Article by Mark Andrew Dwyer in The American Thinker
Free Elections That Weren't
The
2020 presidential elections were not entirely free due to a large-scale
participation, facilitated by the adoption of mail-in voting in the
aftermath the coronavirus pandemic, of persuadable voters who would
either refrain from in-person voting if it were the only venue allowed,
or would have voted differently if their choices weren't influenced by
biased or false information that they were fed by social and mass media
as well as educational institutions. As a result, it was the media and
educational institutions, and not the American electorate alone, who
co-decided the 2020 presidential elections. This conclusion demonstrates
irrationality and harmfulness of the popular mantra that any increase
of voter turnout regardless of the level of rationality and interest of
the extra voters is necessarily beneficial for democracy and the society
that professes it.
The elections comprise of three major components: the voting, the
counting of the votes, including collection of the votes and
certification of the results, and the means of information access and
control on all issues pertaining to the subject or subjects of the
elections.
Elections are free if each eligible individual voter can freely decide,
without fear of retribution, whether to vote or not and, if he/she
decides to vote, whom or what to vote for. These presume that each
eligible individual voter is given an unobstructed access to publicly
available information on all issues pertaining to the subject or
subjects of the elections. Of course, the elections' freedom so outlined
does not guarantee their fairness or honesty as the counting of the
votes may or may not preserve their integrity. Nevertheless, without the
said freedom it is hard to deem any elections to be honest or fair. In
this article, I will focus on such freedom and socially undesirable
consequences of a lack thereof.
Persuadable voters and the harvesting of their votes
In the past, eligible individual voters who did not feel strong enough
about who should win the election did often refrain from voting. This
should be considered an exercise of their right to decide whether to
vote or to abstain. It tended to have a significant beneficial impact on
the rationality of the elections' outcomes as it decreased the
randomness of individual voting choices by delegating the choices to the
segment of eligible voters who were more likely to be well-informed and
genuinely willing to elect the candidate who was objectively the best
for them and for the country.
Clearly, the uninterested and uninformed (or simply: undecided) voters
were more likely to be persuaded whom should they vote for, than those
interested in electing the best candidate and possessing enough
information to make a rational choice.
I will refer to the former ones as the persuadable voters.
Up until emergence of practical and effective methods of mass
persuasion, relatively few individuals and groups of influence had a
good reason to push for an increased participation of undecided voters
in elections. There was no clear benefit for these individuals and
groups resulting from such an increase.
The situation today is different. The persuadable voters can be
identified with the state-of-the-art methods of Big Data, predictive
analytics, etc. These voters can be persuaded en masse with
direct advertising as well as with overwhelming amount of biased samples
of reality, coordinated and aggressive advertising via social and mass
media, and politically biased education in schools and colleges, to vote
according to preferences of the persuaders. Their votes may be then
harvested in the case they are not motivated enough to actually go out
and vote. But still a large number of the persuadable voters are less
likely than those with firm and strong opinions to cast their votes as
in many cases harvesting may be impractical or infeasible. That would
leave a significant portion of gain on investment by the persuaders
unrealized.
The mail-in voting facilitates full realization of the said investment.
Therefore, it must surprise no one that the most dedicated and serious
persuaders were aggressively advocating adoption of mail-in voting as it
would significantly increase the number of votes cast for the candidate
they were promoting.
Because young voters, still in their formative age, are more likely than
more mature voters to be persuadable, the persuaders have been
advocating to lower the minimum voting age below 18 years. If such a
decrease is legislated in America, then it will significantly increase
participation of persuadable voters whose votes can be harvested or
collected, say, via mail-in voting or campus drop-off boxes, for the
benefit of the persuaders who often have a significant impact on the
direction of political bias in educational institutions.
Effective persuasion vs. electoral freedom
Clearly, the voters who were indoctrinated or deceived into believing in
false theses and voted based on such false beliefs were not entirely
free because they were likely misinterpreting the consequences of their
choices. Therefore, any form of mass propaganda, censorship, or
indoctrination, whether carried on by private or public entities,
decreases the degree of electoral freedom. Also, the voters who would
opt to not vote if left alone but ended up casting their votes through
mail-in vote, harvesters, or campus drop-off boxes, were partially
deprived of their right to freely decide whether to vote or to abstain.
Therefore, elections incorporating unsolicited "encouragements" to vote
tend decrease the degree of electoral freedom and cannot be deemed
entirely free elections. The most extreme infringement of the said
freedom would be an imposition of a duty to vote, a legal obligation
that has been instituted in some countries but - fortunately - not in
the U.S. For it is beneficial to free society if those who are
undecided, or not informed enough, or simply don't care, have a freedom
to not vote.
Appropriate legislation may protect voters' right to decide whether to
vote or to abstain. However, legislating against misinformation or
deception appears difficult, if at all possible.
First, it would most likely violate First Amendment rights of the
persuaders. Even if narrowly drafted to criminalize falsification
(misinformation being a subcategory of), it must fall short of enacting
objectively correct and computationally feasible criterion of truth
simply because it has been proved that such a criterion does not exist.
Also, we need to remember that several popular movements that led to
abolition of non-transparent governments that were detrimental to the
governed, including the American Revolution, were partially based on
false premises as a result of governmental secrecy that made impossible
for the governed to know all relevant truth before the abolition took
place. Thus legislating against false information is likely to have a
detrimental effect on the viability of dissent.
Therefore, it appears appropriate to leave it mostly to the individuals
to decide which theses they accept as true and which they don't, even
though it leaves room for possible deception and misinformation.
However, in the light of the foregoing observations, extending
Constitutional protection to groups and organizations for their systemic
informational bias, propaganda, and censorship has no clear benefits to
the society as it is likely to facilitate a decrease of the electoral
freedom.
Detriments of decrease of degree of electoral freedom
The above-mentioned methods of a decrease of the electoral freedom, when
implemented, turn a large number of undecided but persuadable eligible
voters who, if left alone, would likely abstain from voting into actual
voters who make their choices based on preferences of the persuaders
rather then their own, or make random and irrational choices due to
their lack of sufficient information of their false believes. Such a
decrease clearly diminishes the chances that they elect the best
candidate for themselves and the country. It also shifts, even if
partially so, the decision who gets elected from the electorate to the
persuaders thus decreasing the elect's accountability to the electorate.
The detrimental ramification of the above effects on the democracy and the society that professes it are obvious.
Persuadable voters can be identified and persuaded en masse
with existing advanced methods of (mostly digital) marketing and
advertising. However, they are less likely than those with firm and
strong opinions to cast their votes. Vote harvesting is an effective and
practical means to increase participation of such persuadable voters.
Mail-in voting further increases participation of such persuadable
voters as does installation of voting places in schools and colleges.
When applied together, they have potential of swaying elections in favor
of the candidate preferred by the persuaders even if the election
contests are not close. Such an outcome has an obvious detrimental
effect on fairness of the elections and it disenfranchises, even if
partially so, the American electorate. It makes the government less
accountable to the governed which in itself is harmful to the American
society.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/free_elections_that_werent.html
