On his first full day in office, the new Chairperson for the Democrat National Committee, Tom Perez, chose to resuscitate the story of the Russian’s affecting the outcome of the Presidential election. This may be the best continuing example of “fake” news since the term fake news was coined. A little common sense thinking is all that is needed to prove just how unlikely this story is. With an open mind, consider the following:
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a significant margin – if the Russians did meddle in the election to help Mr. Trump, they failed miserably in manipulating the popular vote. Ms. Clinton finished with a comfortable 2.8 million vote advantage.
Given the above, the Russians only meddled with the electoral college vote – this would mean three things had to be true:
- The Russians thoroughly understand how the US electoral college voting system works. This, despite the reality that most Americans don’t completely understand how it works, including some of our own elected officials.
- The Russians were prescient in the knowledge of which “blue” states could be tilted “red”. They used that knowledge to compute all the possible electoral vote combinations that would get Trump to 270, but only acted on those that would arouse the least suspicion. This implies an ability to perfectly predict the electoral outcome of states they didn’t meddle in so the math works out when added to those they did meddle in. Keep in mind that even the best American political strategists often fail miserably in predicting electoral vote outcomes.
- The Russians targeted their meddling with such accuracy that it only affected the states in “2” and not all the states. Without this surgical precision, the meddling effect would spill over to adjoining states and Ms. Clinton could not have won the popular vote.
Recounts showed no evidence – Recounts were conducted in Minnesota and Michigan, “blue” states that turned “red” in this election. Not only was there no evidence of widespread meddling or inaccuracy, but the small discrepancies that did show up actually resulted in more votes for Mr. Trump.
Information revealed from hacked DNC emails changed voters’ minds – (my favorite). This actually is a plausible conclusion, but the underlying reason for it is disgraceful behavior by DNC persons, not “meddling” by the Russians . The term “meddle” would be completely appropriate if the Russians (or any other hacker) had injected false information into the public sphere for the express purpose of changing the mind of a voter. In this case, the hacking operation injected “true” information into the public sphere – the actual emails exchanged between DNC leaders. If voters’ minds were changed, it was because they became more informed with real, not fake, information. The DNC’s continued use of the word “meddling” expresses the belief that had their malfeasance and attempts to cheat remained secret, they would have prevailed in the election. Let’s suppose that’s technically true – is it really the premise a reasonable person is expected to accept for the “meddling” claim to be true?
For the new DNC chair to bring up this topic as one of his first public statements shows him to be just as deceitful as his predecessor. He’s even extended the charge by suggesting Mr. Trump had “colluded” with the Russians to encourage and assist their “meddling”. Of course, neither he or anyone else have offered any explanation or evidence of how this was done, particularly in keeping with the above four real world observations. Sadly, reviving and extending this fiction seems a poor start to resurrecting his party’s power.
The layman’s expression of Occam’s Razor – “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one” – applies here quite well. There was no Russian meddling in this election.