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> Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urgin

> Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that. The premise here is that both sides are just as likely to push misinformation on behalf of their team. The Democrats aren't perfect, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they would engage in the exact same tactics and rhetoric as the GOP if the shoe were on the other foot. I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.

downandout 6y ago
I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I just listened to 4 years of CNN, MSNBC, and virtually every other media outlet claiming that the previous election was rigged, with similarly sparse evidence. So yes, not only do I believe that they would, but they have already done it, 24/7, for the last 4 straight years.
- adamsea 6y ago
  You're assuming equivalence between the two. What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason. The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives. But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous. The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
  - downandout 6y ago
    There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election. A few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, mostly written in broken English, is unlikely to have caused a massive swing in voter turnout or opinions. It seems clear from the Mueller report that Russians attempted to engage in election interference. There is zero evidence that it had any effect on even a single vote. If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference. So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.
    - _RPL5_ 6y ago
      To me the DNC leak stood out as more damaging than Facebook ads / twitter bots. That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.
      - downandout 6y ago
        While the leak was illegal, in the case of elections, personally I am all for anything that brings voters a better understanding of the candidates. Misinformation is untrue, and people can generally see right through it; email leaks are true. Given the polarization at the time, I don’t think that the email leaks had an impact on the outcome, but voters did become more informed, and that likely swayed some votes. Educated voters are a good thing in my opinion.
    - rthomas6 6y ago
      While you're maybe not wrong about it not changing the election outcome, I just wanted to say that it was more than a few Facebook ads. Russia was the likely source of the DNC email leak. Also, it was a lot of sock puppeting and co-opting large groups on Facebook and also Twitter and Reddit. Hundreds of people, masquerading as thousands, playing both sides off each other, all day long every day for months. There were groups for every demographic imaginable, swaying them, as appropriate, to stay home because Hillary doesn't care about [ethnic group], or to vote for Jill Stein because Hillary is just a neocon in disguise. Or to vote for Trump in protest. Or to vote for Trump because conservative. It was a well funded and coordinated effort by a nation state. Not a few thousand dollars on bad english ads.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election The alleged Russian actions are by themselves criminal. It makes no difference whether they had any impact. An attempted theft is still a crime.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      You’re missing my point. A Russian influence operation to support the Trump campaign actually happened. This is a fact supported by evidence which bears up under examination. There is no evidence of electoral fraud or whatever nonsense is currently being claimed. It did not happen. It is, in fact, a deliberate lie. Someone saying stuff on CNN is not reliable information. Are you really going to compare that to the Mueller report? In fact, what is reliable right now is how courts have been deciding these ridiculous claims. And they’ve all been universally rejected because the claims have no evidence, make no sense, and are basically asking for something that’s actually illegal. So we are talking about two completely different things. Something that really happened, based on evidence, and something that is a bunch of lies and distortions. That is my point. And, I’d really encourage you to learn how to better judge things. Or, to stop participating in this anti-democratic bullshit.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  I would feel entirely different about Fox News claiming election malfeasance than I do about the President of the United States claiming it.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  More recently, the pre-election suppression of the Hunter Biden scandals that are now okay to talk about openly for some reason.
asabjorn 6y ago
> I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that. After his win in 2016 we had Russia collusion claims about election collusion that is still ongoing, it even led to the Mueller investigation that extended beyond the 2018 election, so yes absolutely the Democrats would do this.
- p1necone 6y ago
  I'm not sure how you can read the Mueller report and come away with the conclusion that there's a lack of evidence.
  - asabjorn 6y ago
    Declassified FBI documents indicate otherwise. Flynn actually notified FBI of all meetings with Russians and debriefed with them afterwards. There is much that is puzzling about the judges treatment of this case considering: 1) The FBI agents in charge of the Flynn case wrote a 'case closure memo' on Jan. 4, 2017, concluding he had found "no derogatory" evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. 2) In an extraordinary interview with prosecutors this fall, the FBI agent who led the Flynn case, William Barnett, admitted there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team was obsessed with punishing the president. [2] And there are a long list of other odd facts about the case that put into question Judge Sullivans extraordinary actions by acting as a prosecutor in this case. [3] [1] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynnCaseCloseMemo.pdf https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn... [2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073623.pdf https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073... [3] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dozen-belated-disclosures-turned-tide-michael-flynns https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
