13 ms·

I think the side which is getting all their lawsuits dismissed (and with prejudice) is probably the one with the baseless claims. I also think that the side on

by MGGJFU 6y ago

I think the side which is getting all their lawsuits dismissed (and with prejudice) is probably the one with the baseless claims. I also think that the side on which the biggest (public) provable liar/narcissist of all time is on has a chance of having the most baseless claims. Occam's Razor also applies. What is more likely: a massive conspiracy to rig the election, only in specific swing states, only for the presidency and nothing else on the ballot, requiring massive coordination and having no proof. Or... The president is a huge liar and the people in the GOP are afraid to go against him lest he turn his cult against them too. > Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening I'm genuinely unsure how you're genuinely unsure, except if you attribute the same weight to Fox News / OANN and other propaganda networks as you do sources of information with actual credibility. There is zero doubt to be had.

Fellshard 6y ago
Credible by repetition only, at this point. They've shown themselves at the same level, and the most self-righteous networks have proven the most hypocritical, and they don't even seem to see it.
zests 6y ago
If Trump is "the biggest provable liar/narcissist of all time" -- clearly this would make him a huge national security threat -- why wouldn't Democrats do everything in their power to get him removed from office? Including, hypothetically, voter fraud. I don't believe the claims of voter fraud. But if you take what is said about Trump at face value you maybe you should adjust your priors about the likelihood of such fraud. If you don't take the claims at face value, why you take the analysis of the voter fraud situation at face value? Political discussion is practically zero trust right now.
- uoaei 6y ago
  Did they not? Have you been following the news at all in the past year or so?
  - newen 6y ago
    You would realize they haven't been trying very hard at all if you've been paying attention.
    - uoaei 6y ago
      I agree that their tactics were terrible. Their concerns are mainly about optics and they get caught up in their own coattails. But you can't claim that they weren't trying to use legitimate means to remove him from office. That is just absurd.
      - newen 6y ago
        The could have impeached Trump on N things, where N is way more than one. They impeached him on one thing. Yes, I would say they were not trying hard at all.
        uoaei 6y ago
        Again, that's a question of tactics, not strategy.
        newen 6y ago
        Tactics, strategy, you're just shuffling. The point is that the Democrats could easily have done much more with the impeachment and they didn't.
        uoaei 6y ago
        So what? Completely irrelevant. You're acting like a jilted lover, not a participant in democracy.
        newen 6y ago
        Lol, good place to retreat to buddy
- comeonseriously 6y ago
  He was impeached, was he not?
- MGGJFU 6y ago
  > clearly this would make him a huge national security threat r/SelfAwarewolves
  - zests 6y ago
    This type of "reddit" comment is not appropriate for HackerNews. I just want to be sure here. Is he a huge national security threat? If so, is he big enough of a threat to justify voter fraud?
    - uoaei 6y ago
      Foolish question with a faulty premise. No one is required to respond to this in earnest, just like there is no requirement for Google to publish materials just because they were uploaded to their servers.
      - zests 6y ago
        A stable belief system is not shaken by a hypothetical question. You can dodge the question if you'd like but it probably doesn't make your world view appealing to outsiders.
        uoaei 6y ago
        "Stable belief system" is orthogonal to "belief system aligned with verifiable facts".
      - ksk 6y ago
        Are you nice because it is required to be nice? "Requirement" is a loaded term, but I would hope Google employees show some decency and hold up their liberal values and bolster free expression that they claim to value so much.
- neogodless 6y ago
  > why wouldn't Democrats do everything in their power to get him removed from office? Because they believe in the process, the integrity of our country and our Constitution, the voice of the people and the validity of the election. (That doesn't mean Democrats are knights in shining armor, but with many politicians following the President's lead on fighting the integrity of our own country, many find it preferable that Democratic politicians refrain from taking that same low road. Sometimes the high road works. Often it doesn't.)
  - zests 6y ago
    How do you explain "Russiagate"? I just got through 4 years of unbridled partisanness that puts your entire post in to question.
    - nemothekid 6y ago
      I don't see how Russiagate is at odds with what neogodless said. The democrats collected evidence, went to court, and lost. Russiagate, however misfounded, was legal. To imply that there were no other avenues for them to go down so they turned to voter fraud is laughable. Also, I will try to say this in the nicest way possible, but you are repeating, nearly verbatim, talking points that the President has been using for months in various rallies. The idea that the democrats needed to turn to voter fraud to ensure Biden won a Trump talking point - not something born out of any sort of rumor or leak. What is particularly nefarious about this talking point is it's not something he crafted out of the blue, but it is one that he has been forming since at least July. He has carefully planned to use pandemic and the growth in mail in ballots to throw chaos into the electoral process. In other words, I'm asking you take a step back and consider if voter fraud is a credible rumor or if its something that has been manufactured by the right wing media machine.
      - zests 6y ago
        I don't listen to right wing media. Or left wing media. They're both terrible. (I pay for my news to try an avoid the nonsense.) I will say this nicely as well, you should re-read my argument to see where the depth lies. I take caution to ask a simple "IF/THEN" question that's really just a latent criticism of media including social media. The idea that "voter fraud" is some "Trump concocted nefarious scheme" is also rather ridiculous. Voter fraud gets claimed after every election. I hope our new censorship overlords are fair and honest in their censorship.
