Campaign promises and lies
Voters need to do their part because politics is supposed to be a participatory sport
When my daughter was in second grade, she ran for student council. She made some posters and wrote a speech to give to her class, explaining why they should pick her to represent them. She came home from school practically in tears on the day of the election.
Her opponent won after making promises to extend recess and hold more class parties. Their teacher explained to the class – before the vote – that his campaign promises were not within his ability to execute, but he won by a landslide. Who wouldn’t want more parties and longer recess?
Was it the boy’s responsibility to only promise things he was capable of doing? Were the voters expected to vet his ideas? How would they do that? That sounds like a lot of work for a second grader. Actually, it’s a lot of work for adults to gather information and make informed decisions on the ballot.
Democracy isn’t easy. But politics is supposed to be a participatory sport.
We are not required to prove we have done our homework before filling out our ballots. But we really should try harder.
One of the things I love about voting by mail – or voting from home – is the extra time it gives me to research the decisions that could affect my life, my family and my community. I’m a couple-issue voter, in contrast to a one-issue voter, so I make sure I know how the candidates stand on certain issues. I check their credentials and read what one or two voter guides say about them. Maybe I’ll watch a debate, if available. Sometimes my family has its own discussion about the qualities of a certain candidate. Then I fill in the bubble.
How to evaluate campaign promises
Everyone makes campaign promises. And no one is required by law to only promise the things they can actually accomplish. Because most voters are not critical consumers of political ideas, candidates can easily get away with telling lies and making promises they cannot keep.
So what’s a voter with limited time supposed to do? Here’s my proposed checklist:
Ask yourself: Does this sound like something the governor/mayor/president/dog catcher can actually do?
Has anyone vetted this proposal? Check on Google.
Look at a fact check site: Snopes, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org. I’ll write another post about fact checkers, but these are a couple of independent and reputable sites.
What is the job description for this political position? You can Google that as well.
How does the candidate say they will accomplish this goal? What is their plan? How specific is it?
Does their opponent have an alternative proposal that makes more sense or seems more doable?
No one has time to evaluate every campaign promise in this way, but you do have time to fact check at least one major promise if it’s the reason you may vote for or against someone.
A modern case study: grocery prices
During the 2024 presidential election, both candidates recognized that many Americans were struggling financially and saw grocery prices as an example of how expensive everything has gotten.
Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris did a good job focusing on the economy and grocery prices during their speeches and campaign stops.
But as most political pundits will tell you – especially now that the election is over – Trump did a better job of seeming relatable to regular people and saying what voters wanted to hear. He riffed off their concerns, pledging to fix lots of things once he was in office. These promises came with few specific details about how he would accomplish them.
Harris, who like Trump is also not an “everyman” struggling in the trenches to feed her family, got a lot more specific but didn’t make promises that were out of her hands or she was unlikely to deliver.
If you think for a few minutes, you will probably understand why the president of the United States has very little control over grocery prices. I’ll write more about supply and demand and the economy in future posts, in case you’re really interested in groceries. But for now: just Google “what determines grocery prices” and you’ll get an eyeful.
So who won this election’s battle over the economy? The man who won the election, of course. People wanted to believe him so they did. And as any poll or political researcher will tell you: the No. 1 issue in the 2024 election and nearly every other political contest for years is the economy. So whoever wins the economic debate is likely to win the election.
Can the president affect egg prices? Or grocery prices, in general? Yes, he has some levers he can pull, but they were not part of Trump’s political plan. Tariffs, which he spoke about at length, do impact store prices, but not in the way the president-elect presented them. Higher tariffs on goods coming from other countries result in higher prices in American stores. Maybe he has other plans I do not know about that will actually decrease prices by increasing supply, but I didn’t hear about them during the careful attention I paid to the 2024 election.
Is it legal for candidates to lie?
So you might be wondering if it’s legal for candidates to lie and make campaign promises they cannot possibly keep. Or maybe you are cynical enough to not need to ask that question.
The Legal Examiner, a publication that focuses on the law, explains that candidates lie and make promises they can’t fulfill, because the U.S. Constitution says it’s legal for them to do so.
“When it comes to political ads, lies are protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the Legal Examiner stated on Aug. 3, 2020. The article goes on to explain that lies in political ads are covered by the First Amendment, but may also be governed by other laws, depending on where these ads appear.
It’s a pretty complicated argument, but basically broadcast TV stations, like your local NBC affiliate, have to follow FCC rules that require equal treatment of political candidates. Cable TV stations, the Internet and social media are not governed by FCC rules.
Of course, lies in advertisements make up just one part of this question. The First Amendment clearly allows political speech outside of ads without considering the quality of that speech. American courts including the U.S. Supreme Court have added some details, such as limiting speech that incites violence, but the right remains central to American law.
And the courts have mostly blocked all attempts to curtail political speech. My friend and former colleague Melissa Santos at Axios offered this succinct summary of the case law on political lies.
Keep reading and learning
My hope is that this newsletter will give you enough information to satisfy your curiosity and help you understand the basics, but if you want to learn more to build your expertise in a given topic, you’ll need to read more.
Here are some suggestions for future exploration that go deeper into some of the topics explored in this newsletter:
My former colleague Ron Fournier looks at lemmings or people who believe everything they are told in his Substack Convulsions:
How to fact check like a pro from the Annenberg Public Policy Center: https://utopia.ut.edu/FakeNews/factcheck
A podcast about lying in politics from Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy: https://sanford.duke.edu/story/election-2024-lying-politics-podcast/
The founder of Politifact on what he doesn’t understand about political lies for The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/political-lying-fact-checking-social-media/680184/
Add your suggested links in the comments.