    - TMWNN 6y ago
1958325146 6y ago
Didn't we see the shoe on the other foot, roughly, in 2016 with the Russia collusion thing?
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  No. That was not allegations that the votes themselves were tampered with.
  - downandout 6y ago
    Here [1] is a 2016 article from CNN, titled Computer scientists urge Clinton campaign to challenge election results. The articles says that "they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked". Of course no such evidence existed, but it was most certainly among the allegations that Democrats were making in the wake of their loss. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-challenge-results/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-chal...
    - cjohnson318 6y ago
      Here are examples of Hillary tweeting that the election was rigged multiple times, every day, for over a month. ...
      - rayiner 6y ago
        Here is Hilary accusing Trump of being an “illegitimate” President and that he “knows” he stole the 2016 election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum... > Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday. Is there a word for someone or something that mirrors your sins back at you, but in a grotesquely amplified manner?
fennecfoxen 6y ago
> would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? 0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but 1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?" In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts? 2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia. I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here? Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much. > Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    I'm not seeing your "on the night of the election" qualification and she may have said it in other interviews but the "under any circumstances" bit is true: “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday. Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clinton-says-biden-should-not-concede-2020-election-under-n1238156 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...
meanderer 6y ago
Do people remember the Dems crying large scale voter fraud in 2016? I don’t too.
- rayiner 6y ago
  No. They were crying large scale Russian hacking and how Trump was a “Russian asset.” As a result of that rhetoric, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russians had altered the vote tallies to help Trump win: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20... Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.
  - eggy 6y ago
    Not to mention but Russian (Soviet) collusion seems to be a move out of the Democrat's own playbook when Ted Kennedy solicited Soviet intervention to foil the reelection of Ronald Reagan [1]. When you point your finger at something there's usually three more pointing straight back at you. Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election. Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: - "J. Alex Halderman: By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code. Miles O’Brien: And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase. Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch. J. Alex Halderman: I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day." For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted. [1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html?sh=4b04b69c359a https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-machines-solve-election-problems-or-make-them-worse https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...
cjohnson318 6y ago
In the 2000 election, results disputed in Florida, but at the end of the day, Gore conceded and that was that. There is exactly 44 examples of successful, non-dumpster fire, transfers of power in this country.
- rayiner 6y ago
  No he absolutely did not. He tried to cheat through an outrageous request for hand recounts but only in counties he had won: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_papers/01-17.pdf https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa... Specifically, he demanded recounts of under votes, where the machine hadn’t registered any pick for President. But he did so only in counties where he had won a large majority. Theoretically, this wouldn’t help. Statistically, Bush voters should have been as likely as Gore voters to fail to completely punch a ballot. But by only requesting recounts in counties he had won solidly—I.e. the base rate in the data set heavily favored Gore—newly discerned votes would break in heavily his favor. If he had won the county 2-1, he’d get two newly discernible votes for every one that Bush got. This was an obvious attempt at cheating. So obvious that the Florida Supreme Court smacked Gore down and ordered a statewide recount. And the Supreme Court agreed 7-2 that recount was still unconstitutional because under votes were being counted using different standards in different counties. Imagine if Trump had demanded hand recounts of under votes in this election in Wisconsin, but only those votes that were made in person on Election Day. This would be obvious cheating, since the pool of Election Day voters went heavily for Trump to begin with, so newly discernible votes would break for him as well. Gore did the exact same thing. And it would have been a huge news story if the media understood basic Bayesian probability.
- briandear 6y ago
  Gore conceded 37 days after the election. And only after the courts struck down his final challenge. And Hillary Clinton still calls the 2016 election illegitimate. Pot meet Kettle.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I'm going to be a pedantic HN type, but 43. See the 1876 elections. This is important, because you could get an idea of what has to be done to fix the issues and what repercussions it might have by looking at historical precedence.
cicero 6y ago
Trump did win 4 years ago, and Hilary Clinton claimed the election was stolen from her and that there is a specter of illegitimacy over his presidency. This is the exact kind of talk that people are now saying is dangerous and must be suppressed. https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter-hillary-clinton-claims-2016-election-was-stolen-from-her/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...

