were doing the very best that they could. They were all perfectly fine people, even though half of them were supporting the wrong candidate.

But that Bernie guy outside -- the one who urgently told us to take photos of our paper ballots -- had already instilled the idea in all our brains that the whole system was not to be trusted.

When you are constantly on the look out for voter fraud, you're probably going to see it everywhere. Even at an open caucus with a bunch of your neighbors.

[Skwmom]

1. Vote fraud has been happening for decades and is well documented.

[pnwmom]

2. This election has convinced me that it can be over-hyped. For example,

too few people understand that exit polls can't count absentee and early voters -- and those people don't always vote in the same ways as the people who show up in person. In this election Hillary voters tend to be older and older voters are more likely to vote absentee.

People also don't realize exit polls only count willing participants from a sample of precincts they hope are representative. They're not the perfect polls their adherents think they are.

[TwilightZone]

5. When vote fraud allegedly occurs only when one candidate loses a race...

but also happens *every* time said candidate loses a race, it's little more than crying wolf, especially when there is a distinct lack of evidence to support the vast majority of assertions.

"It's happened before" is not proof.

Unlike in Puerto Rico, where it seems that the Sanders campaign requested a 2/3 drop in polling places because they couldn't get enough volunteers there to administer ballot counting. Had the Clinton campaign done this, Sanders supporters would be livid.

[GreatGazoo]

3. blame the media

they said, quietly, that Iowa seemed to have gone for Sanders. That all the stops were pulled out so that Hillary could have that first one and maintain the inevitability narrative

[pnwmom]

4. She won in a squeaker. It happens. In my precinct, Hillary won by a single vote.

And everyone at my table saw that happen and knows it's true.

It didn't really matter, though, anymore than it did in Iowa -- because of the proportional division of delegates.

[Land Shark]

6. Guards, sentinels, police, protectors are ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT, so what's wrong?

We can't fire all the police, sentinels etc, because THIS TIME the photographic evidence was not needed.