- noahtallen 6y ago
  Democrats did do everything in their power. I’m not sure what you expect, do you want them to try to be totally corrupt and step outside of their constitutional role? Because they made sure it was a really honest process: 1. They made sure investigations happened to determine the validity of any claims. Investigations from trusted intelligence officials and even from the Republican-controlled senate confirmed the same thing. 2. They impeached trump based on the evidence provided by the investigations. 3. When the republicans didn’t vote to remove him, they focused a lot on the election and driving voter turnout.
- everdrive 6y ago
  >why wouldn't Democrats do everything in their power to get him removed from office? Correctly, people note that a sure marker of a conspiracy theory is that the absence of evidence supports the claim. (ie, there must have been a cover-up!) This is definitely true, but another aspect which doesn't get enough attention is an argument which relies totally on psychoanalysis. "Group X would surely want to do x, and therefore they probably did!" The truth is that you generally don't understand people's incentives as well as you might guess. Further, simply because there is an incentive does not mean there is a capability. But, most importantly, claims require evidence. Reading incentives is pretty flawed regardless. At best, it must be backstopped by real, hard evidence. This total lack of evidence is why these cases are being unceremoniously tossed out of court.
  - zests 6y ago
    I will come out and say I have not looked at a single court case nor do I look at Trump twitter nor do I read any social media beyond Hacker News. My interest in politics is not partisan. I am not here to debate the likelihood of any sort of fraud because internet debates about this kind of thing are pointless. The rationalistic question is something along the lines of "how do you adjust your priors of voter fraud based on the rhetoric of the party alleged of committing the fraud." The lazy answer is "your voter fraud prior should always be zero." Is that the right answer? There's are interesting discussions to be had here. They likely cannot be had on Hacker News. Many people have beliefs about Trump where, IF I had the same beliefs I'd totally be on board with voter fraud to get him out of office.
    - everdrive 6y ago
      >Many people have beliefs about Trump where, IF I had the same beliefs I'd totally be on board with voter fraud to get him out of office. I wouldn't, but this is because of the game theory sort of nature of democracy. If I can do it, so can my opponents. Suppose Trump is evil, and defeated, and next election my side has a truly wonderful and excellent candidate. (again, I'm just being theoretical.) I don't want the other side to be able to beat my candidate using voter fraud. Ideally, no one can beat anyone using voter fraud. >The rationalistic question is something along the lines of "how do you adjust your priors of voter I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you mean "this party has previously had issues with voter fraud, and therefore it's not stretch to be concerned about it again." If I have you correct, I'd again say that this is a fine suspicion, but then evidence must be produced. If evidence cannot be produced, then the priors alone are not enough. To use a very flimsy metaphor, suppose in a small town there is a kid who has robbed a convenience store. Later, when another convenience store is robbed it might make sense to suspect the kid. But, you had better not charge or convict him unless you can produce some real evidence. (and to be clear, I am not comparing either party to a common criminal, I just wanted a simple metaphor which I thought best explained the argument.)
- chillwaves 6y ago
  The democrats impeached him. You were saying?
ragnese 6y ago
Even if you support the President and his policies, I don't see how you could be surprised at his rather large loss in 2020. He lost the popular vote in 2016 by around 3 million votes. And he was running against someone very unpopular. He ran in 2020 against someone who is much more popular than his 2016 opponent. His approval rating never touched 50%, IIRC. The economy is terrible right now. Never a great sign for an incumbent. And that's all to say nothing about the fervor of the people who oppose him. There's absolutely no reason to believe that he wouldn't have lost by >3 million this time around.
- yonaguska 6y ago
  What doesn't make sense to me are all the statistical anomalies everywhere. How did down ballot republicans outperform Trump everywhere, when Trump's approval ratings among republicans were incredibly high? The bellweather counties perplexes me. The crazy turnout in specific counties that far exceeded demographically similar counties that wouldn't have the impact to flip the election. The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties. The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all. Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines. There are reasons to doubt things. The doubt needs to be addressed with transparency and in court, and so far, all of the municipalities that are raising suspicion are fighting tooth and nail against transparency. If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country.
  - ragnese 6y ago
    > What doesn't make sense to me are all the statistical anomalies everywhere. How did down ballot republicans outperform Trump everywhere, when Trump's approval ratings among republicans were incredibly high? The general polls were super, duper, off. Biden was supposedly leading by 3 points in Florida and then lost by 3 points, for a net of 6 point error. I'm not shocked by polls being wrong. I think, if you accept that polls can be wrong, it's pretty easy to imagine the voters who were lifelong Republicans might have continued to vote R but left the top slot blank. > The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties. He BARELY won in 2016 because of a few thousand votes in three states. The geographic distribution of votes matters. Just because he picked up a few percentage points on minority demographics (still far behind Biden, just more than he had against Clinton) doesn't matter unless you tell me WHERE he picked up those margins. One of the places was south Florida and he won Florida. So there's nothing here that surprises me or seems suspicious at all. > The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all. No. We all knew for MONTHS that Trump would look better on election