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Given the obvious election fraud caught on camera, forensic evidence, voter roll issues, intimidation of poll watchers, lack of transparency, & the lack actiona

Given the obvious election fraud caught on camera, forensic evidence, voter roll issues, intimidation of poll watchers, lack of transparency, & the lack actionable oversight that we saw in the 2020 election, is there any hope to reform the corrupt political system or even to ascertain "the consent of the governed"? If you add a backstop against political outsiers gaining office, only insiders who are under control of entrenched politicrats (who have no interest in reform), corrupt actors & revolving door beurcracats/lobbyists can win a significant political position. Thats a lot of words to say the whole system is rotten and any narrow window of reform is quickly shut... As George Carlin said: It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe

shadowgovt 6y ago
> is there any hope to reform the corrupt political system or even to ascertain "the consent of the governed"? A shared interpretation of reality would be a good start. Most of the things you named in your first sentence happened at such low counts that they had functionally zero impact on the outcome of the election. For starters, there has been no instance of obvious election fraud caught on camera, no forensic evidence that has gone unchallenged, voter roll issues, while chronic, were being addressed for years leading up to the election, intimidation of poll watchers was in the eye of the beholder, and transparency was extraordinary (they had counts live-streamed). Actionable oversight also exists, but excludes "tossing the entire result of a state election," for obvious reasons (most of the actionable oversight is of the form "Screwing with elections is a federal crime and you do a lot of time for it"). There was a commission to look into instances of fraud in the 2016 election, and it concluded in 2018 that there were a handful of actionable events but the end result was the outcome was unchanged. The 2020 election's results were even wider than the difference in the 2016 outcome. It may not be unwise to appoint a commission to investigate the election results, but my money's personally on an outcome in 2022 similar to the outcome in 2018. (... and Carlin was a great entertainer but not a political scientist).
- briantakita 6y ago
  Actually the Fraud caught on camera in Atlanta was shown to have swung the election, if you overlay the surge of Biden votes that occurred when the poll watchers were told to go home yet counting resumed. The problem is there is not institutional effort to investigate the irregularities. The problem with Election fraud is that plausible deniability & passing the buck is too easy to accomplish for any party not willing to prosecute the obvious crimes being committed. The election fraud is obvious & you know it. Even if you think its not enough to swing the election, we still have a responsibility to investigate. George Catlin does not need to be a political scientist to state what is obvious. People do not need to "stay in their lane" to participate in political discussions that ultimately affect them in one way or another
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    The events caught on camera were not fraud. They were an irregularity, but it appears they were already investigated and the relevant ballots were correctly counted. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/fact-checking-claims-about-fulton-countys-election/85-89c150d2-c917-44b6-b7ab-a29dd9dcb888 https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/fact... Every time we criticize Georgia, we should remember that the President's party is the one in charge of elections there, and the one in charge of auditing and assuring security of those elections. There is every incentive for the state election commission to cry foul if there was foul to cry; the fact they have not is extremely telling, and one really has to widen the conspiracy net to come up with an explanation that puts the state election commission of Georgia in on a conspiracy to defraud the electoral process. > there is not institutional effort to investigate the irregularities I don't know what you would consider "institutional effort," but there are absolutely processes for investigating irregularities and multiple investigations are currently in progress. Georgia just concluded one such audit today. https://www.ajc.com/politics/no-fraud-georgia-audit-confirms-authenticity-of-absentee-ballots/QF2PTOGHLNDLNDJEWBU56WEQHM/ https://www.ajc.com/politics/no-fraud-georgia-audit-confirms... - they don't get reported on in detail because, to be honest, the details are boring and therefore don't make for very good news; they have about as much fun as a tax audit with even fewer exciting variables. and to really get a big picture of what's going on, one has to track the news from multiple states, since every state manages its own balloting system. A full and exhaustive audit takes time. The President commissioned such an audit at the federal level for the 2016 election, and it resolved in 2018, finding an absolute handful of actionable cases. I would expect the audits that are going on now to continue, as multiple parties are interested in pursuing them. But they take time; the one for 2016 took two years.

shadowgovt 6y ago

> is there any hope to reform the corrupt political system or even to ascertain "the consent of the governed"? A shared interpretation of reality would be a good start. Most of the things you named in your first sentence happened at such low counts that they had functionally zero impact on the outcome of the election. For starters, there has been no instance of obvious election fraud caught on camera, no forensic evidence that has gone unchallenged, voter roll issues, while chronic, were being addressed for years leading up to the election, intimidation of poll watchers was in the eye of the beholder, and transparency was extraordinary (they had counts live-streamed). Actionable oversight also exists, but excludes "tossing the entire result of a state election," for obvious reasons (most of the actionable oversight is of the form "Screwing with elections is a federal crime and you do a lot of time for it"). There was a commission to look into instances of fraud in the 2016 election, and it concluded in 2018 that there were a handful of actionable events but the end result was the outcome was unchanged. The 2020 election's results were even wider than the difference in the 2016 outcome. It may not be unwise to appoint a commission to investigate the election results, but my money's personally on an outcome in 2022 similar to the outcome in 2018. (... and Carlin was a great entertainer but not a political scientist).

briantakita 6y ago
Actually the Fraud caught on camera in Atlanta was shown to have swung the election, if you overlay the surge of Biden votes that occurred when the poll watchers were told to go home yet counting resumed. The problem is there is not institutional effort to investigate the irregularities. The problem with Election fraud is that plausible deniability & passing the buck is too easy to accomplish for any party not willing to prosecute the obvious crimes being committed. The election fraud is obvious & you know it. Even if you think its not enough to swing the election, we still have a responsibility to investigate. George Catlin does not need to be a political scientist to state what is obvious. People do not need to "stay in their lane" to participate in political discussions that ultimately affect them in one way or another
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  The events caught on camera were not fraud. They were an irregularity, but it appears they were already investigated and the relevant ballots were correctly counted. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/fact-checking-claims-about-fulton-countys-election/85-89c150d2-c917-44b6-b7ab-a29dd9dcb888 https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/fact... Every time we criticize Georgia, we should remember that the President's party is the one in charge of elections there, and the one in charge of auditing and assuring security of those elections. There is every incentive for the state election commission to cry foul if there was foul to cry; the fact they have not is extremely telling, and one really has to widen the conspiracy net to come up with an explanation that puts the state election commission of Georgia in on a conspiracy to defraud the electoral process. > there is not institutional effort to investigate the irregularities I don't know what you would consider "institutional effort," but there are absolutely processes for investigating irregularities and multiple investigations are currently in progress. Georgia just concluded one such audit today. https://www.ajc.com/politics/no-fraud-georgia-audit-confirms-authenticity-of-absentee-ballots/QF2PTOGHLNDLNDJEWBU56WEQHM/ https://www.ajc.com/politics/no-fraud-georgia-audit-confirms... - they don't get reported on in detail because, to be honest, the details are boring and therefore don't make for very good news; they have about as much fun as a tax audit with even fewer exciting variables. and to really get a big picture of what's going on, one has to track the news from multiple states, since every state manages its own balloting system. A full and exhaustive audit takes time. The President commissioned such an audit at the federal level for the 2016 election, and it resolved in 2018, finding an absolute handful of actionable cases. I would expect the audits that are going on now to continue, as multiple parties are interested in pursuing them. But they take time; the one for 2016 took two years.