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So, maybe I'm not understanding something, but there are numerous reports from what appear to be reputable sources -- a few listed below -- claiming that there

So, maybe I'm not understanding something, but there are numerous reports from what appear to be reputable sources -- a few listed below -- claiming that there were uncovered missing votes during recounts in Georgia. However, there isn't a word said about this on CNN, MSNBC or any other heavily left-leaning media sources. The only sources that I hear talking about this are on YouTube. I don't give a shit if I get downvoted for saying this, but when the damn Atlanta news channel says there are uncounted votes how the hell does the left not take an issue with this? My goodness, this is the beginnings of a banana republic. [1] https://www.ajc.com/politics/recount-finds-thousands-of-georgia-votes-missing-from-initial-counts/ERDRNXPH3REQTM4SOINPSEP72M/ https://www.ajc.com/politics/recount-finds-thousands-of-geor... [2] https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/another-georgia-county-has-uncovered-2700-missing-votes-secretary-states-office-says/5W734FA755CK3NCR4P7A27DXVM/ https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/another-georgia-county-h...

daftdoki 6y ago
The "missing votes" were found during the recount, and added t the eventually certified totals. So yeah, the system works. Whats the issue again?
- bananabiscuit 6y ago
  The issue is that the media is selectively ignoring things like this in order to push the narrative that “there is no fraud”. Now it might be true that there isn’t enough fraud to change the apparent results. But as you pointed out, what is wrong with making sure they system works? The media should not try to sweep anything that threatens their agenda under the rug.
  - glenstein 6y ago
    >selectively ignoring things like this Oops. There's failure point. You're using an article about a really narrow set of facts with limited implications to try and support a profound generalization that is totally out of proportion to what's described in the article. That is a completely out-of-control leap to be making. And as others have pointed out "the media ignores..." is a subjective reaction, not something established by the articles, and those votes have been covered by mainstream outlets. And the articles don't show any fraud, and they don't show anything that would change the outcome in Georgia, and they don't show anything that warrants systemic skepticism of the election writ large.
    - bananabiscuit 6y ago
      Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not saying this one instance proves the whole election is fraud. I am saying the that this (actually pretty significant) correction to the results being ignored proves that the media has no interest in being honest.
      - glenstein 6y ago
        >Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not saying this one instance proves the whole election is fraud. You're not saying it, you're just implying it by speaking in a way that leaves open-ended implications that you aren't qualifying with concrete statements. You're putting an isolated example into a broader category, "things like this", to suggest it's not the only one, and to invite people to believe there are more. If you really do agree with everyone that the scope, scale and significance of the facts presented in the article are extremely narrow, are isolated, and that there aren't similar examples, and are choosing to ignore that most important fact to emphasize a less important fact than I'm not so much interested in your point as I am in why you would choose to emphasize facts in that way. And nothing about the articles suggest anything one way or the other about media bias. The articles could presuambly be used to argue somethingorother about the scale of human error in vote counting in Georgia. That would be valid. But they don't have anything to do with any conclusions you are trying to advance about what the media is or isn't "being honest" (again an extremely vague, unprovable claim that you aren't quantifying).
        bananabiscuit 6y ago
        I can’t help it that the attack vectors used by the media to push agendas are themselves vague and non-specific. It’s not like any given piece of news that gets published is outright false. On the small scale, the bias is in the framing of stories. Flaky evidence in stories that serve the agenda are glossed over. In stories that go against the agenda, nits get picked and then used to attack the main idea even if the nits are really inconsequential. On the large scale there is editorializing. Spotlighting certain types of stories. And forgetting and quickly moving past others. I have some specific examples in mind, but it would be completely pointless for me to list them or argue about them like you seem to want to. I’ve already argued each one to death as it came to light and have heard all sides of the arguments. That is a complete misdirection from my point of view. This is “systematic bias” in the media in much the same way that there is “systematic racism” in the world. It’s hard to pinpoint specific instances of it, but we know that it’s there because you see it in the aggregate statistics. And in fact, a common tactic used by people who deny systemic racism is to try to move the discussion away from the big picture and nitpick localized specifics to death.
