In a dead heat with Stacey Abrams, Brian Kemp created a diversion from computer security breakdown
Why am I not surprised?
Is there any compelling evidence that anyone believed Kemp when he made the accusation? It was clearly a cynical political move where he used his office to smear the opposition.
It happened right before the election. Is the right question ‘is there evidence that anyone believed Kemp’–? Or is the right question ‘can we rule out that some may have voted based on the false information Kemp deliberately promulgated’?
I think they’re both valid questions and I think the answers are both “no”.
You don’t think there’s evidence that anyone believed the Kemp-camp (!) story about nefarious Democrats hacking away?
Not compelling evidence, no. But I do think some people might have used it as justification for their vote (confirmation bias).
Which would mean that it did make a difference in the election outcome.
Not necessarily. Guy might be determined to vote for somebody out of sheer cussedness, but will feel better with a threadbare rationalization. Don’t take much.
Seriously? In a country where people believe that millions of illegal immigrants voted in order to prevent Trump from winning the popular vote, that “don’t murder us” is an illogical position for high school students to hold (therefore they must be paid crisis actors), and that Benghazi is a smoking gun but Mueller’s long list of indictments is “fake news”? You find it hard to believe that there are people stupid enough to believe things the GOP tell them? Seriously?
No; that isn’t what I said.
Which has nothing at all to do with either of the two questions presented.
In post #3, Sherrerd asked the question: can we rule out that some may have voted based on the false information Kemp deliberately promulgated?
In post #4, Snowboarder Bo answered ‘no’.
If we accept SB’s answer, then we believe that at least one voter made her/his choice based on false information. We can then conclude that she/he may have, and perhaps would have, voted differently had that false information not been presented.
Ergo, the false information did make a difference in the election outcome.
Thanks, yes–that was my conclusion, too.
Snowboarder, however, must be using alternate logic, as he does not reach the obvious conclusion.
Kemp was going to get 1,000 votes, then he made his statement and his total jumped to 1,001. His opponent got 800 votes. Did the one vote make a difference in the election outcome?
The second you propose that any single voter could have been misled, then you are allowing for the possibility of a lot more, unless you can give a reason that only applies to that voter. Otherwise, it is safe to treat “voters who would have been misled” as a class. Then the question becomes about how big that class is.
If there is indeed only a 200 vote difference, then I would definitely think that even something that only would affect a small number of people could change the outcome. That’s a really low percentage of voters.
If the difference is actually really big, both in absolute and relative terms, then I could accept that the outcome could not have been changed.
The outcome of an election is just “who won and who lost.” Not the exact vote count.
If Kemp started with 900 votes instead of 1,000, then the one vote would make a huge difference.
Obviously, we have no idea if zero voters, one voter, or 10,000 voters were swayed by Kemp’s statements. But you seem to be arguing that it’s okay for a candidate to make a blatantly false and inflammatory statement two days before the election. And it doesn’t seem to matter to you that the candidate made the statement as an elected official who appeared to be acting in an official capacity.
Instead, you’re saying that yes, he lied, but it didn’t matter. Which seems to be the nationwide Republican attitude these days.
That’s the new guiding principle of the Republican party. It’s not whether you did something wrong or whether you broke the law. It’s whether you won the election and whether you got sentenced to prison (and winning an election helps you stay out of prison).