Perceptual Divide 2020
The perceptual divide now plaguing the United States (and the rest of the Western world) is centered around the relationship one has to mass media. On no issue is that divide more stark than the 2020 American presidential election. Media coverage of the ongoing Arizona audit provides a case in point.
Take, for example, this New York Times article, originally published on Sept. 24, under the following headline:
‘Stop the Steal’ Movement Races Forward, Ignoring Arizona Humiliation
As a Republican review of 2020 votes in Arizona sputtered to a close, Donald Trump and his allies signaled that their attack on the election, and their drive to reshape future elections, were far from over.
The article begins:
After all the scurrying, searching, sifting, speculating, hand-counting and bamboo-hunting had ended, Republicans’ post-mortem review of election results in Arizona’s largest county wound up only adding to President Biden’s margin of victory there.
It’s not until the 10th paragraph, however, that its authors arrive at the crux of the matter:
Cherry-picking from the report on Friday, the former president and his allies cited a series of eye-popping statistics that, on first glance, appeared to bolster their case, trusting that their supporters either would not digest the document in full or would not trust the mainstream news outlets that laid out its complete contents.
Peter Navarro, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, falsely claimed on Twitter that the report had shown that 50,000 potentially illegal votes were cast in Maricopa County. That number was in fact the tally of ballots that the report — through questionable methodology — described as problematic in some way.
But what exactly is the difference between “potentially illegal votes” and votes that are “problematic in some way?” And what was the “questionable methodology” employed by the auditors? The authors of the article do not elaborate.
Here is a breakdown of the 50,000 votes in question:
Trump supporters argue that these audit results come from a single county—and Biden’s lead in the entire state only stands at around 11,000 votes.
Here is the executive summary of the Cyber Ninjas audit: