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Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne fruit either. However, I also
by dhruvkar 6y ago
Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne fruit either. However, I also recognize that there may be blindspots/biases.
I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present a cogent argument. I promise not to attack. I want to hear the argument from the other side. I also beseech the rest of HN to please refrain from attacking anyone who is doing so.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoPut simply, I don't know what to believe. As an IT security worker, I have absolutely no faith in the election since voting required the use of hackable electronic voting machines. We need to restore trust in the system. An idiot needs to be able to understand and audit it. Until that happens, there will always be people who think it's rigged, and politicians will always exploit that.
- razius 6y agoTwo issues that raised red flags for me: - All logs deleted from the machines - Machines are connected to the internet
- titzer 6y agoThis is complete BS. Most, if not all, states require paper records from voting machines. And no, they aren't internet-connected.
- razius 6y ago- https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/27/paperless-voting-machines-eac-survey-1385307 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/27/paperless-voting-m... - https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1333493400083984384 https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/13334934000839843... This is why we would need an official investigation.
- titzer 6y agoLike I said, most states use a paper trail. It would be great to do a full, transparent audit of the complete system and apply national standards. Let's do it! That's part of the point of the Federal Elections Commission, but that's been politicized and intentionally crippled. But make no mistake, people who are crying about massive fraud are not actually serious about doing any of that.
- ghostwriter 6y ago> Like I said, most states use a paper trail. Most states don't matter, the swing states do. > But make no mistake, people who are crying about massive fraud are not actually serious about doing any of that. Those people signed affidavits, what papers did you sign that make you liable under the penalty of perjury to get any weight and seriousness to your position?
- titzer 6y agoPeople are holding the Capitol building by force, and you think they are worried about consequences from signing paper?
- ghostwriter 6y agoThat's what you get when the SCOTUS dismisses the case by one sentence without looking into those affidavits. Those 72 million citizens that supported and approved of the formal court hearings and wanted investigations to happen are not silent servants of those who sit in the Capitol building during normal days. When the due process is ignored by one side, another side has a full right to demand the due process by acting physically. They have this right granted to them by the US Constitution, which is above anyone in the Capitol building.
- colejohnson66 6y agoI’m not aware of a line in the Constitution allowing what is happening. The Declaration of Independence mentions it, but not the Constitution.
- MrRiddle 6y ago"Most" is enough, right?
- ehsankia 6y agoAll but 1 of the states that have paperless machines were won by Trump. None of the "contested" states have paperless machines. So while I agree that every state should have paper trails, the argument is irrelevant in for this specific election discussion.
- paganel 6y agoThe 2000 elections were most probably stolen, but Al Gore played the safer card and accepted defeat. Since then I don't see how anyone can trust the process.
- hansthehorse 6y agoJoe Kennedy almost certainly stole the 1960 election for his son. Nixon knew this but decided it wasn't worth the national grief to fight it.
- tubbyjr 6y agoThis is why I love American Democracy, especially when they invade other countries to enforce the democratic process.
- travisoneill1 6y agoHow so? The vote differential from FL was clearly within the margin of error of the counting methods, but that only suggests the possibility of a counting error, not a steal.
- jMyles 6y agoThis argument only works if you ignore the voters who were improperly purged from the voter rolls for having the same or similar names as convicted felons.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoGore lost because of the poor design of the Florida butterfly ballot. The official 537 vote margin is a political expedience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia... > About 19,000 ballots were spoiled because of overvotes (two votes in the same race), compared to 3000 in 1996.[18]:215–221 According to a 2001 study in the American Political Science Review, the voting errors caused by the butterfly ballot cost Gore the election: "Had PBC used a ballot format in the presidential race that did not lead to systematic biased voting errors, our findings suggest that, other things equal, Al Gore would have won a majority of the officially certified votes in Florida." And yet the protests then were level-headed, largely peaceful, and fully justifiable.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago> I have absolutely no faith in the election since voting required the use of hackable electronic voting machines. This is mostly not true. See https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat... . Almost every state produces a voter-readable paper trail for all votes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MrRiddle 6y ago"Almost every state" is enough these days?
