Letter to the Editor: How Do You Win An Election? By 'Being Dishonest'

To the Editor:

A teenage boy asked his dad, “How did they win an election?” The father told his son, “The first thing is to be dishonest. Never admit the truth, or at least not the whole truth.”

When asked to explain that, the dad said, “Well, if you have a traffic study that was conducted on a regular school day, and included an October holiday weekend, you never admit that the school day was part of the study. You
only say it was conducted on a holiday weekend, and you say it repeatedly.” Being a bright child, the teenager then interjected, “But most of the
families here have kids in sports on the weekend. Who ever goes away in
October?”

The father then continued to reveal the strategy. He said, “You release information which is not true. Tell the voters things which will lead the voters to
believe their taxes will go up. Even though there is no factual basis for a tax hike, just saying it will scare enough voters, and especially senior citizens, to support you. People don’t want to invest their time in studying details, so if you just show them a catchy phrase, they will mostly believe you.” Continuing, the father then said, “Don’t get bogged down in technical details. As long as you can write a few sentences about the topic which read like they are authoritative, people will accept them. And if you can word that bit of misinformation so that people will think they will somehow have to pay for a repair, you guarantee more votes.”

The son also wanted to know if local politicians were included in those who could mislead people. “Absolutely!”, said the dad. “You tell the politicians the untruths, and they will not bother to do the research and will simply use your information. Even mayors will release information which is untrue, misleading , and an exaggeration.” “Did the strategy include anything about real estate?” “Of course! You would never, ever tell the community that there are three families who actually moved into town for the program the election was about.” “Wouldn’t that help real estate prices?” the teenager asked. “You want to tell people that real estate will suffer, even though there is no basis in fact for that either. You want to tell people that property values will be destroyed because the view out their window will be filled with a building, but you can’t tell them that for 6 months of the year, you can’t even see through the forest which is 400 feet deep beyond their windows. And, even when the leaves are down, between the density of trees, and the landscaping at the project, the building is still obscured. You want to mislead, don’t you get it?”

“Do you say or write bad things about people involved on the other side?” His dad replied, “This is another part of the whole plan. You get someone to find out bad information about people, and then you release it too. It doesn’t even matter if they write about the correct person. As long as it makes the people look bad, you send it out.”

“Was there a debate before this election?” his son also wanted to know. “Yes indeed,” came dad’s reply, with a snicker. “What are you laughing about?” “We even rigged the debate to be two-on-one!” chuckled the dad. “And the League of Women Voters supported our cabal the whole way!” After a pause, the teenager then said, “You know what dad, I thought it was just a cliché’ that cheaters never win.”

Paul Hansen