30,000 registration mailers and the problem with the phrase "technically true"
It's not what the thing is, it's how you use it -- or misuse it.
In 2022 a claim was shared on Twitter and elsewhere that Colorado had sent 30,000 registration mailers to noncitizens. This was true. What was often left out of the presentation of this fact on Twitter was three important pieces of context:
The registration mailers conferred no right to vote. They were simply postcards reminding people to vote.
Both the postcard and the online registration form stated clearly (in English and in Spanish) that one had to be a citizen to vote, with the online registration having the applicant attest to their eligibility under penalty of law.
The postcards were mailed due to an error – downloading a data file without selecting the full set of filter conditions – that was both documented and not particularly an odd occurrence in data management using transfer files.
We can plot out a minimal map of the election theft argument like so:
Here I’ve tried to highlight that for the evidence to connect to a claim of “theft” and not just “error” one needs evidence that shows both impact (it could sway the election) and cause (it was intentionally done by Democrats).
In this case, the larger claim that the Democrats are using noncitizens to steal the election is without merit. But it’s not that piece that matters. In this case what matters is that there is easily available context about the evidence (the mailers) that shows it does not connect to the claim. In fact, just looking at the mailers in question undermines one important assumption, since the mailer simply had a printed link to the existing registration website and the mailer itself specifies in both English and Spanish only citizens have the right to vote. The mailers don’t confer an ability to vote, and are unlikely to have had any impact at all.
Additionally, the reason the error happened – essentially an export file glitch that did not read the correct export “flag” – was shared at the same time the error was announced. For anyone who has worked with export files, this provides a much more believable alternative than the claim that it was part of a conspiracy.
There is also some simple reasoning that can undermine the assumptions. To cheat in an election one must have their actions go undetected – if they are detectable the results will be litigated and ultimately reversed. The idea that publicly mailing 30,000 postcards across the state is a part of a secret plan is ridiculous at best. Likewise, it’s noteworthy that the Secretary of State knows how many people wrongly got the postcards, which means they know all the names of the people who got them. If one of the recipients wrongly registered, they could spot that and address it before the election or after it. Knowing people’s intent can be hard, but if you can show that no benefit would accrue to someone committing a felony you can make a good case that they would be unlikely to commit it.
So was this evidence misrepresented? In practice, it was. For the evidence to connect to the claim, it would have to be:
An event not easily explained by a common type of error
An event that would increase the possibility of fraud
As seen here, once the context of those mailers is known, the evidence does not connect to the claim anymore.
The problem with “technically true”
This is also a good example of what people likely mean when they say that something was “technically true”. It’s not a phrase I like, but I understand what people think they mean by it. What “technically true” generally indicates is that the description of an event or statistical pattern would be sufficient in some alternate context. For instance, if we were arguing over whether the Colorado government engaged in wasteful mailings, perhaps a description that omitted the fact these mailings conferred no ability to vote would be adequate. Colorado made a stupid mistake and sent out a bunch of useless postcards to people that could not make use of them. Electoral impact isn’t being argued, so context around impact isn’t necessary.
Some people, of course, go further, and argue that something that is “technically true” cannot be seen as deceitful. The problem with using this as a defense is it feigns ignorance as to why the information was offered in the first place.
After all, people are not uttering random assertions about government postal activity. They are doing things with words, and in the context of short form social media, what they are usually doing is making arguments – offering evidence to make given beliefs seem more or less reasonable. This is seen in the way their audiences interpret such assertions, as evidence of some larger claim.
It’s also shown by the virality of these events. It’s possible that a person following Colorado politics might have a very specific reason for promoting such news unrelated to election theft. Maybe they think the Secretary of State is not good at her job. But national promoters of the story are unlikely to have taken a sudden interest in Colorado’s electoral efficiency. They are clearly interested in bringing the “evidence” into a larger argument about elections as a whole, one ultimately about the validity of national results. And even if they claim the story they share is “technically true”, the problem is that in introducing the event as evidence they omitted to mention key pieces of evidence context which would have shown that it is not really evidence at all.
Think of it like this — if I am underage and wanting to get into a bar, perhaps I borrow my older cousin’s license. I walk up to the bar door and show the ID to the bouncer. He looks at the picture and up at me then down at the picture then calls over a nearby police officer.
“But officer,” I say, “The license is technically valid!”
Ridiculous, right? And why is that? Because the issue is not the reality of the license, it’s that I was pretending the license proved my age when I knew in fact it was not my license. It’s the same thing here. You can describe the event however you want, but if you try to use it as evidence of a stolen election, you better be clear about the easily discoverable facts that undermine its use that way. Or better yet, find a piece of evidence that is more suited to the case you want to make.