How Trump Believes “Weapons of Math Destruction” Were Used Against Him
The 2020 Presidential Election was monumental for many reasons, including bringing to light how the election process works in the United States. According to an article from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab when counting presidential candidate votes there are “five types of voting machines used at least somewhere in the United States: hand-counted paper, mechanical lever machines, punch-card machines, scanned paper ballots, and direct-recording electronic devices (Figure 1).” These technologies have been implemented in the presidential voting process since the late 1800s and were a highlighted topic of the results of the 2020 election.
President Donald Trump questioned the integrity of the election and therefore refused to accept the results of the 2020 election which named President Elect Joe Biden had won. According to the Washington Post one of his main arguments was that voting software was compromised and this software had wrongly “misallocated” votes from Trump to Biden. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security refuted these claims and, in the end,, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.
Although Trump’s claims were untrue the idea of how technology could potentially be used to skew the results of an election is an interesting concept. As we continue to innovate and create new technologies, and the question of accessibility becomes more important, many people are calling for an easier voting process which involves voting from home via internet applications or something similar. This concept seems like an easy and logical solution until the algorithms behind these technologies and who is writing them is considered. Cathy O’Neil’s book “Weapons of Math Destruction” addresses just this issue, describing how algorithms can be written with the most sincere of intentions with every measure of fairness, yet still reflect the subtle preconceptions of the people writing them, referring to these skewed algorithms as “Weapons of Math Destruction”. So, who determines that the models we use for elections are not “encoded [by] human prejudice, misunderstanding, and bias” (O’Neil) and do we really understand how these technologies are being used currently? This was the basis of Trump’s argument during the 2020 election, and although they were somewhat trifling, they have unearthed some interesting topics of discussion on the future of how presidential elections, and other important events that use technology, can keep their integrity.