  - knowaveragejoe 6y ago
    How did Trumpian doublethink penetrate so deeply into the likes of HN readers? I can only assume it's various "skeptic" podcasts and the like.
    - bananabiscuit 6y ago
      Not sure what podcasts you are referring to, I don’t listen to any. I don’t have a horse in this race. Don’t care for Trump or Biden. There’s other people in the world that would make much better leaders than these two, but this is all besides the point. Here is my beef: instead of just reporting, the media is invested in producing a specific outcome. For 5 years now they are trying their best to make Trump and his supporters into bigger idiots than they actually are. They are trying their best to make Biden and his supporters appear more noble than they actually are. Why was the Russia election collusion story in the spotlight for years despite flimsy evidence? Why are Trump supporters on the other hand not allowed even a few weeks to investigate their doubts about this election without being ridiculed for doing so?
      - knowaveragejoe 6y ago
        > For 5 years now they are trying their best to make Trump and his supporters into bigger idiots than they actually are. Has it occurred to you that perhaps Trump, his brand of populism and his supporters are worthy of that caricature? > Why was the Russia election collusion story in the spotlight for years despite flimsy evidence? The only people who think that the evidence was flimsy are those willing to ignore the fact that there was a level of obstruction from the administration that would make Nixon blush. > Why are Trump supporters on the other hand not allowed even a few weeks to investigate their doubts about this election without being ridiculed for doing so? My guess: because this is playing with fire. You might not be privy to it, but the calls for violence in their various echochambers if the crapshoot for overturning the election doesn't pan out(hint: it won't) are reaching audiences well armed and with nothing better to do than to engage in stochastic terrorism.
        bananabiscuit 6y ago
  - sjwright 6y ago
    This is an instance where imprecision in language is being weaponised for talking points. There are always many small errors and fraud in any large election. I don't think anyone would dispute this. And it is tolerable because the error is unlikely to be statistically significant. The question is whether there is large scale, organised electoral fraud. Of that there's precisely zero evidence. So when the “mainstream” media says “there is no fraud”, they're talking about organised fraud, not small counting errors and individual voter misconduct.
    - bananabiscuit 6y ago
      You are also using that annoying tactic of reframing the discussion into a question for which the answer suits your own opinion. That is why you choose to ask “is there _organized_ and electoral fraud?”. What about the question of whether there was enough non-organized fraud to swing the results? Seems just as important to me. Let’s be patient until that there is an answer to these questions. From the courts please, not from YouTube, or CNN, or FOX, or John Oliver, or Tucker Carlson.
      - sjwright 6y ago
        Tell me, which answer from which court will satisfy you? Be specific.
        bananabiscuit 6y ago
        I can’t tell you which court because I’m not prescient and don’t know in what areas of the country there was substantial election irregularities (if there are any) until it is done being investigated. Guess what, the media isn’t either, so I don’t know how they can keep claiming this election is accurate before everything is investigated and audited. Not to mention the really weird things happening like states deciding it’s not important to verify signatures. Sure they might have passed laws before the election that makes it legal to not check signatures, but does it make it right? I don’t think so.
        6y ago
cityofdelusion 6y ago
I'm not sure I understand the aim of your message -- the recount did what it is supposed to (well, count again). What does that have to do with the press-release from YouTube?
wwright 6y ago
Because the recount did exactly what was intended (found missing votes) and the result didn’t change?
- filoleg 6y ago
  Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim. Just because the number of missing votes found during the recount ended up not changing the outcome doesn't mean that the earlier claims of "there was no election fraud and missing votes" were correct, because they, according to the recount, are factually incorrect.
  - anthony_romeo 6y ago
    But missing votes isn’t even evidence of fraud. Could be just an error. And from my knowledge I know for a fact that at least NPR reported the change in votes and discussed it in commentary.
    - filoleg 6y ago
      >But missing votes isn’t even evidence of fraud. Could be just an error. Important clarification, agreed, but that wasn't the point of my comment. The point was the retraction of "there are no missing votes, it is nonsense", and that is yet to happen afaik. I wasn't aware that NPR did it already, which is good. But I am still salty that it doesn't get nearly as much attention as the initial "we know for a fact there were no missing votes despite zero evidence one way or another" from a bit more "mainstream" publications like CNN and such. But I guess I am moving the goalpost at this point, because you are correct that one of the somewhat mainstream media publications indeed retracted their earlier statement.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - anthony_romeo 6y ago
