The New York Times has this article, saying Republicans want to boost minor party and independent presidential candidates this year. The authors repeated debunked claims about the 1992 and 2016 elections. They say Ross Perot helped Bill Clinton win in 1992, ignoring the exit polls in 1992 that said half the Perot voters said they would have voted for Clinton if Perot had not been running. They also ignore the fact that between July 17 and September 30, when Perot wasn’t running, Clinton was leading in the polls.

About the 2016 election, they say Jill Stein “gave a meaningful – and arguably election-deciding – boost to Mr. Trump by drawing progressive votes away from Hillary Clinton.” Yet the 2016 exit pollsters had extra questions for Stein voters, which reveal that 25% of the Stein voters said they would have voted for Clinton if Stein had not been on the ballot, but 14% of the Stein voters said they would have voted for Trump. Applying those percentages to the actual vote returns in the three states mention in the article (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin) Stein did not change the electoral outcome in any state.

The authors are Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan, and Rebecca Davis O’Brien.