- rcxdude 6y agoIt's not, but the only state without a paper trail for everything which went Biden in the last election is New Jersey (The other 7 states which have some level of exposure to digital manipulation voted Trump).
- tubbyjr 6y agoHuh, who woulda thunk that, where they had checks & balances it went for Trump. What a thing coincidence is haha
- tubbyjr 6y ago"I do not recall" will be his next line
- jariel 6y ago"no faith in the election since voting required the use of hackable electronic voting machines." The voting machines produce a paper ballot, which can be recounted and audited. The elections were fine. 100% of the issue is derived from Trump's attempt to sow doubt, and of course, his enablers.
- jmull 6y agoDid you take any comfort from the Georgia hand-count?
- razius 6y agoSomething to get you started, some tweets from the threads are bullshit but you'll figure it out: - https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1344009358472957953 https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/13440093584729579... - https://twitter.com/TalkMullins/status/1346559560987897857 https://twitter.com/TalkMullins/status/1346559560987897857 - https://twitter.com/kr3at/status/1345910829384777728 https://twitter.com/kr3at/status/1345910829384777728 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9fX5c7hGf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9fX5c7hGf4
- bcheung 6y agoIs there any source that has a bunch of the claims and refutations to it? Just saying fraud doesn't exist doesn't help calm the outrage of those who believe it was stolen. Also based on how partisan the impeachment was it is likely people don't trust the government to have any sense of accuracy and merely attribute it to partisan lines. The strategy of acknowledging what someone says and then responding to it often calms down difficult interpersonal conflicts. I think the same applies here. We understand you believe "A", we do not believe that because of proof "B". Instead the approach taken is largely ad hominem's which only escalate things further.
- TehCorwiz 6y agoTwo things: 1) You can't reason yourself out of a position that you didn't reason yourself into. They don't care that the data is bad, they care that it supports their worldview. 2) The folowing remains true now as it did more than 70 years ago: “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre
- jmull 6y agoThey’re out there if you want to search for them. I went through three or four of the statistical analyses that purported to show the election results were practically impossible. They were trivially junk. E.g. one compared the voting rate in 2020 and 2016 but used votes to registered voters in 2020 but votes to eligible voters in 2016. The others were similarly laughable, but no body cared when I posted this. Others says it better than I can, but the people who believe this stuff believe it because they want to, not because it makes sense. Facts and reason didn’t get them to this point and facts and reason isn’t going to pull them back.
- Shared404 6y ago> Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? There are. One sent me to this [1] resource earlier. I do not endorse this source, and have not manually verified their claims myself. If anyone else would like to check the source, that would be good, I intend to manually check their claims myself later, but don't have time now. [1] https://hereistheevidence.com/ https://hereistheevidence.com/ Edit: I would ask anyone checking the source to not use the tool that the source provides, for obvious reasons. Also, we should probably see if the datasets provided are available elsewhere.
- eli 6y agoThe evidence is just laughably bad. But there is a lot of it and if you wanted to explain why each claim is either meaningless or outright false would take a lot of time. I guess that's the point.
- Shared404 6y agoI suspected that would be the case, but as you pointed out, they have many claims. At work currently, so haven't really looked at it. Probably will tonight, maybe make a post refuting it.
- eli 6y agoI doubt it's worth your time. You can't refute a conspiracy theory with facts.
- Shared404 6y agoYou can't refute those deep in, but you can help protect those who could be swayed by lots of "data" and a fancy web page. I may or may not get around to it, but I could see it being worthwhile.
- eli 6y agoRespectfully disagree. I don't think you can. People are reading a website like this because they are looking for confirmation of what they already feel must be true.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoListen to the tape of the Trump call to Georgia, or better yet this Georgia election official's point-by-point takedown of Trump's claims: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/us/politics/trump-georgia-election-fraud.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/us/politics/trump-georgia... There simply is no reality based reason to believe that the election was stolen, certainly not in any consistently logical belief system (e.g. the 2016 Electoral College results were almost exactly the same in the opposite direction).
