I'd like to make a point about elections, but let's talk first about football. Simpler to start there.
Ned Seaton
For a couple years now, the internet has been full of assertions that the referees are in the bag for the Kansas City Chiefs. Or maybe the entire league is fixed. Pick the particulars, if you'd like: The refs won't call penalties on the Chiefs, or they will make calls on the Chiefs opponents, or everybody on the field is really faking it, or -- something. Anything.
The blocked field goal that won a game for the Chiefs this past Sunday was really just an orchestrated sham. Etc., etc.
The evidence to support these theories is basically this: The Chiefs keep winning. That's really it. Oh, you could throw Taylor Swift in there somewhere, I guess, as if the NFL is orchestrating all of this to expand to the 18-to-30 female demo. The pop music superstar is dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
Too many coincidences, the conspiracy theorists say. Look, watch this replay! That guy stepped out of bounds, or this other guy was obviously holding! How is Kelce always open? I mean, I'm just asking questions here!
It's not fixed. Fixing it would require hundreds or thousands of people to be in on it, and you have to remember that everybody on all the teams gets paid a lot of money to win.
Let's just pretend for a minute that somebody was paying off the refs. You don't think a ref's ex-wife โ and her divorce lawyer โ would dig that out in an alimony claim? You don't think one of the bagmen would get drunk and tell his buddy, who happens to be a newspaper reporter? If those interior linemen on the Broncos fell down on purpose to allow the blocked kick, you don't think their teammates who lost a giant bonus would scream?
Refs blow calls. Players make plays, and they screw up sometimes, too. Coaches make great tactical decisions and they mess up clock management. This is all a human enterprise.
A week ago, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in the presidential election. Four years ago, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. Four years before that, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
I still hear some assertions by Trump backers that the 2020 election was fixed, based on a much larger turnout that year, and that the number of people voting for the Democrat that year was substantially larger than it was four years before or four years after. But, evidently, it was not fixed in 2016, or in 2024. Riiiiight.
Yes, more people voted for Biden in 2020. Yes, the Chiefs keep winning. But just because one team wins and the other team loses doesn't mean the results are fixed. It doesn't mean there's cheating. It just means somebody won and somebody lost.
Why exactly one won and one lost is for people smarter than me to figure out. But, you know, this happens. Richard Nixon lost to John Kennedy, and then Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey. George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis, then lost to Bill Clinton. Grover Cleveland won, lost, then won again.
Several commissions and panels have looked into the election-fraud claims in 2020, and more than 60 lawsuits were filed all over the country. Nowhere did they find evidence of fraud. Nowhere.
You have to use common sense. For fraud to have occurred, hundreds of people would have to be in on it โ for instance, the people counting ballots, with observers from both parties present. You don't think an assistant county clerk somewhere who later got fired would spill the beans, just to spite the boss? You don't think an election supervisor who got a big payoff would brag to his golfing buddies?
Somebody wins, somebody loses. Everybody's trying to win. The refs are doing the best they can. The system is fair, and it works about as well as you could hope.
