Port: North Dakota’s open records laws, election conspiracies, and the tyranny of the confidently incorrect

MINOT, N.D. — Every week in the past I wrote about

the legions of dopes and dupes

who’re flooding North Dakota election officers, on the state and native degree, with open data requests for election information.

Now comes reporter Michael Standaert with

a deeper dive into the sorry state of affairs

.

These dim bulbs have been led down the primrose path by hucksters like pillow impresario Mike Lindell, in addition to his numerous hangers-on

like North Dakota-based discuss radio host Scott Hennen

.

That they don’t have any actual clue about what they’re doing is evidenced by the truth that they’re usually requesting info that does not exist. Their calls for don’t have any footing in how North Dakota’s elections really work.

When confronted with that truth, they confidently and incorrectly accuse state officers of a conspiracy to obscure some crime they don’t have any proof of.

Nonetheless, North Dakota’s robust open data legal guidelines require that every request, irrespective of how inane, be taken critically.

We are able to speak about why folks like Lindell and Hennen have dedicated themselves to this charade. Theirs are the standard kind of grubby motivations incumbent to seedy televangelists and wannabe prophets.

They discuss sport about patriotism and noble intent, however in the long run, it is at all times about fame and cash.

We are able to additionally discuss concerning the threat this kind of factor poses to democracy. From a philosophical perspective, these troglodytes are working at undermining the general public’s religion in our electoral processes that are, in flip, the very basis of our system of self-governance.

As a extra sensible matter, they’re distracting state and native election officers from the vital work of getting ready for the upcoming balloting.

However there’s additionally the danger this poses to the integrity of our state’s open data legal guidelines.

Our state could be very clear. By regulation, any member of the general public could make a request for data from any public official. There aren’t any varieties or authorized niceties essential; you simply must ask for them in particular person, by telephone, by e-mail. You might ship a service pigeon for those who actually needed to.

And your requests should be answered. There’s a presumption within the regulation that every one data can be found to the general public, until they’ve been particularly exempted, and if a public official tells you {that a} file is exempted, they need to cite to you the regulation permitting for the exemption.

What this provides as much as is a strong software for info and accountability out there not simply to these of us who work within the information media, however to any member of the general public.

Conserving that software in place is a continuing battle. There are various in authorities who view this degree of entry to state data as folly. A nuisance. Even a menace. They’re on the prowl for justifications to shut it down.

Individuals, such because the dullards mindlessly pursuing handy conspiracies, who abuse this very open system of entry to data, are unwittingly making the case for closing it down.

In the event that they actually cared about clear and accountable authorities, and never simply the transparently hypocritical myopias of carnival barker phonies like Hennen and Lindell, they’d knock it off.

However they will not, as a result of they have been led to consider that the conclusions they’ve already reached about supposedly stolen elections are right and that any paucity of proof to assist this conclusion should be the results of nefarious machinations.