        If the point of your statement not about fraud, then why did you use the word “fraud” in your initial example? “Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim.”
bananabiscuit 6y ago
Yeah this bothers me, whether Trump won or lost is kind of besides the point, the real issue is that clearly the media “wants” a specific outcome and has been doing as much as they can to make that outcome more probable starting even way before the day of the election.
- glenstein 6y ago
  I think is a perfect encapsulation of the muddled thinking that is caused by this kind of misinformation. This is a really narrow example, and it doesn't generalize any conclusions about to the entire electoral system the way you are suggesting it might. For some reason, consumers of misinformation take these small fragments and use them to cast doubt on the entire system, which is a conclusion totally out of proportion to the evidence. But if you say that out loud, all you will get is a blank stare.
  - bananabiscuit 6y ago
    Let’s un-muddle something: I’m not using this example of fraud to prove that the entire electoral system is broken, as you are suggesting. I’m using it as an example of real actual evidence that is quickly forgotten by the media in order to continue to ridicule anyone who has doubts about the election results. Considering in just this one example, the margin of victory in a crucial state was reduced by something like 25 percent, why wouldn’t a rational person begin to have some doubt.
    - glenstein 6y ago
      > I’m not using this example of fraud to prove that the entire electoral system is broken You could have fooled me. Your previous comment contained no such qualification, leaving an open ended implication which seemed to be intentional. Most people responding to this example are pointing out the problems with it, and they don't seem to have any issue being quite frank about how this evidence doesn't show fraud, doesn't show systematic error, doesn't show that the election outcome would be different. No one interested in the facts should be willing to take that as a starting point and proceeding to entertain this kind of meandering, open ended, unprovable and vague speculation that you seem to want to steer the conversation toward.
phailhaus 6y ago
> However, there isn't a word said about this on CNN, MSNBC or any other heavily left-leaning media sources. That's untrue, nor are those "heavily left-leaning" sites [1]. With a quick google search, I can already see that CNN did report on it [2]. There's no reason for it to be a "huge news story" because they caught it, it wasn't malicious, and it didn't affect the vote tally in any meaningful way. [1] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ [2] https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-trump-us-election-news-11-16-20/h_99d89abfb0414f24685959a78043974f https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-trump-us-el...
glenstein 6y ago
>So, maybe I'm not understanding something You're right about that. Most claims about election fraud have absolutely nothing to do with the two links you are shared. And your links don't show fraud. And your links don't show anything that would change the outcome in Georgia let alone the election as a whole.
pwthornton 6y ago
You are attributing to malice what can be easily explained by bad processes and incompetence (we see this all the time in tech with bugs that make it through to production!). The missing votes weren't much, and changed the nature of the race by less than 500 votes. Trump still lost Georgia by about 13,000. The banana republic part of this is a man who lost the election by more than 7 million votes trying to steal the election. Trump didn't come close to winning. Trump got straight up thumped, and he is still trying to sue to get millions of votes thrown out. Millions of American votes. If you are concerned with why voting isn't smoother in this country with less errors, you need to support creating national standards and funding to help make voting easier and more modern. This is an artifact of an incredibly balkanized voting processes. A lot of Americans would support easy, modern, universal voting. The election is long since past, and Trump lost. The reason you don't see national news orgs covering small-scale election issues in individual counties is that they aren't national news stories. It's really that simple. The fact that a recount found additional votes -- the point of a recount -- and that the additional votes didn't impact the election is not news. It's just not news.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
newacct583 6y ago
That's not true at all. Every recount changes the results by a little bit, and that's exactly what happened and exactly what was reported in the recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin. What was not seen was "fraud", nor any reason to suspect the end result of the election (Biden victories in those states) was incorrect.

