The Science of Conspiracy Theories

Scottish Independence Referendum conspiracy

Scottish Independence Referendum conspiracy

I remember this back in 2014. The Scots elected not to break away from the British. The Independence referendum failed and immediately generated conspiracy theories. The pro-independence movement labeled the election a fraud and suggested that it was rigged. A new petition was started and supposedly gathered 100,000 signatures.

So what's the big deal? Was the election rigged? That's hard to say because the conspiracy theorists claimed that the referendum voting did not meet international standards because of the following: The counting was done in aircraft hangers with observers watching from the perimeter. What does that mean, that they were standing outside?

Some Russian observer that made this claim also said that the U.S. and U.K. observers always say the Russian elections are rigged, so he was getting back at us Yanks and Brits. Remember that Russia used a referendum to justify its takeover of the Crimea from Ukraine.

The conspiracy cranks had two videos that show an alleged incident in which an election worker uses a writing tool to mark on a sheet of paper and another incident in which a woman moved ballots from the 'yes' pile to the 'no' pile. This video was played in a loop to make it appear that the woman was shuffling the ballots. Officials labeled the first video as being standard counting procedure.

Naomi Wolf claimed to have a spreadsheet that could prove the referendum was rigged, and she posted on her Facebook page that she had 400 Scotts that say they did not have a barcode on the back of their ballot to uniquely identify it. Of course, this was only hearsay evidence from people. Who remembers what's on the back of a ballot when they vote?

This referendum vote attracted about 85% of the voters and the result was 55.3% against independence and 44.7 % in favor. That sounds pretty normal to me. The videos I saw after the results looked as if the people were happy with it. I would think that breaking from the U.K. would result in financial and economic woes. Again, this referendum was sponsored by the Scottish National Party, which has promoted independence for quite some time.

The other thing to consider is that Scotland was promised new powers by the British government as an inducement not to go independent. I don't know if the general public in Scotland like this result or not, but I do know that the Queen liked it. Since I'm not a Brit, I don't really have an opinion.

Thanks for reading.