“Voter fraud” is a right-wing obsession used to justify restrictive ballot access-limiting measures that are actually designed to suppress turnout among people who tend to vote for Democrats. It does not and cannot exist in anything approaching a large enough scale to affect an election, and even isolated incidents of fraud prove difficult for right-wingers to dredge up to prove that their concerns have merit. Dozens of people have spent years tirelessly attempting to prove that organized “voter fraud” is a real thing and all they have ever managed to prove is that sometimes lazy volunteers make fake registration forms, sometimes former felons mistakenly vote despite being disenfranchised, and sometimes people double-vote. There is nothing remotely resembling coordinated voter fraud, carried out with the intention of stealing an election, taking place anywhere in the United States. Those who sincerely believe that there is are deluded, though most of the people who constantly crow about it don’t sincerely believe in it; they just want to make it harder for blacks and Latinos and poor people to vote.

So O’Keefe, whose modus operandi is “create the corruption you wish to see in the world,” tried to get some ballots in New Hampshire using the names of recently deceased people. And it might’ve worked in a couple of places. Though not all the places. At one polling place his partner was stopped by a kindly old poll worker, and then he ran away.

O’Keefe has pretty clearly violated the law and TPM reports that a federal prosecutor is reviewing his video. But at least he finally proved that voter fraud is a very real threat, and one that could lead to upward of a couple of phony ballots being cast in a statewide primary election, depending on how many registered voters died quite recently. As we all know, once you prove that something is hypothetically possible, it is a factual certainty that ACORN has done it.

And now O’Keefe might finally get that felony conviction that he avoided last time. Fingers crossed.

Of course, it’s no mystery why Santorum’s views on gay rights get so much attention; there’s an entire Wikipedia entry with the title, “Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality.” But in New Hampshire this past week, one of the more interesting developments has been the degree to which young audience members have confronted him on the subject. Several college students in Concord last Friday pressed Santorum to justify his opposition to same-sex marriage, prompting a testy exchange in which the former senator repeatedly likened it to polygamy and that ended with loud jeers from some in the crowd. Gay marriage was also the crowd’s favorite topic at a Santorum event at a private high school, while a man in Keene demanded to know why Santorum is against allowing gays to openly serve in the military.

At the Elks lodge, where about 100 people gathered (most of them seemingly not lodge members), Santorum took a total of six questions. Two were from young people, and each was about gay rights. The first, from a high school student named Christine Taft, was framed in terms of electability. “I know you have strong views on gay rights,” Taft said before asking if “some of those views might exclude some of the independents” Santorum would need to beat Barack Obama.

Santorum professed surprise at the question, noting that his fellow Republican candidates — and even Barack Obama — are all on the record opposing gay marriage. He went on to talk about studies that have shown people who are married tend to be happier and more secure and to argue that expanding the definition of marriage would make it “simply one of a variety of different lifestyles, all of which are similar to each other.”

“Now, I get a kick out of this,” he said, “because I’m told all the time: ‘Santorum, quit trying to impose your ideas on everybody else. Quit trying to impose your morality on everybody else.’ But what’s that? Is that not trying to impose their morality on everybody else?”

There was applause, but Taft said later that she wasn’t exactly won over.

“I don’t agree with his very strong opinions about gay rights,” she told Salon. “I think people should be allowed to do what they want to do. I liked his answer at the end, that if one of his kids was to come out of the closet that he would support them unconditionally. That I really appreciated. But I think that with a lot of young voters, gay rights is a big issue to them.”

Asked why this is, Taft noted  that “my school is very open about it. We have, like, a gay-straight alliance club. And I know that when my parents were in high school, there weren’t as many people that they knew going through it — having to deal with it. So it could be that.” And she pointed to a broader cultural evolution.

“I’m not very religious. I believe in God, but I go to church maybe four or five times a year,” she said. “And so, I think the church values that were such a big part of the older generations aren’t as big a part of our beliefs nowadays. We want to be able to do what we want to do. We don’t like when people tell us, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t do that.’ So I think it’s just that we want our freedom.”

Take the candidates’ position on the government’s use of its war powers against U.S. citizens.  The powers a government exercises during wartime — including detention without charge and summary execution — represent a far greater intrusion on individual liberties than, say, the power to raise taxes or confiscate private property.  To an unprecedented extent, our government is claiming the right to exercise these drastic powers against Americans.

One might expect conservatives to unite against this trend.  The specter of the government turning its military force against the people helped drive conservatives’ support for an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.  Yet most of the candidates seem unconcerned about indefinite military detention for U.S. citizens. Three of them (Romney, Perry and Santorum) have praised the government’s execution, without trial and based on secret information, of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki.

Conservatives also tend to be “tough on crime,” which might explain their position on detaining or executing suspected terrorists.  But suspected wrongdoers aren’t the only ones surrendering the right, so cherished by conservatives, to be left alone by the government.  Changes in the law after 9/11 have allowed government officials to invade Americans’ privacy even when no reason for suspicion exists.  For instance, the PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to obtain any American’s telephone and financial records without a warrant, regardless of whether that person is a suspect in an investigation.  At a debate in November, Gingrich and Perry supported extending this power.

In any case, being “tough on crime” is another conservative principle that is seemingly going by the wayside.  Currently, the government can try suspected terrorists either in civilian courts or in military commissions.  The scorecard is clear: Since 9/11, civilian courts have convicted more than 400 terrorists, while military commissions have convicted a mere handful.  Moreover, the average sentence imposed by civilian courts is higher.  If you go by results, civilian courts are unquestionably “tougher.”  Nonetheless, most of the candidates favor sending suspected terrorists to military commissions.

Another traditional conservative principle is hatred of “big government” and wasting taxpayers’ money.  Nowhere is such waste more evident than in our country’s bloated national security apparatus.  As Dana Priest reports in her recent book, “Top Secret America,” 51 government organizations track the flow of terrorist finances.  And yet, while Rick Perry can name (on a good day) three federal agencies he would like to eliminate, none of these organizations made the list.  Romney, for his part, supports expanding Guantanamo at a cost of $800,000 per inmate per year, rather than using U.S. prisons that would provide equal security (no prisoner has ever escaped from a supermax prison) at one thirtieth the cost.

Finally, conservatives have long championed the importance of religion in American life and opposed any government encroachment on religious freedom.  But today, many law enforcement agencies consider devoutness among Muslims to be a sign of potential terrorism.  In some places, government informants are paid to infiltrate mosques at random.  Such religious profiling makes American Muslims apprehensive about openly practicing their faith.  Instead of crying foul at this governmental interference with religion, Santorum has embraced the profiling of Muslims, and Gingrich favors loyalty tests for Muslims who wish to serve in government.

The truth is, our post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus has become everything conservatives claim to hate in government: coercive, intrusive, ineffective, wasteful and violative of religious freedoms.  And yet, the only Republican candidate who seems to have noticed — Ron Paul — is the one considered outside the mainstream.  Even the supposedly libertarian Tea Party members in Congress mostly support the runaway national security establishment.

To be sure, this is not a partisan phenomenon.  Conservatives’ wavering commitment to their proclaimed values is matched by a wavering commitment on the part of progressives in government — including congressional Democrats and, on some issues, President Obama — to the civil liberties and human rights they espouse.  This abandonment of principles on both sides of the aisle has enabled the national security establishment’s exponential growth in size and powers.

Which means that New Hampshire, with its proud history of championing individual liberties, has something to teach all of the candidates for office this year.