daftdoki 6y ago

The "missing votes" were found during the recount, and added t the eventually certified totals. So yeah, the system works. Whats the issue again?

bananabiscuit 6y ago
The issue is that the media is selectively ignoring things like this in order to push the narrative that “there is no fraud”. Now it might be true that there isn’t enough fraud to change the apparent results. But as you pointed out, what is wrong with making sure they system works? The media should not try to sweep anything that threatens their agenda under the rug.
- glenstein 6y ago
  >selectively ignoring things like this Oops. There's failure point. You're using an article about a really narrow set of facts with limited implications to try and support a profound generalization that is totally out of proportion to what's described in the article. That is a completely out-of-control leap to be making. And as others have pointed out "the media ignores..." is a subjective reaction, not something established by the articles, and those votes have been covered by mainstream outlets. And the articles don't show any fraud, and they don't show anything that would change the outcome in Georgia, and they don't show anything that warrants systemic skepticism of the election writ large.
  - bananabiscuit 6y ago
    Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not saying this one instance proves the whole election is fraud. I am saying the that this (actually pretty significant) correction to the results being ignored proves that the media has no interest in being honest.
    - glenstein 6y ago
      >Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not saying this one instance proves the whole election is fraud. You're not saying it, you're just implying it by speaking in a way that leaves open-ended implications that you aren't qualifying with concrete statements. You're putting an isolated example into a broader category, "things like this", to suggest it's not the only one, and to invite people to believe there are more. If you really do agree with everyone that the scope, scale and significance of the facts presented in the article are extremely narrow, are isolated, and that there aren't similar examples, and are choosing to ignore that most important fact to emphasize a less important fact than I'm not so much interested in your point as I am in why you would choose to emphasize facts in that way. And nothing about the articles suggest anything one way or the other about media bias. The articles could presuambly be used to argue somethingorother about the scale of human error in vote counting in Georgia. That would be valid. But they don't have anything to do with any conclusions you are trying to advance about what the media is or isn't "being honest" (again an extremely vague, unprovable claim that you aren't quantifying).
      - bananabiscuit 6y ago
        I can’t help it that the attack vectors used by the media to push agendas are themselves vague and non-specific. It’s not like any given piece of news that gets published is outright false. On the small scale, the bias is in the framing of stories. Flaky evidence in stories that serve the agenda are glossed over. In stories that go against the agenda, nits get picked and then used to attack the main idea even if the nits are really inconsequential. On the large scale there is editorializing. Spotlighting certain types of stories. And forgetting and quickly moving past others. I have some specific examples in mind, but it would be completely pointless for me to list them or argue about them like you seem to want to. I’ve already argued each one to death as it came to light and have heard all sides of the arguments. That is a complete misdirection from my point of view. This is “systematic bias” in the media in much the same way that there is “systematic racism” in the world. It’s hard to pinpoint specific instances of it, but we know that it’s there because you see it in the aggregate statistics. And in fact, a common tactic used by people who deny systemic racism is to try to move the discussion away from the big picture and nitpick localized specifics to death.
- knowaveragejoe 6y ago
  How did Trumpian doublethink penetrate so deeply into the likes of HN readers? I can only assume it's various "skeptic" podcasts and the like.
  - bananabiscuit 6y ago
    Not sure what podcasts you are referring to, I don’t listen to any. I don’t have a horse in this race. Don’t care for Trump or Biden. There’s other people in the world that would make much better leaders than these two, but this is all besides the point. Here is my beef: instead of just reporting, the media is invested in producing a specific outcome. For 5 years now they are trying their best to make Trump and his supporters into bigger idiots than they actually are. They are trying their best to make Biden and his supporters appear more noble than they actually are. Why was the Russia election collusion story in the spotlight for years despite flimsy evidence? Why are Trump supporters on the other hand not allowed even a few weeks to investigate their doubts about this election without being ridiculed for doing so?
    - knowaveragejoe 6y ago
      > For 5 years now they are trying their best to make Trump and his supporters into bigger idiots than they actually are. Has it occurred to you that perhaps Trump, his brand of populism and his supporters are worthy of that caricature? > Why was the Russia election collusion story in the spotlight for years despite flimsy evidence? The only people who think that the evidence was flimsy are those willing to ignore the fact that there was a level of obstruction from the administration that would make Nixon blush. > Why are Trump supporters on the other hand not allowed even a few weeks to investigate their doubts about this election without being ridiculed for doing so? My guess: because this is playing with fire. You might not be privy to it, but the calls for violence in their various echochambers if the crapshoot for overturning the election doesn't pan out(hint: it won't) are reaching audiences well armed and with nothing better to do than to engage in stochastic terrorism.
      - bananabiscuit 6y ago
- sjwright 6y ago
  This is an instance where imprecision in language is being weaponised for talking points. There are always many small errors and fraud in any large election. I don't think anyone would dispute this. And it is tolerable because the error is unlikely to be statistically significant. The question is whether there is large scale, organised electoral fraud. Of that there's precisely zero evidence. So when the “mainstream” media says “there is no fraud”, they're talking about organised fraud, not small counting errors and individual voter misconduct.
  - bananabiscuit 6y ago
    You are also using that annoying tactic of reframing the discussion into a question for which the answer suits your own opinion. That is why you choose to ask “is there _organized_ and electoral fraud?”. What about the question of whether there was enough non-organized fraud to swing the results? Seems just as important to me. Let’s be patient until that there is an answer to these questions. From the courts please, not from YouTube, or CNN, or FOX, or John Oliver, or Tucker Carlson.
    - sjwright 6y ago
      Tell me, which answer from which court will satisfy you? Be specific.
      - bananabiscuit 6y ago
        I can’t tell you which court because I’m not prescient and don’t know in what areas of the country there was substantial election irregularities (if there are any) until it is done being investigated. Guess what, the media isn’t either, so I don’t know how they can keep claiming this election is accurate before everything is investigated and audited. Not to mention the really weird things happening like states deciding it’s not important to verify signatures. Sure they might have passed laws before the election that makes it legal to not check signatures, but does it make it right? I don’t think so.
        6y ago

