Predicate Predicament
We have no agreed account of what happened on November 3rd; that's a huge problem and worthy of investigation
Let’s role play. You are applying for a job at America’s primary domestic intelligence agency. For the final interview question, you are presented with two scenarios. You can only investigate one. Which do you choose?
Scenario A: On July 26th 2016 you receive a tip from an Australian diplomat. He says Russia offered dirt on Clinton to a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor. This is based on a conversation in a London bar, and you have no corroborating evidence.
Scenario B: On November 3rd 2020, 160 million Americans vote in the presidential election. The margin of victory for Joe Biden is wafer thin, with just 43,000 votes (0.03% of the total) needed to flip the result. In the aftermath there is mass distrust (42% do not believe the election was legitimate). A dichotomy emerges in the media, with some claiming it was totally fair and there’s nothing to see here, and others circulating a shitstorm of debunked allegations.
With partisan tension high, the public eye turns to the courts. They do not settle the issue. They decline to intervene in critical cases in Michigan (“the case would be a poor practical vehicle for addressing these questions”) and Wisconsin (“denying the petition without weighing in on Trump’s allegations”). In Pennsylvania, after the State Supreme Court declined to enforce the law (“[F]ailures to include a handwritten name, address or date in the voter declaration on the back of the outer envelope, while constituting technical violations of the Election Code, do not warrant the wholesale disenfranchisement of thousands of Pennsylvanian voters”), the Supreme Court then declined to hear a case due to lack of standing. The justices did trouble themselves to say they may consider arguments in October 2021.
Your investigation will not overturn the election, but it will uncover any irregularities and firmly, independently establish what happened. It may also lead to recommendations for the next election, restoring faith in the electoral process.
This is the intelligence / law enforcement community’s predicate predicament. You have to decide which of these two scenarios offers a better predicate for an investigation.
If you selected scenario A – congratulations! You’re hired! You can look forward to a long career in law enforcement, that may involve forging court documents, wiping your phone before returning it to investigators, leaking damaging information, and lucrative book / TV contributor deals from a pliant media. If your spouse is running for office, you may be able to arrange significant donations for them from people you are investigating. You may be free to use the power of your office to absolve your political favourites and go after your opponents. If you rise to the top, you may have the opportunity to lie to Congress about accessing the computers of Senate staff who were investigating your torture programme.
Peter Strzok chose the right scenario - did you?
If you selected scenario B – remain where you are. A SWAT team is on its way. Do not attempt to run. You may be put on a no fly list or be brought before a truth and reconciliation commission.
But Seriously…
…here is a simple argument. The Republic relies on a vote that people trust. At the moment, tens of millions of people do not trust the vote. Whether the vote was completely fair or riddled with fraud (and of course this is a false dichotomy; the answer is likely in the middle), we need to find a common understanding of what happened.
Expecting to have a comprehensive answer to this within two months of the election, and then vilifying anyone who asks questions, is not a constructive position. Mueller did not resolve the Russia collusion argument until two and half years after the election. We need an independent, thorough commission to investigate so that by the next election we can have greater faith in the vote, with any fraud uncovered and punished. As shown above with the predicate comparison, there is a strong basis to launch such an enquiry relative to certain recent investigations.
Pretending that there are no good questions here will further degrade public trust in the media. The New York Times says there is no problem because they called the people responsible and they said it was fine. Because the role of the media is just to repeat to a bigger audience what government officials tell them. Right. And despite huge increases in mail-in voting, the rejection rate of mail ballots in 2020 is one eighteenth its 2016 rate in Georgia, and one third in Pennsylvania. But the New York Times says that is because people are more aware of the rules, so that’s fine.
Journalism-lite New York Times article from November 10th. It only took a week for them to conclusively settle what happened with 160 million votes in 3,000 counties, so stop asking questions. National media outlets working closely with a major political party, government officials, and the intelligence community is always the sign of a healthy democracy
A commission could not only evaluate what happened on November 3rd, but also recommend how to build trust in future elections. We have some serious issues that almost seem designed to create distrust. For instance, Michigan did not recount, and would in fact find it difficult to do so. Because state law says that they can only recount when the number of votes in the poll books corresponds to the number reported to have been cast. Which was not the case in 72% of Detroit precincts in August 4th primaries, and 71% in November. So we are not able to recount in the city that went to Biden by a margin of 230,000. And this is not a new issue. In the 2016 state recount, officials could not recount in 60% of Detroit precincts due to discrepancies.
Stories of flash drives being left behind, the data entry issues in Michigan and Virginia etc were mostly fact-checked as ‘routine errors’. But the fact that they happen provides fuel for the raging fire of rumour and distrust, while also showing that the vote is not as secure as anyone would like. A commission that is empowered to examine these issues, pursue any hint of deliberate wrongdoing, and recommend safeguards to build trust in the next election is sorely needed. Denial of any problem and aggressive hounding of those who disagree is not.