Voters are the jury that decides presidential elections

The Supreme Court has taken up Donald Trump's lawsuit seeking presidential immunity, meaning that even if the court rules against him, Trump will not be tried before the 2024 election. This is making many Americans worried.

Assuming the court allows Trump's case to be heard, special counsel Jack Smith will have to prove not only that Trump committed illegal acts, but also that he acted with criminal intent. No. You can't read Trump's mind, so you have to infer his intentions from his words and actions.

As a psychologist, I am particularly interested in Smith's first charge, “Conspiracy to defraud the United States,” regarding Trump's “Big Lie” about widespread election fraud. The indictment accuses President Trump of spreading “false claims about the November 2020 election that he knew were untrue,” according to NPR.

For a lie to be genuine, it must be asserted with the intent to deceive. President Trump claims he is not lying about election fraud, but substantial evidence suggests otherwise.

NBC News reported on the matter succinctly: “In public, Mr. Trump claimed that the election he had won was stolen from him. In private, he admitted he had lost, a close aide said. [Jan. 6 House] Committee. “

In Washington, D.C. District Court under Judge Tanya Chutkan, proving that Trump lied (if the case goes forward) would require proving that Trump knew the “Big Lie” was false. , which begs the question of whether Trump was himself deceived, or willfully ignorant, or both.

Philosopher David Livingstone Smith defined self-deception as “any mental process or action” that has the function of “hiding information from consciousness.” The question is, how is it possible that the deceiver and the deceived are the same person?

Smith finds the answer in the “cognitive unconscious,” the mechanisms underlying mental processes such as memory that “remain hidden from consciousness.” He argues that we are all self-deceived to some degree, especially in the little lies we tell ourselves to get through the day.

However, the legal issue is the relationship between self-deception and criminal prosecution. And given the unconscious component of self-deception, it can be virtually impossible to determine whether someone is truly self-deceived. Nevertheless, willful ignorance can and has been proven in court.

Although some consider willful ignorance to be a form of self-deception, philosopher Kevin Lynch has convincingly argued that they are “a different psychological kind.” According to psychologist Mark Alicke, willful ignorance is distinct from self-deception, and is defined as “when an individual recognizes at some conscious level that his or her beliefs are probably false, or when he or she receives information that establishes his or her error.” It happens when you refuse to pay attention to.”

Willful ignorance therefore involves a deliberate decision to remain ignorant about something.

Law professor Alexander Saatchi wrote that the Supreme Court noted that there was “broad agreement” about “two basic requirements” for willful ignorance. First, “the defendant must subjectively believe that there is a high probability that the truth exists.” Second, “the defendant must take deliberate action to avoid knowledge of that fact.”

The fact that Trump's advisers repeatedly told him he lost the election meets the first requirement of willful ignorance. The second requirement was when President Trump told Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” that he “didn't listen to the lawyers who told him he lost the election because he didn't respect lawyers.” suggested. listen? myself. “

“Courts routinely substitute willful ignorance for knowledge,” Saatchi said. Therefore, if it can be proven that Trump knowingly made the false claims, he would likely be found guilty in the first instance.

However, given the success of President Trump's delay tactics so far, there is no expectation that the court will issue a ruling before November 2024. So when a fairly recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that half of Republican voters said, “If I didn't vote for Trump, he would be a convicted felon,'' I said. You could be forgiven for being cynical, but at least some of them feel it's okay for something like that to happen.

As voters, we are the only jurors who can decide the outcome of the presidential election, so we must each decide for ourselves whether Trump's Big Lie is self-deception, willful ignorance, or a genuine lie. No. Revealing the truth as best we can, given the available facts, is necessary to minimize the ignorance that influences our votes, whether intentional or not.

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