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoIf you don't get a lot of responses, it isn't because those with cohesive arguments don't exists; it's because it has become increasingly dangerous to express views counter to the mainstream narrative.
- Daishiman 6y agoDownvotes are scary?
- pertymcpert 6y agoOk, why don't you tell us what you think? No one is going to attack your home.
- joshuamcginnis 6y agoThat you have to offer that sort of reassurance makes my point.
- pertymcpert 6y agoNo it doesn't at all. You're just worried that people will think less of you. Which if you have abhorrent views, is fair enough right?
- derision 6y agoTell that to senator Hawley
- pertymcpert 6y agoRight, a senator and some random person on the internet who's existent barely matters are the same vis-a-vis risk.
- Const-me 6y ago> No one is going to attack your home. Not OP, but one possible explanation, people see which comments are downvoted. I don’t really care about these 4 bytes in the SQL DB on the other end of the world, with no connection to real life. But I think some people care.
- moosey 6y agoA person can believe anything they want. If there were evidence of a stolen election, then Trump would have won a number of court cases from one of the MANY judges, mostly ... well, conservative, to use a label ... that he placed his cases in front of. Anyone can look at these cases and have an understanding of the actual evidence presented, and see, objectively, that there was not significant election or voter tampering, and definitely not significant enough to change the election. I'm far more concerned about attempts to make it harder to vote before the election - the one drop box per county in TX, for example, then I am that any election was stolen.
- nostromo 6y agoI don't believe the election was stolen. But I will say: it's almost impossible to prove an election has been stolen after the fact with mail-in ballots. Once the outer envelope is removed and destroyed, the ballot is irreversibly anonymous. It's impossible to tell if an anonymous ballot is fraudulent or not -- there's no ability to audit it by contacting the voter. Mail-in ballots are particularly vulnerable to fraud, something the New York Times correctly worried about back before Trump.[1]. And we just had more mail-in ballots than ever before thanks to Covid. HN has long been suspicious of voting systems; we all know how often systems are hacked by bad actors. I don't think it's a stretch to think that election tampering is possible, particularly in close elections. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-...
- xpe 6y ago> Mail-in ballots are particularly prone to fraud, something the New York Times worried about back before Trump. This is mischaracterization of the article. 1. The title that shows up in the browser bar (the HTML <title>) is: "As More Vote by Mail, Faulty Ballots Could Impact Elections". 2. The title as shown on the page is "Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises". So, clearly, the article speaks about both fraudulent and faulty ballots. In my view, the article is not well organized. The two ideas are too fluidly mixed. So, with this context in mind, let's discuss two paragraphs from the article: In 2008, 18 percent of the votes in the nine states likely to decide this year’s presidential election were cast by mail. That number will almost certainly rise this year, and voters in two-thirds of the states have already begun casting absentee ballots. In four Western states, voting by mail is the exclusive or dominant way to cast a ballot. The trend will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud. While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say. Yes, the article says "voting by mail [...] increases the potential for fraud". However, how often is this an important factor? How often does it affect election results? From what I understand, the overall fraud rate from in-person voting is so low, that even a doubling of that rate is negligible.* * Except, of course, in extremely close races.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoThere are climate change deniers and, I'd wager, holocaust deniers here, so why not? I don't understand why people have such a hard time believing that just because you're in tech you're not immune to the cognitive biases shared by the entire human race.
- scoot 6y agoWe might like to think that by virtue of of being technically minded, logical, and by following the scientific method that somehow biases can be eliminated. And yet, there are those here willing for example, to espouse a spiritual belief that has no basis in fact or science. That alone should put paid to any hope that any of us can truly shake biases and beliefs and operate solely on the basis of fact. Further, very few information sources are truly factual, and without bias?