night than he would as the rest of the votes were tallied. We knew for MONTHS that Pennsylvania was not allowed to START counting mail in votes until AFTER polls closed on November 3rd. We knew it so well that they even coined a cutesy term for it: the "red mirage". We were repeatedly warned that we would see the red mirage on election night. You should not have been perplexed. I'm sorry. The only statistically impossible ratio of votes for Biden are those that are over 100%. > Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines. What lack of security, specifically? What thousands of witnesses? What activities were "strange"? All I've seen or heard is a bunch of people who are very ignorant of the election process pointing to video clips from the live streams and saying "OMG, this worker just filled out a ballot!" when the person in question was clearing performing "ballot curing". Maybe HN wasn't exploding because there isn't anything to see here. That's not to say that the election was perfect. No election is. I'm in Florida. We can't do an election to save our lives down here. But a nationwide conspiracy that would require thousands of individuals to coordinate in key counties in key states (many of which are run by Republicans) is basically "moon landing didn't happen" levels of conspiracy. > If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country. I've seen and read many real rebuttals against all kinds of claims. From "poll workers were ejected" to "suitcases full of ballots". Similarly I saw something about a Dominion machine that supposedly flipped Trump votes to Biden votes that was summarily debunked. There was nothing surprising about the results except that Georgia flipped blue. But I think that says more about Trump and Georgia's demographics than it does about the election. Remember that 2016, when he eeked out his EC win, it was because he barely flipped the "blue wall" states. The fact that they went back blue this year is not at all surprising.
ksk 6y ago
Is Google also going to ban all the people who pushed the baseless Russia-made-trump-win nonsense? What a giant waste of time and money that was. Do it equally for everyone, or don't do it at all.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  We don't know if Russia made Trump win, we only know that they helped him. Likewise, we don't know if Trump himself worked with Russians, we only know his campaign chairman Paul Manafort did. These are both facts that have been verified by the Republican controlled Senate Intel Committee. You are free to read their report yourself. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
  - ksk 6y ago
    >We don't know if Russia made Trump win, we only know that they helped him. That's a bit like saying we know there is election fraud in 2020 because we found 2 voting irregularities. Minor voting irregularities happen in every election and are also facts. Sorry, it goes both ways. Both sides need to provide evidence and prove it in court before making such statements. If you don't know, then the right thing to do is to say nothing unless it has been proven.
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      Have any democrats been implicated in voter fraud? You are completely ignoring the high level of coordination that has been proven, between the Trump campaign and the Russians. It's impossible to know what the effect was, but we know for sure they tried, which is illegal. Can you find any example of a "voter irregularity" that has the same level of intent and coordination with an official of the Democratic party? It only "goes both ways" when you are blatantly lying and discounting reality. Many of the states in question are run by Republicans. Are you saying that Republicans conspired to steal the election from Trump?
      - 6y ago
dukeofdoom 6y ago
The rules were changed prior to the election, in a way that clearly favours the democratic party. That should raise suspicion. We also had : 1. Unusually low mail in ballot vote rejection rate (0.02 vs 6% previous elections) 2. Unusually many voters 3. Unusually high turnout in specific areas (90%+) 4. Delay in announcing results 5. Results that don't match (6000 votes flipped back to Trump after "glitch" Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190
- drchopchop 6y ago
  1. If huge swaths of Americans are forced to vote by mail, wouldn't you expect the rate to decrease? 2. Trump is incredibly polarizing, so, sure 3. What was the previous turnout / percentage increase? 4. The GOP specifically passed laws that disallowed counting ballots until election day in many districts, which, combined with lots of mail-ins, makes things much slower 5. This was an accident, and was corrected
  - laverya 6y ago
    1. No, I would expect people filling out a mail-in ballot for the first time to get it wrong (and thus have the ballot rejected) more often than people who have done it before. This would track with previous elections, where first-time mail-in voters are more likely to have their ballots invalidated. Protections on mail-in ballots have unambiguously been reduced this election - many states skipped signature validation, for instance. This may be acceptable, but IMO should not have been implemented due to being easy fodder for conspiracy theorists. Yes, the mere appearance of illegitimacy is reason enough to not do something when it comes to potentially contested elections.
  - dukeofdoom 6y ago
    2. This election turn out was 2 standard deviations above average. That has never happened in the past. 3. Detroit region of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Oakland had a 15% increase in turnout compared to 2016 and Macomb was up 18%. More black people came out to vote for Biden than Obama in these historically Black counties. https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/11/see-2020-election-turnout-by-michigan-county-compared-to-2016.html https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/11/see-2020-election-tur...
vimy 6y ago
This is a good overview why you should be skeptical. https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-election-is-deeply-puzzling/ https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect...
chillwaves 6y ago
Don't forget, not only do they only care about the battleground states Trump lost, but also the congressional victories which were on the same ballot are not similarly being questioned. Republicans picked up seats in the House. They did better in the Senate than expected. No one is questioning the results of those races. Why?

