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For at least 36 hours, Idahoans believed that Democrat Karma Metzler Fitzgerald had bested Jack Nelson in a Magic Valley race for a House of Representatives seat. But Wednesday morning, state and county officials explained in an about-last-night-style press release, someone noticed that the state’s election results data didn’t match the county’s vote tabulation. Officials declared Nelson the winner. There are two things about this that fascinate me endlessly. The first is that when reporters wanted to know whether there’s any truthfulness to President Donald Trump’s claims about voting irregularities or truth to election complaints by folks like Mike Lindell, they went to election officials in all 50 states. Those officials self-reported that there’s nothing to worry about, which led the press to write, to this day, that criticisms of the 2020 election were “baseless” claims spouted by “election deniers.” Apparently, election results are only wrong if the government makes an announcement that the results are wrong. Whether you believe the 2020 election was stolen or not, I encourage people to not be so trusting of government officials who lie to you about everything from inflation to unemployment numbers to the effectiveness of Covid shots to the quality of the education system. However — and I'm sure I’ll get called a crazy conspiracy theorist for saying so — whenever 100% of government employees or elected officials say something is true, I’m pretty sure it’s not, and I’m usually right. In more than three decades of public policy, I don’t remember ever being wrong in my assessment of government. The second thing that fascinates me is how people think that this reversed result — a Republican winning instead of a Democrat — is in any way consequential to the makeup of the House of Representatives. Sure, it means the Republican caucus will be bigger and the Democrat caucus smaller. It may or may not mean fewer Democrats on committees. Beyond that, there’s probably little difference. |
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