- xpe 6y ago> Further, very few information sources are truly factual, and without bias? This statement presents a false dichotomy. I could also say that no measurement of the temperature in Phoenix, AZ is "truly" accurate. However, they are accurate enough for our purposes. To take it a step further, we can combine sources. We can use reasoning about the sources in how we combine them. These sort of study and technique is meta-analysis.
- toyg 6y agoIt’s not as unreasonable as you make it sound. Some of the most devout Christians I know are scientists, and extremely logical people too. Precisely because they know how the sausage of Official Science is made, and are naturally inquisitive people, they are not shy to question our supposedly-scientific understanding of the universe (i.e. our best guesses at how it all started) and eventually resolve that doubt with (what they think is) an equally-unprovable act of faith. (Note: this is not about creationism, we’re talking Big Bang etc). I don’t disagree that human communication is often an oxymoron, simply because of how bodies work. Until we get perfect brain-to-brain data transfer, we’ll always have to go through this messy mismatch between my perceptions and your perceptions.
- bluedino 6y agoI believe that allowing mail-in ballots was a mistake and resulted in inaccuracies.
- Shared404 6y agoHow would mail-in ballots be a mistake this cycle, but not others?
- eli 6y agoOregon and Washington have been voting entirely by mail for decades without any apparent problems.
- labcomputer 6y agoBecause this time one side asked their voters not to use mail-in ballots and vote in person. So mail-in ballots tend to be skewed to the other party. It's nothing more than a fig leaf to justify tossing ballots that are predominantly for one party in most states.
- eli 6y agoCan you define "inaccuracy"? You mean like someone stole another person's ballot and fraudulently cast it?
- jandrese 6y agoThe inaccuracy is that people who normally had their vote suppressed were able to bypass the voter suppression efforts this year and turn out. This caused statistical anomalies like a lot of inner city people actually voting for a change. This is why you see many states with Republican legislatures racing to tighten mail in ballot restrictions before the next election. Who would have thought that people would vote if it didn't require you to stand in line for two to three hours during a workday?
- toyg 6y agoVoting during the week is one of those absurdities of ancient anglo-american systems that should simply give way. One of the things that postwar European countries really got right is voting on weekends, if anything because elections should be a celebration of democratic entitlements and of the people who gave their life to establish them as universal human rights.
- Klonoar 6y agoThere are shill accounts that pop up whenever the topic comes up - if you look at the creation date / comment history of the accounts, often they're within the past few days and only discussing that.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't break the site guideline against insinuations of shilling without evidence. There are simpler explanations for such accounts. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- umvi 6y agoI do not believe the election was stolen. But I also don't believe we had perfect election integrity either. In my mind any system involving hundreds of millions of people is bound to have some bad actors, mistakes, fraud, etc. It's important to acknowledge when and where it happens, and how to improve. But claiming any given election had near perfect integrity raises some alarm bells with me at least.
- pgrote 6y agoThank you. I feel the same way. I vote in every election. There are problems with many elections, especially ones for US President. Those problems are baked into the system we've established as a nation. States run their own elections. States elect US Presidents and not citizens. I don't think states could coordinate a conspiracy to change citizen votes to steer elections one way or another. Too many moving parts, too many people. It is fair one state has one set of rules that differ from another? Yes. It is the way the USA is built. It frustrates me to no end that a group of people say, "The election had no issues" just as it frustrates me when someone says, "The election was stolen." Those thoughts are always perpetuated by those who lead political parties.
- bas 6y agoEvery election has had issues. Voter fraud, however, is rare. Voter suppression is common and tactical.
- Diederich 6y ago> tactical tactical AND strategic.
- tylerhou 6y ago> It frustrates me to no end that a group of people say, "The election had no issues" just as it frustrates me when someone says, "The election was stolen." I think this is a strawman. Can you find me a source of a prominent* Democrat that said that this election had no issues? Most of the time, people who support the election's outcome mean that there was no fraud significant enough to change the outcome, or that this election had less fraud/was more secure than a previous election. On the other hand, when Trump says the election was stolen [1] (along with some Congressional Republicans), he means that the outcome should have been him winning. *Prominent being: US Senator, US Representative, Secretary of State, state election official, state governor, DNC leadership. [1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346928882595885058 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469288825958850...