by MGGJFU 6y ago

Fellshard 6y ago

Credible by repetition only, at this point. They've shown themselves at the same level, and the most self-righteous networks have proven the most hypocritical, and they don't even seem to see it.

zests 6y ago

If Trump is "the biggest provable liar/narcissist of all time" -- clearly this would make him a huge national security threat -- why wouldn't Democrats do everything in their power to get him removed from office? Including, hypothetically, voter fraud. I don't believe the claims of voter fraud. But if you take what is said about Trump at face value you maybe you should adjust your priors about the likelihood of such fraud. If you don't take the claims at face value, why you take the analysis of the voter fraud situation at face value? Political discussion is practically zero trust right now.

uoaei 6y ago
Did they not? Have you been following the news at all in the past year or so?
- newen 6y ago
  You would realize they haven't been trying very hard at all if you've been paying attention.
  - uoaei 6y ago
    I agree that their tactics were terrible. Their concerns are mainly about optics and they get caught up in their own coattails. But you can't claim that they weren't trying to use legitimate means to remove him from office. That is just absurd.
    - newen 6y ago
      The could have impeached Trump on N things, where N is way more than one. They impeached him on one thing. Yes, I would say they were not trying hard at all.
      - uoaei 6y ago
        Again, that's a question of tactics, not strategy.
        newen 6y ago
        Tactics, strategy, you're just shuffling. The point is that the Democrats could easily have done much more with the impeachment and they didn't.
        uoaei 6y ago
        So what? Completely irrelevant. You're acting like a jilted lover, not a participant in democracy.
        newen 6y ago
        Lol, good place to retreat to buddy
comeonseriously 6y ago
He was impeached, was he not?
MGGJFU 6y ago
> clearly this would make him a huge national security threat r/SelfAwarewolves
- zests 6y ago
  This type of "reddit" comment is not appropriate for HackerNews. I just want to be sure here. Is he a huge national security threat? If so, is he big enough of a threat to justify voter fraud?
  - uoaei 6y ago
    Foolish question with a faulty premise. No one is required to respond to this in earnest, just like there is no requirement for Google to publish materials just because they were uploaded to their servers.
    - zests 6y ago
      A stable belief system is not shaken by a hypothetical question. You can dodge the question if you'd like but it probably doesn't make your world view appealing to outsiders.
      - uoaei 6y ago
        "Stable belief system" is orthogonal to "belief system aligned with verifiable facts".
    - ksk 6y ago
      Are you nice because it is required to be nice? "Requirement" is a loaded term, but I would hope Google employees show some decency and hold up their liberal values and bolster free expression that they claim to value so much.
neogodless 6y ago
> why wouldn't Democrats do everything in their power to get him removed from office? Because they believe in the process, the integrity of our country and our Constitution, the voice of the people and the validity of the election. (That doesn't mean Democrats are knights in shining armor, but with many politicians following the President's lead on fighting the integrity of our own country, many find it preferable that Democratic politicians refrain from taking that same low road. Sometimes the high road works. Often it doesn't.)
- zests 6y ago
  How do you explain "Russiagate"? I just got through 4 years of unbridled partisanness that puts your entire post in to question.
  - nemothekid 6y ago
    I don't see how Russiagate is at odds with what neogodless said. The democrats collected evidence, went to court, and lost. Russiagate, however misfounded, was legal. To imply that there were no other avenues for them to go down so they turned to voter fraud is laughable. Also, I will try to say this in the nicest way possible, but you are repeating, nearly verbatim, talking points that the President has been using for months in various rallies. The idea that the democrats needed to turn to voter fraud to ensure Biden won a Trump talking point - not something born out of any sort of rumor or leak. What is particularly nefarious about this talking point is it's not something he crafted out of the blue, but it is one that he has been forming since at least July. He has carefully planned to use pandemic and the growth in mail in ballots to throw chaos into the electoral process. In other words, I'm asking you take a step back and consider if voter fraud is a credible rumor or if its something that has been manufactured by the right wing media machine.
