RALEIGH – I really don’t want to believe it.

I want to believe that advocates of voting systems based on arboreal destruction simply want to avoid miscues in North Carolina like the lost votes last November in Carteret County. Certainly you hear a lot about the 2004 case, which has helped to perpetuate the longest-lived election dispute in the country, from those pushing a bill likely to get a hearing in the North Carolina Senate soon.

But you also hear the same case cited by activists who are dissatisfied even with the forthcoming bill. They are demanding what they call a “voter-verified” paper trail, essentially a kind of paper receipt that voters using electronic machines at the polling place could see as proof of their participation and as evidence that their electoral preferences are registered.

Here’s what I don’t want to believe: that their demand isn’t really about correcting errors, but instead about preventing a nefarious Republican conspiracy from stealing elections through computer manipulation. Unfortunately, there is too much evidence to dismiss the existence of their paranoia.

Much of it is available at the click of a mouse. Go online to various lefty political sites, ranging from the busy national hub DailyKos to hang-outs closer to home such as OrangePolitics.org, and you see witness the spectacle of otherwise-reasonable people embracing the idea that the Bush-Cheney campaign stole the 2004 election by rigging the machines in Ohio and elsewhere.

Occasionally, a sensible visitor will ask for real evidence or suggest that Democrats ought to devote their time and attention to more worthwhile political pursuits than emulating the black-helicopter crowd. The visitor is usually liberal, too (or says so, it’s hard to tell, of course) but it doesn’t matter. The Internuts pile on. Their conspiracy theories get wilder and wilder. You want to laugh, but then it registers that this isn’t funny. Their delusions are not self-contained. They are strong enough to motivate sustained political activism, making these activists influential far beyond their numbers since most North Carolinians are paying attention to other things.

In this case, the fiction of an election-machine conspiracy may well result in a big step backwards in voting technology. The demand for “voter-verified paper” will almost certainly lead to more errors, more expense, and longer lines. I’ve had some fun in the past with this issue, but all kidding aside there has to be some way to find a reasonable solution to the problem. Yes, there needs to be a backup to computer-based voting systems. Presumably, there could be multiple backups utilizing different technologies. All sorts of valuable information are stored throughout our economy through means that do not include piles of paper stacked up in some court basement.

Perhaps I should explain my reference here. Not long ago, I heard about a very-real election manipulation. Elections officials in a certain Western NC county found a large bundle of ballots in the courthouse basement. These never-counted ballots were decades old, and it seems likely that they were set aside by partisan officials who didn’t want their candidates to be hurt by an overwhelming vote for the other team.

I’m not going to get into specifics, except to say that paper was involved and Republicans were not. Do I worry about such blatant manipulation today? Not really, as long as we use modern technology and keep our heads.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.