- jMyles 6y agoI haven't had confidence in most elections in a long time. Nothing seems worse about this election than, say, Ohio in 2004, but I like the idea of adopting a system where there is much more thorough verifiability and ease of auditing.
- curt15 6y agoFor all the fraud allegations thrown around by Trump and his allies, his lawyers have consistently refused to allege fraud in their court proceedings. See for example https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-giuliani-voter-fraud.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-giulian...
- slumdev 6y agoFraud occurred. That much is tautological. A single instance of a dead person voting proves the statement true. To say, "fraud didn't occur," is an outright lie. The debate is over (1) how much fraud occurred and (2) whether it affected the results. Someone else posted the "Here is the Evidence" link. Too many videos of (R) election judges being denied access to counts done in secret, organizers paying for votes, postal workers diverting ballots from their intended destinations, chain of custody violations, Dominion machines sending ballots to be "adjudicated" in foreign countries, etc. Thus far, the answer to the question of whether this mountain of fraud affected the results seems to depend entirely on the political views of the person examining said mountain.
- bentcorner 6y agoPersonally I'm of the opinion that there are likely voting inaccuracies just due to scale, and anything that is turned up is only found because we looked. If you looked anywhere else I'm positive you'll find similar problems but they don't matter as much because the buffer for correctness is so large.
- standardUser 6y agoYou just made a listen of unsubstantiated lies. Trump and his team had dozens of opportunities to provide ANY evidence of ANY of these lies to many different judges and they failed to every single time. If the full power of the Executive branch and an army of lawyers can't find evidence to show to judges, what makes you think any of the lies are true?
- slumdev 6y agoBe civil and acknowledge your own misrepresentation, whether it was intentional or not. Trump and his "team" (and other people purportedly acting on his behalf) have been denied opportunities to present evidence due to lack of standing and other procedural hurdles. Our adversarial court system is a horrible place to litigate this problem.
- standardUser 6y ago
- Const-me 6y agoI do. https://hereistheevidence.com/ https://hereistheevidence.com/ and many other sources. Congresses of some states had hearings, interviewed many testimonies. Independent journalists did tons of research, see e.g. https://www.theepochtimes.com/2020-election-investigation-who-is-stealing-america_3617562.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/2020-election-investigation-wh... All courts so far declined to hear anything about the fraud, dismissing cases for contrived reasons. The riots are rather expected.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoYou won't convince many people by citing the Epoch Times, which is a far-right Falun Gong mouthpiece that reports conspiracy theories incuding QAnon and antivax as news. That "list" of evidence suffers from similar problems with conspiracies being reported as fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662891
- baby 6y agoWhat does falun gong have to do with this?
- dwaltrip 6y agoThe Epoch Times is a Falun Gong controlled publication that has rabidly supported Trump for the past several years. It's widely known.
- Const-me 6y agoNot trying to convince anyone, just answering the question. BTW I live in Europe, not a US citizen and not participating in US politics, only have a few friends who moved there. I generally don’t care who writes or films stuff as long as the presented data is good, i.e. verifiable.
- plouffy 6y agoCourts have not declined to hear anything about fraud, Trump's lawyers are the ones that have declined to call it fraud. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-giuliani-voter-fraud.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-giulian...