downandout 6y ago

I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I just listened to 4 years of CNN, MSNBC, and virtually every other media outlet claiming that the previous election was rigged, with similarly sparse evidence. So yes, not only do I believe that they would, but they have already done it, 24/7, for the last 4 straight years.

adamsea 6y ago
You're assuming equivalence between the two. What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason. The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives. But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous. The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
- downandout 6y ago
  There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election. A few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, mostly written in broken English, is unlikely to have caused a massive swing in voter turnout or opinions. It seems clear from the Mueller report that Russians attempted to engage in election interference. There is zero evidence that it had any effect on even a single vote. If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference. So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.
  - _RPL5_ 6y ago
    To me the DNC leak stood out as more damaging than Facebook ads / twitter bots. That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.
    - downandout 6y ago
      While the leak was illegal, in the case of elections, personally I am all for anything that brings voters a better understanding of the candidates. Misinformation is untrue, and people can generally see right through it; email leaks are true. Given the polarization at the time, I don’t think that the email leaks had an impact on the outcome, but voters did become more informed, and that likely swayed some votes. Educated voters are a good thing in my opinion.
  - rthomas6 6y ago
    While you're maybe not wrong about it not changing the election outcome, I just wanted to say that it was more than a few Facebook ads. Russia was the likely source of the DNC email leak. Also, it was a lot of sock puppeting and co-opting large groups on Facebook and also Twitter and Reddit. Hundreds of people, masquerading as thousands, playing both sides off each other, all day long every day for months. There were groups for every demographic imaginable, swaying them, as appropriate, to stay home because Hillary doesn't care about [ethnic group], or to vote for Jill Stein because Hillary is just a neocon in disguise. Or to vote for Trump in protest. Or to vote for Trump because conservative. It was a well funded and coordinated effort by a nation state. Not a few thousand dollars on bad english ads.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election The alleged Russian actions are by themselves criminal. It makes no difference whether they had any impact. An attempted theft is still a crime.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    You’re missing my point. A Russian influence operation to support the Trump campaign actually happened. This is a fact supported by evidence which bears up under examination. There is no evidence of electoral fraud or whatever nonsense is currently being claimed. It did not happen. It is, in fact, a deliberate lie. Someone saying stuff on CNN is not reliable information. Are you really going to compare that to the Mueller report? In fact, what is reliable right now is how courts have been deciding these ridiculous claims. And they’ve all been universally rejected because the claims have no evidence, make no sense, and are basically asking for something that’s actually illegal. So we are talking about two completely different things. Something that really happened, based on evidence, and something that is a bunch of lies and distortions. That is my point. And, I’d really encourage you to learn how to better judge things. Or, to stop participating in this anti-democratic bullshit.
rootusrootus 6y ago
I would feel entirely different about Fox News claiming election malfeasance than I do about the President of the United States claiming it.
pnw_hazor 6y ago
More recently, the pre-election suppression of the Hunter Biden scandals that are now okay to talk about openly for some reason.

asabjorn 6y ago

> I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that. After his win in 2016 we had Russia collusion claims about election collusion that is still ongoing, it even led to the Mueller investigation that extended beyond the 2018 election, so yes absolutely the Democrats would do this.

p1necone 6y ago
I'm not sure how you can read the Mueller report and come away with the conclusion that there's a lack of evidence.
- asabjorn 6y ago
  Declassified FBI documents indicate otherwise. Flynn actually notified FBI of all meetings with Russians and debriefed with them afterwards. There is much that is puzzling about the judges treatment of this case considering: 1) The FBI agents in charge of the Flynn case wrote a 'case closure memo' on Jan. 4, 2017, concluding he had found "no derogatory" evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. 2) In an extraordinary interview with prosecutors this fall, the FBI agent who led the Flynn case, William Barnett, admitted there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team was obsessed with punishing the president. [2] And there are a long list of other odd facts about the case that put into question Judge Sullivans extraordinary actions by acting as a prosecutor in this case. [3] [1] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynnCaseCloseMemo.pdf https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn... [2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073623.pdf https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073... [3] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dozen-belated-disclosures-turned-tide-michael-flynns https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
  - TMWNN 6y ago

1958325146 6y ago

Didn't we see the shoe on the other foot, roughly, in 2016 with the Russia collusion thing?

