timehaganIt has been received wisdom for months — almost to the point of the election headlines having already been written — that Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate Sean Haugh was going to spoil the election for the Republican, House Speaker Thom Tillis. As Democrats fretted Senate races in other states, here in North Carolina there was relief, if not a bit of sniggering, at vulnerable incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan’s slim but persistent polling ahead of Tillis, once Haugh’s candidacy was factored in.

A not-exhaustive list: The New York Times noted it in early July. Time featured it in early August (the graph on the right is from Time). The Democratic Public Policy Polling discussed it in August. So did the Washington Examiner. WRAL focused on it in early September. Breitbart worried about it in September. CNN highlighted it last month as well.

Suddenly, however, with Hagan slipping in the polls, the notion is being floated that the (dun dun DUN-N-N-N) Koch Brothers are behind the scenes somewhere, somehow pushing the Haugh candidacy to spoil the election for Hagan. Their medium? An advertisement about how the anti-war Haugh would legalize marijuana, clearly trying to peel off the all-important Stoner Youth swing vote that has determined so many races before it isn’t funny.

Among others, The News & Observer, National JournalPoliticsNC, and even NPR featuring Haugh are totally on board with this novel take on Haugh as election spoiler.

As with the previous take on it, it has the sound of the election headlines already being written.

Epilogue

Meanwhile, a far more serious potential election spoiler is getting little discussion outside of Carolina Journal:

As early voting opens for the 2014 general election, an attorney representing the state in the lawsuit fighting state election law reforms is seeking further information regarding statements made earlier this month by the Rev. William Barber at the state NAACP convention.

The statements, according to a memo by Butch Bowers, indicate that Barber urged those attending the convention to take people who have not registered to vote to early voting sites and transport registered voters to their wrong precincts on election day. Both practices — same-day registration at early voting locations and out-of-precinct voting — were prohibited by the General Assembly’s 2013 election law. …

Bowers in his memo said the stated purpose for Barber’s request to bring unregistered people to the polls during early voting and take voters to improper precincts was to “gather evidence” that would enhance the plaintiffs’ chances of succeeding in the lawsuit. Bowers also said that doing such things also would “be disruptive to the election process and could result in voter confusion or disenfranchisement.”

Would the “moral” movement actually resort to deliberate election disruption and voter confusion, even to the point of disenfranchisement? I guess we’ll see. Unfortunately, it would be believable, given that so many other of its causes create so much harm to the people the movement pretends to speak for.