- Vomzor 6y agoThis is a good read, if you only read one link of my post let it be this one: https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-election-is-deeply-puzzling/ https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect... It's my understanding Trump supporters are mad their concerns aren't taken seriously. Most court cases were dismissed on technicalities, without looking at the provided evidence or testimonies. This is supposed to be the evidence: https://got-freedom.org/evidence/ https://got-freedom.org/evidence/ One example, the Georgia video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ0xDWhWUxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ0xDWhWUxk And the comments about that video: https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/07/no-the-georgia-vote-counting-video-was-not-debunked-not-even-close/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/07/no-the-georgia-vote-cou... Then there's this: https://twitter.com/MArepublican18/status/1346596969729417216 https://twitter.com/MArepublican18/status/134659696972941721... https://twitter.com/Maximus_4EVR/status/1346582356899991552 https://twitter.com/Maximus_4EVR/status/1346582356899991552 PA & AZ Republicans wanting to decertify Biden after the election fraud hearings in their states. Not sure how serious those attempts are. I'm European so I don't have a horse in this race.
- dtauzell 6y agoI stopped reading the first article after this: "We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes." >>Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes. If you look at the populations of these various counties it isn't puzzling at all. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-votes-counties-election/fact-check-clarifying-the-comparison-between-popular-vote-and-counties-won-in-the-2020-election-idUSKBN2931UY https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-votes-counties-...
- jmull 6y agoWell, these are lists of claims, but they are unsubstantiated. The question is, where is the evidence of fraud? The people pursuing these issues need to go beyond tweeting or holding press conferences and bring evidence to court. So far, that hasn’t happened. At this point there’s been plenty of opportunity, so it doesn’t seem there’s evidence to substantiate this stuff.
- tossthere 6y agoThe media’s ad-supported business model and the effects of branding on consumer behaviors naturally results in an extraordinarily pro-left media environment. The cost of advertising is bid up by brands that benefit from presenting a liberal image, and it drowns out all alternative views. Just to illustrate, take greenwashing as an example. Companies market their products as being good for the environment because that drives sales, and you can find that message on every shelf in the grocery store. There are many alternative views, very convincing ones in my opinion, that choosing the bottle of water that uses a thinner plastic is still harmful to the environment, and supporting greenwashing by purchasing it actually results in net harm to the environment because it reduces adoption of better options (reusable bottles, tap water) and distracts consumers from issues that could actually have a meaningful impact on climate change (innovation in direct air capture, greener steel production or air travel, a carbon tax, etc). But how would that message ever reach consumers? It doesn’t make them spend more, so people never hear any of this. The result is a populace that believes they are saving the world by not asking for a straw at Starbucks. This is happening at an ideological level. Major brands either declare no political stance, or they declare a pro-left stance. Every celebrity either declares no political opinion, or declares a pro-left political opinion. (Or declares any pro-right opinion, even vaguely or accidentally, and has their brand harmed or destroyed for it.) I’m something like a Clinton-era liberal, I guess, but the media environment is concerning to me. I would choose Biden over Trump, but the fact that the election was this close even with every major media source being so aggressively and overtly anti-Trump and pro-Biden does concern me. I can’t ignore the fact that if the media environment was more balanced and less ad-driven, it probably would have been an easy victory for Trump. And I do think all of the above is material to the subject of election integrity and the health of our democracy.
- bumbada 6y agoThere is no argument here. The fact is that you should never let electronic voting machines ever in the first place. I went crazy the first time I saw them in the US long time ago and said: "this is the end of democracy" You should only count physical ballots in front of someone that represents all the parties. As an engineer I can not trust them. There are 20 different ways I can cheat using those machines, from network hacks to software that self modifies. The US election system is a joke, with no national ID card. The worst thing is that they are trying to import those defective systems into Europe.
- xpe 6y agoRe: "There is no argument here." can you clarify what you mean? Are you making an argument that electronic voting machines resulted in an incorrect election outcome?
- driverdan 6y agoNothing you just stated is evidence.
