Archaeological Fraud and Election Fraud

I have a passionate interest in both New Testament studies and the history of early Christianity, and in democracy. So it was with great pleasure that I realized how they intersected in the case of vote fraud in the recent US elections. Here is a recent post of mine at Dailykos on how to use archaeological fraud to think about voting fraud.

Using Archaeological Fakes to Understand Election Fraud

Back in 2002 a sensational find made news all over the world: an ossuary, an ancient Jewish burial box, that purported to be from James, the brother of Jesus, had come to light in Israel. This object made the rounds of internet lists immediately, and as someone with an abiding interest in the New Testament and Early Christian history, I heard about it right away.

From the first I knew the object was a fake, for I do not believe that Jesus ever existed as a historical person; naturally, no one could be his brother by blood. I was also fairly sure, for reasons that I cannot enumerate here as they might be considered libel in some courts of law, that the object had to be a modern fake. However, a short while later, when I heard that the Geological Survey of Israel (GSI) had tested the object and determined that it was authentic, I was certain that the object had to be a modern fake. Why? Because the tests performed by the GSI were not capable of authenticating the Ossuary. They gave it the veneer of authenticity, while not seriously examining it. The forger had managed somehow to suborn the GSI. I also knew, from the sheer chutzpah of the forgery (a fake archaeological artifact involving Jesus!), that this was not the first forgery of this group. It bespoke a skilled forger who had been operating for many years. So do our recent experiences with elections in the US.

Famous cases of forgery (a fake made for gain; a hoax being a fake made for some other purpose, such as a practical joke) have a certain pattern. The forger creates an object, which is generally aimed at a specific audience; sometimes even a specific individual. The ring that forged the James Ossuary apparently had a longstanding pattern of forging objects either aimed at collectors of antiquities, or at Jewish religious nationalism. Similarly, the Chingshan Diary, the diary of the Boxer Rebellion forged by Edmund Backhouse in Beijing at the turn of the century, was aimed at certain academics whose positions the diary supported. The Hitler Diaries targeted the huge market in Hitler stuff. In my own brief career as a collector of Sung Dynasty porcelain I also was the target of fakes that appealed to my tastes. As Stephen Carlson notes in his recent and excellent book on Secret Mark, The Gospel Hoax, this "targeting" of forgeries is ultimately one of the ways that they are unmasked, for their "ideological moment" passes, and they begin to grow ever more dated and obvious over time.

After creating the object and envisioning the market, the forger then faces a couple of problems. The object has to be authenticated by experts, or else it has no market value. However, the forger risks exposure at that point, for the experts may well spot the forgery. The conclusion, from the forger's point of view, is inevitable: to the extent possible, the forger somehow has to gain control over the authentication process, to ensure a positive outcome for himself. The forger can do this in several ways, though simple bribery, or by controlling the flow of information to the authenticator, or by creating the impression that the forgery has been authenticated without authentication actually taking place, or, most importantly, by achieving the forger's dream of becoming the authenticator of his own forgery. The last is a common tactic in scientific fraud, the most recent example being the cloning scandal in Korea. In the Secret Mark hoax, Morton Smith, the forger, was also a skilled scholar, and was able to use his knowledge of other scholars to ensure that the object was authenticated by handwriting experts. By manipulating his presentation of information both to the scholars he had chosen to authenticate the handwriting, and to the scholars to whom he was presenting the authentication, he was able to create the impression that the necessary work had been done. In the famous Mormon Salamander Letter case, FBI technicians authenticated the Salamander Letter, but one of their own became convinced that they had used tests that could not determine the authenticity of the document. His own, more detailed work, proved it to be a fake.

In the Hitler Diaries case, the forger had the advantage of another common result: the forger's own fakes become the basis for authentification. Notoriously, the handwriting of the Hitler Diaries was authenticated by experts, based on a sample of authentic letters of Hitler. The problem was that some of the "authentic" letters supplied to the handwriting experts were also fakes by the same forger. Hence, ironically, the experts were right: the handwriting did match. It just wasn't Hitler's handwriting. A similar event occurred when FBI investigators in the Mormon Salamander case Letter used 17 handwriting samples to authenticate what eventually turned out to be fakes -- they were fooled because 14 had come from the forger (Mark Hoffman, the forger in that case, was a highly skilled genius who began young and eventually faked the work of 129 different people). This highlights another problem: with so many fake antiquities about, the range of acceptability is distorted, and academics are more willing to accept fakes. We will return to this issue shortly when discussing election fraud.

After getting the forgery authenticated, the forger usually generates a critic or two who knows from the start that the thing is fake and never wavers from this position. In the James Ossuary case that critic was Rochelle Altman, while the Chingshan Diary was attacked by a friend of Backhouse's. The forger can usually find someone invested in the forgery to front for the object, whether knowingly or not, and because the object targets an audience that has some important connection to it, critics can usually be shouted down one way or another. In the Mormon Salamander Letter case, document forger and murderer Mark Hoffman was initially defended by many document dealers, as he had been selling them documents for several years. In the James Ossuary case internationally recognized scholars attacked Altman. Altman also stated that her computer had been hacked and said that there was an organized effort to suppress critics.