cityofdelusion 6y ago

I'm not sure I understand the aim of your message -- the recount did what it is supposed to (well, count again). What does that have to do with the press-release from YouTube?

wwright 6y ago

Because the recount did exactly what was intended (found missing votes) and the result didn’t change?

filoleg 6y ago
Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim. Just because the number of missing votes found during the recount ended up not changing the outcome doesn't mean that the earlier claims of "there was no election fraud and missing votes" were correct, because they, according to the recount, are factually incorrect.
- anthony_romeo 6y ago
  But missing votes isn’t even evidence of fraud. Could be just an error. And from my knowledge I know for a fact that at least NPR reported the change in votes and discussed it in commentary.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >But missing votes isn’t even evidence of fraud. Could be just an error. Important clarification, agreed, but that wasn't the point of my comment. The point was the retraction of "there are no missing votes, it is nonsense", and that is yet to happen afaik. I wasn't aware that NPR did it already, which is good. But I am still salty that it doesn't get nearly as much attention as the initial "we know for a fact there were no missing votes despite zero evidence one way or another" from a bit more "mainstream" publications like CNN and such. But I guess I am moving the goalpost at this point, because you are correct that one of the somewhat mainstream media publications indeed retracted their earlier statement.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - anthony_romeo 6y ago
      If the point of your statement not about fraud, then why did you use the word “fraud” in your initial example? “Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim.”