Dylan16807 6y ago
No. That was not allegations that the votes themselves were tampered with.
- downandout 6y ago
  Here [1] is a 2016 article from CNN, titled Computer scientists urge Clinton campaign to challenge election results. The articles says that "they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked". Of course no such evidence existed, but it was most certainly among the allegations that Democrats were making in the wake of their loss. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-challenge-results/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-chal...
  - cjohnson318 6y ago
    Here are examples of Hillary tweeting that the election was rigged multiple times, every day, for over a month. ...
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Here is Hilary accusing Trump of being an “illegitimate” President and that he “knows” he stole the 2016 election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum... > Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday. Is there a word for someone or something that mirrors your sins back at you, but in a grotesquely amplified manner?

fennecfoxen 6y ago

> would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? 0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but 1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?" In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts? 2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia. I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here? Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3

Dylan16807 6y ago
> It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much. > Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  I'm not seeing your "on the night of the election" qualification and she may have said it in other interviews but the "under any circumstances" bit is true: “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday. Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clinton-says-biden-should-not-concede-2020-election-under-n1238156 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...

meanderer 6y ago

Do people remember the Dems crying large scale voter fraud in 2016? I don’t too.

rayiner 6y ago
No. They were crying large scale Russian hacking and how Trump was a “Russian asset.” As a result of that rhetoric, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russians had altered the vote tallies to help Trump win: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20... Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.
- eggy 6y ago
  Not to mention but Russian (Soviet) collusion seems to be a move out of the Democrat's own playbook when Ted Kennedy solicited Soviet intervention to foil the reelection of Ronald Reagan [1]. When you point your finger at something there's usually three more pointing straight back at you. Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election. Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: - "J. Alex Halderman: By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code. Miles O’Brien: And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase. Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch. J. Alex Halderman: I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day." For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted. [1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html?sh=4b04b69c359a https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-machines-solve-election-problems-or-make-them-worse https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...

cjohnson318 6y ago

In the 2000 election, results disputed in Florida, but at the end of the day, Gore conceded and that was that. There is exactly 44 examples of successful, non-dumpster fire, transfers of power in this country.

rayiner 6y ago
No he absolutely did not. He tried to cheat through an outrageous request for hand recounts but only in counties he had won: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_papers/01-17.pdf https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa... Specifically, he demanded recounts of under votes, where the machine hadn’t registered any pick for President. But he did so only in counties where he had won a large majority. Theoretically, this wouldn’t help. Statistically, Bush voters should have been as likely as Gore voters to fail to completely punch a ballot. But by only requesting recounts in counties he had won solidly—I.e. the base rate in the data set heavily favored Gore—newly discerned votes would break in heavily his favor. If he had won the county 2-1, he’d get two newly discernible votes for every one that Bush got. This was an obvious attempt at cheating. So obvious that the Florida Supreme Court smacked Gore down and ordered a statewide recount. And the Supreme Court agreed 7-2 that recount was still unconstitutional because under votes were being counted using different standards in different counties. Imagine if Trump had demanded hand recounts of under votes in this election in Wisconsin, but only those votes that were made in person on Election Day. This would be obvious cheating, since the pool of Election Day voters went heavily for Trump to begin with, so newly discernible votes would break for him as well. Gore did the exact same thing. And it would have been a huge news story if the media understood basic Bayesian probability.
briandear 6y ago
Gore conceded 37 days after the election. And only after the courts struck down his final challenge. And Hillary Clinton still calls the 2016 election illegitimate. Pot meet Kettle.
sudosysgen 6y ago
I'm going to be a pedantic HN type, but 43. See the 1876 elections. This is important, because you could get an idea of what has to be done to fix the issues and what repercussions it might have by looking at historical precedence.

cicero 6y ago

Trump did win 4 years ago, and Hilary Clinton claimed the election was stolen from her and that there is a specter of illegitimacy over his presidency. This is the exact kind of talk that people are now saying is dangerous and must be suppressed. https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter-hillary-clinton-claims-2016-election-was-stolen-from-her/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...