Tom SullivanOPINION

“It’s just sad when a political party has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics. I am not willing to defend them anymore.”

– retiring Wisconsin state Senator Dale Schultz, the sole Senate Republican to oppose early voting limits

Johnny Carson once interviewed a NASA astronaut and asked what he thought of the bestselling book about alien visitations to Earth written by Erich von Daniken, titled “Chariots of the Gods.”

The NASA guy paused, took a breath and said, “Whenever Dr. von Daniken looks around the world and encounters something he doesn’t understand, he sees evidence of flying saucers. And since there is a lot in this world that Dr. von Daniken doesn’t understand, he sees evidence for them everywhere.”

Now consider state Republican leaders, Jay DeLancy, the dogged amateur sleuths of his Voter Integrity Project, and the Asheville Tea Party. They see voter fraud everywhere.

DeLancy’s team has spent vast amounts of volunteer time chasing dead voters (some of whom aren’t) and clerical and voter file data entry errors. Since list accuracy is their passion, you’d think they would demand increased public funding for voter database maintenance. They could spend their volunteer hours registering new voters, getting them to the polls, and showing the rest of us how to win elections the American way.

Unless they don’t believe they can.

Instead of making it easier for neighbors to vote, Republican lawmakers in Raleigh trumpeted recent unproven allegations of election irregularities to justify the radical voting changes they enacted last year. The U.S. Department of Justice has challenged the law in court.

Here in Buncombe County, DeLancy’s cadre had not even finished getting dozens registered at homeless shelters thrown off county voter rolls when it hurled another charge at the Board of Elections. They allege that some data in computerized records show invalid addresses. As with Dr. von Daniken, what they don’t understand proves … something.

There may be technical reasons (or simple human error) why database entries don’t match information on paper voter registration forms. (Did they check?) DeLancy’s group made great show of trying to send mail to erroneous street addresses so they could issue a press release about it. In it, DeLancy himself got the Buncombe County Elections Board director’s name wrong. It’s Trena Parker, not Trina.

No matter. They are still gnashing their teeth over students legally voting in North Carolina. After a handful of votes from Warren Wilson College settled the close 2012 District 2 county commission race in favor of Democrat Ellen Frost, the Voter Integri-T-Party is busily “working the refs” in advance of this fall’s rematch. They’ll be back.

Their panic over alleged double voting, suspected voter impersonation (as elusive as space aliens), dead voters and messy voter rolls is because demographic trends show that the numerical edge to which many white Americans feel entitled will evaporate by 2043. They avoided looking at that fact square on for years.

No longer. Our half-black president embodies the trend Time and National Geographic predict will literally change the face of the nation, reducing white America to just another minority in this melting-pot country.

The fear behind the allegations is not about election integrity or race, but power. Who has it and who fears sharing it. (Hint: not Millennials. ) The GOP base knows how minorities are treated in America. For centuries, our European forebears did most of the treating.

Republican supporters and the Voter Integrity Project could register voters and invest more in get-out-the-vote efforts. But with weak faith in their own ideas, they throw smoke bombs into newsrooms and yell “Voter fraud!” loudly and often to create the perception that where there are smoke bombs there must be fire.

They are preparing the ground for challenging votes for the opposing team should theirs lose. Plus, bolstering support for photo ID laws to make it harder for opponents – and supporters – to vote in the first place.

And this. The state Board of Elections last year estimated that 67,639 registered Republicans had no photo identity cards (over 2/3 women). But 176,091 Democrats. To retain power in 2016, Republican leaders are playing percentages, sacrificing thousands of supporters, potentially, as acceptable casualties.

Fearful. Defensive. It is not the American way. But it’s their way.

Tom Sullivan is a blogger, a former community columnist for the Asheville Citizen-Times, and an engineer who consults for industries ranging from chemicals to biotech. He writes for the Asheville-based blog, Scrutiny Hooligans, and has contributed to Huffington Post, Crooks and Liars, and other national blogs. He is the first vice chair of the Buncombe County Democratic Party.