The unmasking of forgers often occurs when they reach for too much. Forgery has a strong psychological element; in addition to the money motive, many forgers enjoy fooling the experts and demonstrating their own power. Like a serial killer who learns by torturing kittens and killing squirrels, forgers typically start out small. Mark Hoffman, the Mormon documents forger, began by altering dimes to make them more valuable. The ring that produced the James Ossuary made a career producing seals. Edmund Backhouse, the Chingshan Diary forger, began with small documents. Over time, as they are not caught and their repertoire of skills begins to expand, their forgeries become ever more ambitious, until at last they do something truly stupendous. In the Mormon case, that was a letter that purported to demonstrate that Joseph Smith was a fraud. In the James Ossuary case the Ossuary with its connection to Jesus was the ultimate effort by an extremely successful forgery ring dedicated to producing artifacts. The Hitler Diaries were similarly the apex of a long forgery career that included letters and drawings as well, as was the Chingshan Diary. In each case the artifact in question led to the unmasking of the forger, who had gotten too big for his britches. This progression we will also note in our discussion of electoral fraud.

The recent alleged cases of fraud in US elections can be treated as a forgery case, the forged artifacts being election results. Since the problem first surfaced in the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, we should take note: those two election results represent "stupendous" artifacts produced after a long career. We are not looking at a first run at forgery; these forgers know what they are doing and have been at it for some time. Prior to this they had been producing frauds aimed at specific markets, probably local elections where no one would suspect. When a forgery "surfaces" and comes to general attention as an artifact of questionable origins, that is a sign that the forger is becoming intoxicated after years of success and is no longer in control of his need for power, and has now decided to do something really stupendous. Hence I would conclude that "archaeological" work with election records should show patterns of skewed results going back many years, probably to the beginning of the use of machines in elections, if only people are willing to do the hard slogging to find them. This also suggests that since the forgers were not unmasked in the 2000 or 2004 elections, in the next election round the forgery is going to be very brazen indeed. It will only keep getting worse, until it is exposed and stopped.

Another aspect of forgery this case illuminates is verification. In this case the verification of election results and the production of election results reside with the same entity: the machines. The forger has acheived the forger's dream -- he can authenticate his own fakes. Further, he also retains complete control over the data, meaning that no one can gainsay his authentification. Should anyone attempt to, vested interests -- in this case, Republicans whose interests he serves, will rise to defend him. Americans in general, who have a vested interest in believing the voting system to be sound, will behave like the well-meaning people they are, tempted to sit on the fence or agree that critics are simply conspiracy nuts, and those who from the beginning knew the results were fraudulent will be shouted down or shut out. In this case, I have been reading material suggesting that computer election results are fraudulent since the beginning of the 1990s. Some people out there know, and have always known, and have never wavered. But until now, no one has listened.

Experience with archaeological fakes also suggests that the forger will to the extent possible attempt to suborn the authentication process. This has actually happened, since the voting machines produce their own records and can easily be manipulated. This means, of course, that the way to stop the forger is to separate the validation of election results from the production of election results. Hence, it should be concluded that anyone who attempts to prevent that separation from occurring is either incredibly naive or stupid, knowingly serving the forger, or is the forger. No other conclusion is possible.

Election fraud in the US also displays some other elements of what I like to call the typical "forgery arc," the common progress of a major forgery case. In some forgery cases professionals fail to unmask the fraud; indeed, for one reason or another, many cooperate with it without realizing it is a fraud. In the James Ossuary case a number of New Testament scholars abetted the forger by supporting the authenticity of the object, and it was finally unmasked not by the New Testament studies community which divided basically into those supporting it and those on the fence, but by Israeli archaeologists who performed the requisite physical tests on the object. One of the box's champions, Hershel Shanks, vociferously objected to tests in Israel and instead recommended the box be examined by North American scholars, whom he apparently believed would be more apt to authenticate it than not. The Chingshan Diary was finally brought low by a journalist, not a Chinese studies expert. Again, in the electoral fraud case, allegations of fraud have not come from experts in politics or from election officials, but from statistics experts and software experts. Bev Harris, who runs BlackBoxVoting and has become famous for her leadership in the attempt to restore accountability to the electoral system, made a living as a literary publicist. As Harris says of elections officials' understanding of security: "I've never seen such a clueless bunch of people."

Archaeological fakes should also remind us of another aspect of electoral fraud that in my opinion doesn't get enough publicity: the forgers are criminals: electoral fraud is a form of organized crime. They are unscrupulous, dangerous and violent, and when things finally begin to unravel, we should be prepared for the stakes to rise. Electoral fraud in the US is not a crime of an individual or two interested in cashing in on clueless non-experts collecting obscure antiquities, but gangsters intent on altering an entire nation's political system. We should make sure that individuals engaged in this effort have maximum publicity, support, and protection. If we are going to win, we need to be as resolute as the enemies of democracy.

[Christianity] [New Testament Studies] [historical Jesus] [US] [Democrats] [elections] [election fraud]