VOTER FRAUD, rigged elections? Where’s the beef? (Shutterstock).

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”

––Ernest Benn

Well, there’s no getting around it now. We’re knee-deep in a political year and it’s one that seems likely to be about as wild and wooly as we’ve had in a while.

Local results are a harbinger of that. In Huntington Beach, voters approved two proposed city charter amendments that have helped put Surf City on the map, and not necessarily in a positive light.

Measure A – among other things – calls for major changes in the electoral process. Voter identification would be required, the number of drop boxes curtailed and the number of in-person voting stations increased and voting place monitors approved.

The reason for this is the unsupported allegation that voter fraud is widespread across the nation and that – according to a person who we shall not mention –  boatloads of bogus votes are being cast in each election. There is literally no evidence of that, but millions of voters believe it.

It’s not just red voters that cling to that cold comfort. Katie Porter (D-Irvine), who lost in her bid to become a U.S. Senator, claimed the election was “rigged.”

She later clarified it to claim that “big money” had hoodwinked the public into supporting The Other Guys.

So there you have it. On one side of the aisle, many folks think that millions of fake votes make our elections a farce, and on the other side of the aisle, perhaps it’s millions of dollars and gullible voters that make our elections a farce.

It ought to be an uplifting election. May the farce – or belief in it –not be with us.