    - zests 6y ago
      I don't listen to right wing media. Or left wing media. They're both terrible. (I pay for my news to try an avoid the nonsense.) I will say this nicely as well, you should re-read my argument to see where the depth lies. I take caution to ask a simple "IF/THEN" question that's really just a latent criticism of media including social media. The idea that "voter fraud" is some "Trump concocted nefarious scheme" is also rather ridiculous. Voter fraud gets claimed after every election. I hope our new censorship overlords are fair and honest in their censorship.
noahtallen 6y ago
Democrats did do everything in their power. I’m not sure what you expect, do you want them to try to be totally corrupt and step outside of their constitutional role? Because they made sure it was a really honest process: 1. They made sure investigations happened to determine the validity of any claims. Investigations from trusted intelligence officials and even from the Republican-controlled senate confirmed the same thing. 2. They impeached trump based on the evidence provided by the investigations. 3. When the republicans didn’t vote to remove him, they focused a lot on the election and driving voter turnout.
everdrive 6y ago
>why wouldn't Democrats do everything in their power to get him removed from office? Correctly, people note that a sure marker of a conspiracy theory is that the absence of evidence supports the claim. (ie, there must have been a cover-up!) This is definitely true, but another aspect which doesn't get enough attention is an argument which relies totally on psychoanalysis. "Group X would surely want to do x, and therefore they probably did!" The truth is that you generally don't understand people's incentives as well as you might guess. Further, simply because there is an incentive does not mean there is a capability. But, most importantly, claims require evidence. Reading incentives is pretty flawed regardless. At best, it must be backstopped by real, hard evidence. This total lack of evidence is why these cases are being unceremoniously tossed out of court.
- zests 6y ago
  I will come out and say I have not looked at a single court case nor do I look at Trump twitter nor do I read any social media beyond Hacker News. My interest in politics is not partisan. I am not here to debate the likelihood of any sort of fraud because internet debates about this kind of thing are pointless. The rationalistic question is something along the lines of "how do you adjust your priors of voter fraud based on the rhetoric of the party alleged of committing the fraud." The lazy answer is "your voter fraud prior should always be zero." Is that the right answer? There's are interesting discussions to be had here. They likely cannot be had on Hacker News. Many people have beliefs about Trump where, IF I had the same beliefs I'd totally be on board with voter fraud to get him out of office.
  - everdrive 6y ago
    >Many people have beliefs about Trump where, IF I had the same beliefs I'd totally be on board with voter fraud to get him out of office. I wouldn't, but this is because of the game theory sort of nature of democracy. If I can do it, so can my opponents. Suppose Trump is evil, and defeated, and next election my side has a truly wonderful and excellent candidate. (again, I'm just being theoretical.) I don't want the other side to be able to beat my candidate using voter fraud. Ideally, no one can beat anyone using voter fraud. >The rationalistic question is something along the lines of "how do you adjust your priors of voter I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you mean "this party has previously had issues with voter fraud, and therefore it's not stretch to be concerned about it again." If I have you correct, I'd again say that this is a fine suspicion, but then evidence must be produced. If evidence cannot be produced, then the priors alone are not enough. To use a very flimsy metaphor, suppose in a small town there is a kid who has robbed a convenience store. Later, when another convenience store is robbed it might make sense to suspect the kid. But, you had better not charge or convict him unless you can produce some real evidence. (and to be clear, I am not comparing either party to a common criminal, I just wanted a simple metaphor which I thought best explained the argument.)
chillwaves 6y ago
The democrats impeached him. You were saying?

