Five Million Reasons to Love Unilateral Contracts
Election denial loses again. As we reported here, Texas’ Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (left) offered $25,000 to anybody who could come forward with information that leads to the arrest and conviction of any person for voter fraud in connection with the 2020 election. For a while, I crowed about how nobody had come forward to claim the award. Then, a year after the election, as we reported here, Mr. Patrick ultimately paid at least one claim, to “the scion of a family of Democratic operatives” who found evidence that led to the conviction of a Republican man who had voted twice, once for himself and once on behalf of his son, a registered Democrat. Probably not the evidence of voter fraud that Mr. Patrick was hoping to discover.Chris Dehghanpoor, Emma Brown, and Jon Swaine report in The Washington Post today that Mike Lindell of MyPillow and CrackpotElectionConspiracy fame will have to make good on his offer to pay $5 million to anyone who could prove him wrong in his claims that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen.
The story began in August 2021, when Mr. Lindell hosted a “cyber symposium” in South Dakota (shown below). At said symposium, he announced the Prove Mike Wrong Challenge and offered $5 million to anyone who could prove that his evidence of alleged Chinese interference did not relate to the 2020 U.S. elections. Seems clever. It’s hard to prove a negative. In order to participate in the contest, Robert Zeidman had to attend the cyber symposium. After extreme vetting, Mr. Zeidman was allowed to attend, and he signed the agreement associated with contest participation. He never thought he would win. Rather, he expected only to see for himself evidence of election fraud.
By Douglas W. Jones – Own work, CC0
The contest rules provided (preposterously) as follows:
5. Participants must submit all of their evidence in writing to a three member panel selected by Lindell who will determine whether the submission proves to a 100% degree of certainty that the data shown at the Symposium is not reflective of November 2020 election data.
The arbitral decision highlights the following characteristics of the contest:
- Winners were to be determined on August 12, 2021 at 8 PM, giving entrants roughly 48 hours to reach their conclusions.
- All discrepancies or inconsistencies in the contest were to be resolved in Mr. Lindell’s sole discretion.
- The contest rules focused on the authenticity of the data rather than its accuracy, as the entrants could not assess terabytes of data in time to verify accuracy.
- Mr. Lindell created a “Red Team” to assemble data to be shared with entrants, but even members of the Red Team could not access the data, and at least one of them advised Mr. Lindell to call off the contest.
- One expert on whom Mr. Lindell relied and who was a member of the panel that was to judge the contest explained that entrants were provided with only “a slice” of the data and that various technological obstacles, including encryption, were created to make the task more difficult.
Mr. Zeidman, who is a 63-year-old supporter of Donald Trump, spent two days, and he was provided with eleven files. He timely produced a fifteen-page report that concluded: “[T]he data Lindell provides, and represents reflects information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally does not contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election.” The arbitral panel selected by Mr. Lindell determined that Mr. Zeidman had not won the contest. One of the arbiters wrote some notes, explaining the decision.
Mr. Lindell, of course, chose not to pay, alleging that Mr. Zeidman had not actually won the contest. Mr. Zeidman thought he had won and that if the contest rules were construed as Mr. Lindell claimed, it would be both unconscionable and a violation of Minnesota’s anti-fraud statute. He brought his claim before a panel of arbiters.
Yesterday, the panel delivered its 23-page decision, ordering Mr. Lindell’s firm to pay the $5 million. The heart of the opinion, after the description of the contest provided above, is a careful review of the eleven files shared with Mr. Zeidman. In each case, the panel agreed with Mr. Zeidman that the files had nothing to do with the 2020 election. In most cases, Mr. Lindell’s firm did not contend otherwise. There is the possibility that some of the files might have contained information relevant to the 2020 election, but those files could only be read with a program with which Mr. Zeidman and other contestants were not provided. I suppose the panel thought the contest ought to be fair. In the alternative, it seems likely that, even if the files could have been read, they too had nothing to do with the 2020 election. Having found that Mr. Zeidman had indeed won the contest, it dismissed his remaining claims as moot.
I’ve always wondered how Trump supporters can believe both that the Democrats cheated in the 2016 election and that they nonetheless somehow still managed to lose. But here we have it: Mr. Lindell tried his best to rig this contest, and he still lost. I owe Trump supporters an apology. I now see how what they allege to be possible is actually possible. It just did not happen in 2016 or in 2020. But it happened in August 2021, and Mr. Lindell’s firm now is subject to a $5 million arbitral award as a result.
Mr. Zeidman expressed pleasure with the arbitral decision, telling The Washington Post, “The truth is out there now.” Yup. Nobody will ever again claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
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