Fact checking not prioritized during elections

Lasirra Hines, Entertainment Editor

The elections, a week of anxiety and annoyance. They lasted for so long I was questioning if we would even have a confirmation in the month of November. 

When Nov. 3 came around, I wasn’t expecting results, but I also wasn’t expecting them to be dragged out for four days. 

It was down to Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Florida. Most of these states were already blue-leaning, and we were just waiting for the ballots to be counted. 

In the time it took for these states to figure out who they wanted in office, I saw more Facebook rants and arguments in the comments then I can remember. Some wanted Donald Trump, some were hoping Joe Biden, and nobody wanted to respect each other. It mostly came down to a lack of accurate information. 

I saw a post that essentially bashed on Biden, but did so providing information that wasn’t even correct. 

The reasons people were against Biden was mainly because of gun laws and taxes, and people took that idea and ran with it. Referring back to that post, it said “Regardless of the outcome, this is scary. 60 million-plus people voted for higher taxes, full term abortions, defunding the police, socialism and the abolishment of the Second Amendment.”

Now mind you, most of this is said without proper context and information. The higher taxes are not in place for everyone, it is for people within a higher tax bracket. Most people who are afraid of this don’t even fall into that tax bracket. It was said multiple times that this would be for people that make over $400,000 a year, and again, most of the people complaining don’t even make that much anyway.

Full-term abortions don’t happen as often as Biden’s critics imply. Research conducted by the Center for Disease Control showed that, from the 623,471 legal abortions reported, 91.0 percent of abortions were performed at no later than 13 weeks. Only 1.2 percent were performed over 21 weeks. People keep bringing up these policies that are simply not criminalizing getting the procedure. Women won’t be thrown in jail for geting an abortion, and the doctors who legally perform it aren’t arrested for it. 

Defunding the police is another hot button topic that causes distress to Biden’s haters. they misunderstand that “defund” does not mean “get rid of,” but rather reallocation of funds — not getting rid of the police, just redirecting funds to more appropriate services. And more importantly, Biden isn’t even for defunding the police. He stated multiple times that he is looking to provide more resources for the police.

No matter what you heard or saw, people were quick to call this Socialism, even when they couldn’t back up their points with evidence that led to this conclusion.

Abolishing the Second Amendment, now that is an exaggeration. Interestingly enough, this isn’t abolishing the Second Amendment, it is just simple gun laws. Abolishing the Amendment actually requires a two thirds vote in the House and Senate. It’s a much longer process, and it is utterly ridiculous for people to think that it would be “abolished” in the first place.

There hadn’t been much fact checking the entire week, and people were simply just posting what they thought was true, using their own opinion to justify something that had no research done on it. People then got angry over the fact check that many platforms have, such as Facebook and Instagram, and quite frankly, I nearly removed all social media due to the fact that people were using Fox News and CNN as viable sources. 

There was just so much that wasn’t true that truly ruined what logic was left of the election. 

I guess what I’m saying is that do your research before trying to say something about politics or anything really. Always make sure you know what you are talking about.