ragnese 6y ago

Even if you support the President and his policies, I don't see how you could be surprised at his rather large loss in 2020. He lost the popular vote in 2016 by around 3 million votes. And he was running against someone very unpopular. He ran in 2020 against someone who is much more popular than his 2016 opponent. His approval rating never touched 50%, IIRC. The economy is terrible right now. Never a great sign for an incumbent. And that's all to say nothing about the fervor of the people who oppose him. There's absolutely no reason to believe that he wouldn't have lost by >3 million this time around.

yonaguska 6y ago
What doesn't make sense to me are all the statistical anomalies everywhere. How did down ballot republicans outperform Trump everywhere, when Trump's approval ratings among republicans were incredibly high? The bellweather counties perplexes me. The crazy turnout in specific counties that far exceeded demographically similar counties that wouldn't have the impact to flip the election. The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties. The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all. Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines. There are reasons to doubt things. The doubt needs to be addressed with transparency and in court, and so far, all of the municipalities that are raising suspicion are fighting tooth and nail against transparency. If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country.
- ragnese 6y ago
  > What doesn't make sense to me are all the statistical anomalies everywhere. How did down ballot republicans outperform Trump everywhere, when Trump's approval ratings among republicans were incredibly high? The general polls were super, duper, off. Biden was supposedly leading by 3 points in Florida and then lost by 3 points, for a net of 6 point error. I'm not shocked by polls being wrong. I think, if you accept that polls can be wrong, it's pretty easy to imagine the voters who were lifelong Republicans might have continued to vote R but left the top slot blank. > The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties. He BARELY won in 2016 because of a few thousand votes in three states. The geographic distribution of votes matters. Just because he picked up a few percentage points on minority demographics (still far behind Biden, just more than he had against Clinton) doesn't matter unless you tell me WHERE he picked up those margins. One of the places was south Florida and he won Florida. So there's nothing here that surprises me or seems suspicious at all. > The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all. No. We all knew for MONTHS that Trump would look better on election night than he would as the rest of the votes were tallied. We knew for MONTHS that Pennsylvania was not allowed to START counting mail in votes until AFTER polls closed on November 3rd. We knew it so well that they even coined a cutesy term for it: the "red mirage". We were repeatedly warned that we would see the red mirage on election night. You should not have been perplexed. I'm sorry. The only statistically impossible ratio of votes for Biden are those that are over 100%. > Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines. What lack of security, specifically? What thousands of witnesses? What activities were "strange"? All I've seen or heard is a bunch of people who are very ignorant of the election process pointing to video clips from the live streams and saying "OMG, this worker just filled out a ballot!" when the person in question was clearing performing "ballot curing". Maybe HN wasn't exploding because there isn't anything to see here. That's not to say that the election was perfect. No election is. I'm in Florida. We can't do an election to save our lives down here. But a nationwide conspiracy that would require thousands of individuals to coordinate in key counties in key states (many of which are run by Republicans) is basically "moon landing didn't happen" levels of conspiracy. > If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country. I've seen and read many real rebuttals against all kinds of claims. From "poll workers were ejected" to "suitcases full of ballots". Similarly I saw something about a Dominion machine that supposedly flipped Trump votes to Biden votes that was summarily debunked. There was nothing surprising about the results except that Georgia flipped blue. But I think that says more about Trump and Georgia's demographics than it does about the election. Remember that 2016, when he eeked out his EC win, it was because he barely flipped the "blue wall" states. The fact that they went back blue this year is not at all surprising.

