☆ Election denialism rhetoric sneaks under the tent into the CA16 circus
Image by Manuel Balce Ceneta
Amid all the drama surrounding the second place tie in the CA16 primary congressional race--and political shenanigans informing calls for a recount--an important principle is being sidelined: what matters most is the accuracy of the vote--not achieving a preferred result. The Opp Now team analyzes, in an exclusive.
There are two strong potential reasons to ask for an election recount, most notably:
A super close result which could be changed due to the discovery of a small number of counting mistakes made during election night tabulations.
Evidence of questionable vote-counting. {Notably, this charge, which was a staple of Trump's Stop the Steal campaign, hasn't arisen (yet) in CA16.}
CA16's tie certainly meets the "so close it should be double-checked" standard. But oddly, some of the arguments locals are making for the recount stray into rhetorical terrain that looks uncomfortably similar to Trump in 2020.
It's this idea:
That a tied vote--because of its improbability--is a priori illegitimate.
This argument was voiced most enthusiastically in the Merc's op-ed on the recount, in which they state:
"The recount... will provide a much-needed check on the highly improbable deadlocked vote for second place in the March 5 primary.
"And if, as is likely, the recount breaks the tie, we will have a November runoff between two rather than three candidates, meaning the winner will need a majority of voter support rather than just a plurality."
The Merc's thesis doesn't stand up to critical nor statistical analysis and, upon close analysis, echoes many Trumpian election denialism tropes. Here's why:
All particular results are improbable--not just a particular vote count that ends in a tie.
Statistically, if Joe Simitian had defeated Evan Low by one vote, that would be improbable. If Evan Low defeated Joe Simitian by 147 votes, that, too, would be improbable. Given the 182,135 votes cast in the primary, any specific count-results are unlikely--not just the tie.
But more importantly, probabilities are the wrong standard to apply to looking at results because elections are intentional activities, not flips of coin. The final outcomes are not the result of odds nor statistical predictions. They are the totality of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of intentional acts of individual humans—a collection of singular, free-will actions not predicted by group odds nor possibilities. And unless someone has insight into the hearts and minds of individual voters, there's no way to forecast any particular result. That's one of the reasons why we have secret ballots, btw.
So to invoke improbability (as Trump did in 2020 and as the Merc did in its 4.11 op-ed) as a sign of electoral uncertainty opens the door election denialism--throwing doubt on electoral results because they don't deliver the preferred or expected results. {It's important to remember that the Merc endorsed Liccardo, and most political watchers view a three-way final race as more difficult for Liccardo).
In the U.S., you don't need a majority to get elected.
Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 with only 42% of the vote. Whether we like it or not, we have a system in CA congressional elections in which more than two candidates can advance to the runoff in the case of a tie for second. And even if only two candidates formally make the run-off, write-in votes certainly are legit, which can certainly bring the winner's total down below 50%. For the Merc to state that the only legit winner is the one that gets a majority of the vote runs counter to electoral fairness and U.S. political history and--again--throws a shadow of doubt over a potential result that the editorialists simply don't like.The recount could still end in a tie.
Most recounts don't change the results. (Though, to be fair, most aren't dealing with ties, either.) The conclusion of the recount won't be based on the likelihood of changed votes, but rather on the reality of finding miscounted votes. There is no way for us to know in advance what that reality is until the votes are recounted. The Merc, then, muddies the water by predicting a non-tie outcome, indulging in a type of pre-emptory, Trumpian, election denialism. The Merc has already said it finds a tie dubious, so does that mean that if the recount finds a tie--yet again--will the Merc not acknowledge the legitimacy of the result?
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