bananabiscuit 6y ago

Yeah this bothers me, whether Trump won or lost is kind of besides the point, the real issue is that clearly the media “wants” a specific outcome and has been doing as much as they can to make that outcome more probable starting even way before the day of the election.

glenstein 6y ago
I think is a perfect encapsulation of the muddled thinking that is caused by this kind of misinformation. This is a really narrow example, and it doesn't generalize any conclusions about to the entire electoral system the way you are suggesting it might. For some reason, consumers of misinformation take these small fragments and use them to cast doubt on the entire system, which is a conclusion totally out of proportion to the evidence. But if you say that out loud, all you will get is a blank stare.
- bananabiscuit 6y ago
  Let’s un-muddle something: I’m not using this example of fraud to prove that the entire electoral system is broken, as you are suggesting. I’m using it as an example of real actual evidence that is quickly forgotten by the media in order to continue to ridicule anyone who has doubts about the election results. Considering in just this one example, the margin of victory in a crucial state was reduced by something like 25 percent, why wouldn’t a rational person begin to have some doubt.
  - glenstein 6y ago
    > I’m not using this example of fraud to prove that the entire electoral system is broken You could have fooled me. Your previous comment contained no such qualification, leaving an open ended implication which seemed to be intentional. Most people responding to this example are pointing out the problems with it, and they don't seem to have any issue being quite frank about how this evidence doesn't show fraud, doesn't show systematic error, doesn't show that the election outcome would be different. No one interested in the facts should be willing to take that as a starting point and proceeding to entertain this kind of meandering, open ended, unprovable and vague speculation that you seem to want to steer the conversation toward.

phailhaus 6y ago

> However, there isn't a word said about this on CNN, MSNBC or any other heavily left-leaning media sources. That's untrue, nor are those "heavily left-leaning" sites [1]. With a quick google search, I can already see that CNN did report on it [2]. There's no reason for it to be a "huge news story" because they caught it, it wasn't malicious, and it didn't affect the vote tally in any meaningful way. [1] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ [2] https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-trump-us-election-news-11-16-20/h_99d89abfb0414f24685959a78043974f https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-trump-us-el...

glenstein 6y ago

>So, maybe I'm not understanding something You're right about that. Most claims about election fraud have absolutely nothing to do with the two links you are shared. And your links don't show fraud. And your links don't show anything that would change the outcome in Georgia let alone the election as a whole.

pwthornton 6y ago

You are attributing to malice what can be easily explained by bad processes and incompetence (we see this all the time in tech with bugs that make it through to production!). The missing votes weren't much, and changed the nature of the race by less than 500 votes. Trump still lost Georgia by about 13,000. The banana republic part of this is a man who lost the election by more than 7 million votes trying to steal the election. Trump didn't come close to winning. Trump got straight up thumped, and he is still trying to sue to get millions of votes thrown out. Millions of American votes. If you are concerned with why voting isn't smoother in this country with less errors, you need to support creating national standards and funding to help make voting easier and more modern. This is an artifact of an incredibly balkanized voting processes. A lot of Americans would support easy, modern, universal voting. The election is long since past, and Trump lost. The reason you don't see national news orgs covering small-scale election issues in individual counties is that they aren't national news stories. It's really that simple. The fact that a recount found additional votes -- the point of a recount -- and that the additional votes didn't impact the election is not news. It's just not news.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

newacct583 6y ago

That's not true at all. Every recount changes the results by a little bit, and that's exactly what happened and exactly what was reported in the recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin. What was not seen was "fraud", nor any reason to suspect the end result of the election (Biden victories in those states) was incorrect.