|
|
|
The views expressed on this page are soley
those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the views of County
News Online
|
 |
Along Life’s Way
Election Alert
By Lois E. Wilson
In regard to the 2020 election, suppose you are undecided as to whom
you will vote for in the presidential primary and November races.
Wanting to learn more, you use a computer search engine to pull up
information about the candidates.
I conducted my own test for each of the ten Democratic candidates that
took part in the third presidential debate. After typing in one letter
at a time the letters of their first name and then last name, Google in
all but one case produced an index of selections which included the
name of the candidate. On nine of the twenty indexes, the candidate’s
name was listed first.
Click on the candidate’s name and a second index of articles and
information about the selected person appears. These are what voters
might study to aid them in choosing for whom they’ll vote.
Some studies have found that people tend to trust a search engine—most
of their clicks go to the top few items on the index. The concern is
that if the compilation of these index lists is biased in any way, it
can sway the undecided voter to vote in a particular way.
In July 2019, Robert Epstein (an American psychologist, professor,
author, founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for
Behavioral Studies) presented his research to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. He is an admitted Hillary Clinton supporter. He claims that
a search engine like Google could manipulate “upwards of 15 million
votes” in 2020.” In an answer to a question by Senator Cruz, he stated
that “2.6 million is a rock bottom minimum…up to 10.4 million” for the
number of votes that search engine might have swung to Clinton in the
2016 presidential election.
Since 2016, Epstein has continued his research. It has been embraced by
some, and condemned by others. His findings confirm the dangers of
damaging the integrity of elections by biased indexed search
suggestions. Search results are only available to monitor for a short
period of time; there is no paper trail. The money spent on such
activities cannot be easily traced for compliance with campaign finance
laws. Without the cooperation of the search engine itself, it is almost
impossible to ascertain if any person or entity is injecting bias into
its programs. The items and articles about the candidate on the second
list could be slanted for political reasons.
It is a positive and proper step for Congress to address the problems
search engine activity could cause, and try to put up safeguards to the
election process. We want all our country’s leaders to be elected by a
system that is as fair and honest as it can possibly be.
It should be noted that on the day I did my search engine test, it took
only typing in O’ to bring up an index with Beto O’Rourke’s name third
on the list of ten items. Is that an edge or not? It certainly is
interesting.
To be responsible voters, we must be informed voters. Do not rely on
any search engine’s order of candidates or its order of suggestions
about them. Gather information from a variety of sources about all the
candidates. They all have a message—make sure you vote for those that
you believe will be the best for our country. Remember every vote
counts—but only if you vote. See you at the polls!
|
|
|
|