ksk 6y ago

Is Google also going to ban all the people who pushed the baseless Russia-made-trump-win nonsense? What a giant waste of time and money that was. Do it equally for everyone, or don't do it at all.

chillwaves 6y ago
We don't know if Russia made Trump win, we only know that they helped him. Likewise, we don't know if Trump himself worked with Russians, we only know his campaign chairman Paul Manafort did. These are both facts that have been verified by the Republican controlled Senate Intel Committee. You are free to read their report yourself. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
- ksk 6y ago
  >We don't know if Russia made Trump win, we only know that they helped him. That's a bit like saying we know there is election fraud in 2020 because we found 2 voting irregularities. Minor voting irregularities happen in every election and are also facts. Sorry, it goes both ways. Both sides need to provide evidence and prove it in court before making such statements. If you don't know, then the right thing to do is to say nothing unless it has been proven.
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    Have any democrats been implicated in voter fraud? You are completely ignoring the high level of coordination that has been proven, between the Trump campaign and the Russians. It's impossible to know what the effect was, but we know for sure they tried, which is illegal. Can you find any example of a "voter irregularity" that has the same level of intent and coordination with an official of the Democratic party? It only "goes both ways" when you are blatantly lying and discounting reality. Many of the states in question are run by Republicans. Are you saying that Republicans conspired to steal the election from Trump?
    - 6y ago

dukeofdoom 6y ago

The rules were changed prior to the election, in a way that clearly favours the democratic party. That should raise suspicion. We also had : 1. Unusually low mail in ballot vote rejection rate (0.02 vs 6% previous elections) 2. Unusually many voters 3. Unusually high turnout in specific areas (90%+) 4. Delay in announcing results 5. Results that don't match (6000 votes flipped back to Trump after "glitch" Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190

drchopchop 6y ago
1. If huge swaths of Americans are forced to vote by mail, wouldn't you expect the rate to decrease? 2. Trump is incredibly polarizing, so, sure 3. What was the previous turnout / percentage increase? 4. The GOP specifically passed laws that disallowed counting ballots until election day in many districts, which, combined with lots of mail-ins, makes things much slower 5. This was an accident, and was corrected
- laverya 6y ago
  1. No, I would expect people filling out a mail-in ballot for the first time to get it wrong (and thus have the ballot rejected) more often than people who have done it before. This would track with previous elections, where first-time mail-in voters are more likely to have their ballots invalidated. Protections on mail-in ballots have unambiguously been reduced this election - many states skipped signature validation, for instance. This may be acceptable, but IMO should not have been implemented due to being easy fodder for conspiracy theorists. Yes, the mere appearance of illegitimacy is reason enough to not do something when it comes to potentially contested elections.
- dukeofdoom 6y ago
  2. This election turn out was 2 standard deviations above average. That has never happened in the past. 3. Detroit region of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Oakland had a 15% increase in turnout compared to 2016 and Macomb was up 18%. More black people came out to vote for Biden than Obama in these historically Black counties. https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/11/see-2020-election-turnout-by-michigan-county-compared-to-2016.html https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/11/see-2020-election-tur...

vimy 6y ago

This is a good overview why you should be skeptical. https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-election-is-deeply-puzzling/ https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect...

chillwaves 6y ago

Don't forget, not only do they only care about the battleground states Trump lost, but also the congressional victories which were on the same ballot are not similarly being questioned. Republicans picked up seats in the House. They did better in the Senate than expected. No one is questioning the results of those races. Why?