Opinion

BARR: Schiff’s Concerns About Rigging The 2020 Election Are Real, But Misdirected

Font Size:

In one of his more outlandish pronouncements during last week’s never-ending impeachment managers’ Opening Argument in the Senate trial of President Donald Trump, Rep. Adam Schiff declared it vital that the President be found guilty and removed from office right now because he has shown himself to be an electoral “cheater.” As seen through the hate-colored lenses by which Schiff and his Democrat Party view the political landscape, if Trump remains in office November’s election results cannot possibly be trusted.

While voters clearly have reason to be concerned about vote manipulation, it is not Donald Trump who should worry us; it is Google.

“Search engine manipulation effect” (SEME) has been familiar to behavioralists for several years. It is the process of manipulating internet users’ preferences through deliberate but subtle – more precisely, surreptitious – algorithmic changes in search engine preference rankings.  One way to achieve this effect is through Google’s “autocomplete function,” which directs users’ searches based on secret algorithms and user history.

The autocomplete function used by internet search engines completes a search term or phrase being entered by a user before the user deliberately completes it himself or herself. In this way, the search engine interposes its search preferences for those of the user in such manner that the user is not consciously aware of such manipulation. While the vast majority of instances in which a search engine engages autocomplete are those in which the user is simply searching for a factual term or phrase (e.g., “the Bill of Rights was ratified in what year?”), there is far more room for the search engine to subjectively direct a user when the query is more open-ended or includes a hot-button political term or name of a candidate.

Extensive research by Robert Epstein, a self-described center-left supporter of Hillary Clinton, established that search algorithms utilized by Google had “suppressed negative autocomplete search results relating to Hillary Clinton.” This was described in a December 2016 article in The Guardian, but more recently Epstein testified last July before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution chaired by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, that “[i]n 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton.”

Epstein went on to testify that, “biased search results can easily produce shifts in the opinions and voting preference of undecided voters by 20 percent or more – up to 80 percent in some demographic groups.” Despite assurances in 2016 from Google that its use of algorithmic-based autocomplete processes are unbiased and designed simply to “prevent offensive terms, like porn and hate speech, from appearing” in a user’s inquiry, Epstein testified that “Google employees deliberately engineer” such processes “to change people’s thinking.”

Epstein also discussed the manner by which Google manipulated tens of millions of voters at all levels of government, through its selective “Go Vote” reminders; under the guise of performing a “public service.” He concluded his startling congressional testimony by noting that, “Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015.”

Epstein did not limit his expert testimony to simply identifying the problem of search-engine voter manipulation; he suggested a remedy. He recommended the federal government address this grave and worsening problem not by censorship, which some in Congress have endorsed, but rather by declaring the “database [Google] uses to generate search results .  .  .  to be a ‘public commons,’” accessible to other search platforms.  This would prompt and promote competition in much the same way a similar move decades ago against AT&T, ushered in an era of phenomenal and innovative competition in telecommunications.

Whether those in Washington will listen to non-partisan experts like Epstein and do something to rein in the uncontrolled manipulation of voters by Google and other search engines, remains to be seen.

However, if attention continues to focus on the specious, anti-Trump scolding of Adam Schiff and the Democrat Party in the lead up to this November’s election, the more likely it becomes that Epstein’s dire warnings of massive voter manipulation by Google and other search engines will in fact take place – which is, after all, exactly what the Democrats want.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel