Trust, but Verify: Why we need to hold our politicians accountable when they are incorrect
With presidential elections currently going on, it is vital that everyone ensures they are getting the correct information in order to make an informed voting decision.
However, politicians from all ends of the political spectrum occasionally make statements that are not be completely accurate, and these statements are reported by social media and news outlets for all to see.
This often causes the voters to make their opinions of the candidates and their policies based on blatantly inaccurate information.
For example, on April 6, 2016, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton claimed that she was the only presidential candidate that Wall Street was attacking, stating that “I’m the only candidate in the Democratic primary, or actually on either side, who Wall Street financiers and hedge fund managers are actually running ads against.”
While it is true that groups backed by Wall Street are running ads against her, the claim that she is the only candidate targeted is absurd.
Although she is more frequently targeted, other Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders is also targeted, and every other Republican candidate is targeted more than Clinton.
In actuality, Republican forerunner Donald Trump is the most frequently targeted, according to PolitiFact.
Many candidates also use incorrect statistics to back their proposed policies.
Former Republican candidate Ted Cruz was guilty of this when he claimed statistics showed that he was more likely to beat Clinton than Trump in the November election.
At a rally in Irvine, California, on April 11, 2016, Cruz told his supporters “The polling shows over and over again that, unlike Donald Trump, that with me as the (GOP presidential) nominee, we beat Hillary Clinton.”
It is true that the polls at the time of this statement did not show Trump beating Clinton,.
However, Cruz only beat Clinton in one out of nine polls at that time- a Fox News poll that showed Cruz scoring 3% higher than Clinton, according to PolitiFact.
Therefore, it is clear that Cruz’s statements were blatantly incorrect.
Another example of this is when Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders claimed that, by raising the minimum wage to $15, federal spending on programs to assist the poor would be reduced drastically.
On May 4, 2016, Sanders tweeted “Increasing the min. wage to $15 an hour would reduce spending on food stamps, public housing and other programs by over $7.6 billion a year.”
In actuality, the analysis showing this major decrease was based on a minimum wage increase to $10.10.
Economists have actually never studied the potential job loss that would occur as a result of this dramatic raise, and some suggest that the job loss would actually increase federal spending, according to PolitiFact.
In addition to this blatantly incorrect information that plagues presidential elections, many candidates also run smear campaigns, or campaigns discrediting an opponents by running false accusations against them.
One of the most infamous examples of this is Trump’s claim that Cruz’s father was linked to the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy.
“(Cruz’s) father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald being, you know, shot. I mean the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right, prior to his being shot? And nobody even brings it up,” Trump said on Fox and Friends on May 3, 2016.
Trump’s claim is allegedly based on a National Enquirer report claiming that Rafael Cruz is the man pictured next to Kennedy’s killer- Lee Harvey Oswald.
However, Cole Calistra, Chief Technology Officer at facial recognition software company Kairos told PolitiFact that the photos are too grainy “to perform a proper match one way or the other.”
These many examples make it clear that we must investigate the claims made by the politicians that we vote for this November.
The primaries may be over, but all voters must be sure to fact check the important claims made by presidential hopefuls.
