A few days ago Ted Cruz made the news by floating a bizarre story that sprang from the febrile mind of Jim Hoft, the Stupidest Man on the Internet, that Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear was actually a “transgendered leftist activist.” Cruz had no speculation about why such a person would choose to attack Planned Parenthood, but as with most right wing fake stories logic is way down on the priority list.

This idiotic claim was based on a flimsy piece of evidence: a voter record that listed Dear’s gender as “female.” From this the right wing fever swamp evolved an entire theory that he was “transgendered,” instead of assuming it was a simple clerical error as I pointed out on Sunday.

Well, I was right, and once again people who followed the Stupidest Man on the Internet down the rabbit hole — for example, presidential candidate Ted Cruz — end up with dirt on their faces.

Ryan Parsell, El Paso County’s chief deputy clerk and recorder, said his office incorrectly recorded Dear’s gender in October 2014, leading to the issuance of both a driver’s license and voter’s registration card erroneously identifying him as a woman.

“The Clerk and Recorder’s Office processes over 500,000 transactions a year,” Parsell said. “Mistakes are going to be made, and it is a reminder to us of the important job that we do to see that a mistake made by us has had national implications.”

What Parsell described as a data entry error occurred after the 57-year-old Dear moved to tiny Hartsel in Park County, which doesn’t have a driver’s license office.

Records show Dear traveled 65 miles to a Colorado Springs clerk and recorder’s office to obtain his driver’s license and his voter’s registration card, Parsell said.

Although Dear clearly identified himself as a man, the information was incorrectly logged into a computer, Parsell added.

“Our employee inadvertently clicked on ‘female’ and gave the confirmation to Mr. Dear to review,” he said. “He missed it and signed it.”