by Tom Siebert , Op-Ed Contributor, December 8, 2016

Nearly a month past and the finger-pointing hasn’t stopped over the Hillary Clinton campaign, everybody pointing at everything else. Of course, they all played their part—it’s never any one thing.

But let others focus on that. Our topic is something mostly missed, forgotten or hushed up. It appeared in TheWashington Post the day after Election Day.

On November 9, The Washington Post ran a fascinating articleby John Wagner about “ADA—a complex computer algorithm that…was said to play a role in virtually every strategic decision Clinton aides made.”

The algorithm was named after the late British Countess Ada Lovelace, an esteemed 19th-century mathematician and daughter of the poet Lord Byron.

Ada Lovelace was part of the team (the only woman) who developed the “Analytical Engine,” a precursor to the modern computer. Many consider her the first programmer.

Before we get to ADA the algorithm, let us pay tribute to Ada, Countess of Lovelace. She was brilliant and fascinating, mastering the sciences far more than the vast majority of the educated class. She traveled widely, loved freely, flirted with scandal, dabbled in the occult to some undetermined degree, and died tragically at the age of 36.

Ada Lovelace was a visionary.

The virtual ADA, as it turned out, not so much.



But not for a lack of faith from the Clinton brain trust, who were true believers. There was such confidence in the ADA algorithm as omnipotent overseer of the Clinton election effort, it was kept from the public, media and most of the campaign team.

The plan was to reveal ADA triumphantly after the election was won, the virtual mastermind behind the first woman president’s victory, according to WaPo.

How many people working for Clinton actually knew about ADA and her influence remains unclear. The Post reported that ADA operated on a separate, private computer server (uh-oh!) — only a few elite aides had access to it. The article did not identify who.

According to the article, tons of public and private poll results were fed into the algorithm, along with intricate voter data the campaign collected. Ada took the data and ran 400,000 simulations a day of what could happen in the race against Trump.

Data analysis reports would guide decisions about where candidate Clinton should go, how much money and time should be spent there, which states were a battleground and which were a slam dunk.

It was the ADA algorithm that told the Clinton camp Michigan and Wisconsin were safe wins, and they took her word for it. Clinton did not visit Wisconsin once, even as desperate state volunteers tried to warn the state was in play, per Huffington Post.

Another bad call from ADA, according to TheWashington Post was seeking celebrities’ endorsements and the “staging of high-profile concerts with stars like Jay-Z and Beyoncé.”

In reality, the Jay-and-Bey concert in Ohio (a state Clinton lost) brought as much bad publicity as good. Jay-Z matched Trump profanity-for-profanity on stage and dropped N-bombs too, spurring bad press. Did it win Clinton votes? The New York Times reported audience members leaving as soon as the music was over and Clinton began speaking.

Opinions and decisions were repeatedly deferred to the ADA algorithm, removing the human factor — and they were wrong.

Beyond the first reporting in WaPo, the only other media with circulation over a million that covered ADA was a regurgitated recap in Bretbart. But it contained no new reporting, and there was no follow up there or anywhere else.

Inquiring minds hunger—was the algorithm wrong, or was the information being fed into the algorithm the problem?

Who determined what data was considered in the calculations? Which campaign officials were part of the ADA brain trust? Was Hillary Clinton involved? And the biggest question of all: Was it ADA’s fault? Or her programmers?

I reached out to both the DNC and The WashingtonPost reporter about ADA. Neither responded to my inquiry. Down the memory hole it goes, and nothing “fake” about it.