Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/02/republican-roy-moore-launches.html
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His campaign seems like an uphill battle to take back a seat he already lost in a year where the progressives are energized. It will be nice if he can lose by an even larger margin this time.
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If someone passing a polygraph test isn’t worth mentioning because it’s pseudoscientific BS, then shouldn’t someone failing a polygraph test be treated the same way?
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But we know he failed a pedophile detector test 
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Alabama.
Yes, but we also know Roy Moore’s past actions.
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Right. He’s obviously a pedophile, but I don’t see why taking a polygraph test is worth mentioning at all - regardless of whether he ‘passed’ or ‘failed’. Because either way, it’s meaningless.
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If Moore was the only opponent, I’d bet on Doug Jones keeping the seat blue.
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If you can practice to fool a polygraph test…is he saying that he practiced to implicate himself?
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It was sadly a pretty tight margin - Jones only beat Moore by 1.7%. And that was without an organized turnout machine behind him, as the Republican Party pretty much abandoned Moore by that point. Were Moore to win the primary again, it’s conceivable that the Republican party would turn a blind eye to the allegations and funnel resources into his campaign.
Based on the numbers Jones vs. Moore looks more like a coin toss to me.
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Which is why that’s hilarious. Its almost impossible to fail a polygraph you commissioned yourself. A lot of what you’re paying for there is the fiction of the thing so you can point at it as proof in the press. You are buying an “expert” who will produce the results you prefer.
And he still failed.
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So far the polling for Moore hasn’t been that great, so I’m sure the GOP POT will do what it can to drum up a more credible candidate.
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I thought people rarely failed self-commissioned polygraphs because it’s the sort of thing you only tend to do if you’re innocent. In the end it rarely convinces anybody one way or the other so it’s usually a waste.
He should primary Trump.
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That would only matter if it worked (and is moot since its not admissable). It doesn’t. They measure stress responses (often poorly), everyone has stress responses to all sorts of things. Whether you have a stress response in a polygraph is mostly down to how the operator conducts the questioning. And whether those responses are considered indicitive of lying is entirely down to that operator’s interpretation.
So you can hire a polygraph operator who softballs the questioning and interprets things in your favor. And that’s a relatively common thing to do in the PR space. You also see it done frequently by the wealthy and obviously guilty in legal contexts. Sometimes leading to a duelling polygraph situation where the defense has a pass test, and the accusers have a failed test. And we all have a polygraph party.
What you’re referring to is in criminal contexts. Where its not advisable to submit to a polygraph at all since they’re so manipulable. And you certainly don’t volunteer or commission your own. Though it still happens. The major risk is that the other side get at the data and have their guy reinterpret it. Or press you into an “independent” test.
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Yeah the early polls aren’t being kind to Moore, but I can see his being on the sidelines for 2 years being enough for Republicans to say they have a clean conscience voting for him.
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In awhile pedophile.
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It would still be an uphill battle for him. Voters (in either party) can be very “well you had your chance and you blew it.”
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