Category File
Election Conspiracies
2 documented theories filed under this subject.
- The 2014 Scottish Referendum CountScotland voted against independence on 18 September 2014 by 2,001,926 to 1,617,989 on an 84.6 per cent turnout. Within hours, video of ballots on counting tables was circulating as proof of substitution, and petitions for a re-run passed 80,000 signatures. The Yes campaign itself said the footage was being misread, and the Chief Counting Officer recorded that not one of the thousands of accredited observers had complained on the night — but the Electoral Commission went on to measure the highest level of fraud perception it had ever recorded.
- The "Teddy Roosevelt" Third Party SabotageThis theory claimed that Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 Progressive, or “Bull Moose,” campaign was covertly backed by high finance—especially J.P. Morgan interests—not to elect Roosevelt, but to split the Republican vote and guarantee Woodrow Wilson’s victory. The theory draws on a real electoral effect: the Republican split did enable Wilson to win with a plurality. It also draws on the documented role of wealthy Progressive financiers, especially George W. Perkins, a former Morgan partner, in funding the new party. In conspiracy form, these facts become evidence of deliberate sabotage orchestrated by big business.
- The "Machine" ElectionThis theory claimed that the earliest mechanical voting machines contained hidden gears, counters, or programmed tricks that could quietly transfer votes from one candidate to another, sometimes described as flipping every tenth vote. It emerged almost immediately after the introduction of lever voting machines in the 1890s, when reformers presented them as solutions to ballot stuffing and intimidation while skeptics worried that unseen mechanisms merely moved fraud inside the box. The historical record confirms early suspicion and debate over machine integrity, but not a documented system in which machines were built to shift every tenth vote by design.