- gwright 6y agoIf we are at the point that we have to have "evidence" (in the legal sense) that fraud has occurred in order to resolve the outcome of an election, then the water is under the bridge. Voting process and procedures should all be designed to build and strengthen transparency, to fortify the process against actual fraud and vague assertions of fraud that can't be trivially disproved. We find ourselves in a situation where the processes have been constructed in such a way that there is suspicion about the outcome and logistical difficulties at disproving what should be by design trivially disprovable, this just creates a terrible feedback loop of mistrust. The argument that we don't need better controls until actual widespread fraud can be proved in a court of law seems mistaken to me. We need the controls to keep us from getting to the point where a forensic analysis is needed to discern what happened during an election. I realize that there are legitimate concerns that better voting controls can result in "voter suppression" but our haphazard approach to voting controls and process transparency has left us in a place where large numbers of people are suspicious and there doesn't seem to be any effective way to counter those suspicions in part due to the haphazard controls.
- _fq4v 6y agoI'm a trump supporter. I don't believe the election was stolen necessarily. However, there are major issues that have gone unresolved and unexamined by courts and cases dismissed without investigation. For example, in PA, a judge ordered the election officials to allow republican watchers to view the counting, and struck down the distance requirements set by the governor due to COVID. However, election officials refused to do so, violating a court order. The GOP sued the officials, but the court dismissed it due to standing. They didn't even consider the complaint. Then a voter group tried to sue. They dismissed that for standing. Then trump sued, they dismissed that too. So if neither the political party, the voters, nor the candidate purportedly affected has standing to force the state to allow the vote to be examined and cannot bring a case against an official violating a court order -- then who exactly has that right? Can any election official simply do what they want? Or in the TX v PA case, the Supreme Court really displayed major cowardice. They ought to have taken the case, examined the merits, and said yes or no. They dismissed it due to lack of standing. The case asked a very important question -- the Constitution says only the legislature sets the election rules, but in PA, the governor and SoS made up rules. Additionally, the PA supreme court simply extended a deadline set by the legislature. If indeed the legislature is the only one who can make electoin rules, then these moves are clearly illegal. The Court should have said if it's okay or not. They could have not granted the relief requested, which I do admit is a major ask. But they should have ruled on whether or not the PA Supreme Court or the governor's actions were legal. To many republicans, it seems as if there were bad actors who got away with not following the law. It now seems that governors, courts, etc can simply set whatever election rules they want and get away with it. Even if it wouldn't have changed the outcome, I'd like to see a court penalize those officials in PA who disobeyed a court order, or explain in clear legal detail after hearing a case as to why those officials were right to do so. I also want explanations into why the counting stopped. It is quite clear now that the supposed water leak in Atlanta was a simple toilet overflow that should not have caused anything to stop. Why did they do that, and why did they report it as a leak? Why did we see major drops for Biden with zero votes for Trump? Again, I am ready to concede that Biden won. In fact, I think it likely. However, it is crazy to me that so far not a single body has been willing to investigate these seeming discrepancies and instead told the groups interested in seeking resolution that they have no standing to question it. Telling people that they do not deserve an answer is what leads to the behavior we're seeing now. The courts made a huge mistake by simply dismissing on standing. Rumor has it that John Roberts didn't want to take the case due to fear of a mob... Well he got his mob, just not the one he expected. Downvoters: please engage in good faith. Someone asked if there was anyone who believed the election was 'stolen'. I have given my good faith answer as to what I would have liked to have seen in order for me to fully trust our elections. You may disagree with me, but I'm simply giving my solicited opinion.
- elinear 6y agoI have seen this article [1] being thrown around among my conservative friends, and while I do not have the statistics background to understand the detailed analysis, it seems to suggest some strange behavior around the reporting of mail-in votes. Not exactly evidence, but something that may have warranted investigation at the time. [1] https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020 https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-... edit: I'm looking for folks to give their take on this analysis since I nowhere qualified. A good summary is the final two sections of the article.
- 542458 6y agoThe vote spikes are simple - early voting ballots getting reported [1]. Biden encouraged his supporters to vote early. Trump did the opposite. Accordingly, the early/absentee votes are ~90% for Biden. Due to the way they get counted they come in larger lumps than day-of vote counting. As far as I can tell the rest of the post is statistical gish-gallop with some graphs and equations to make it all look more convincing. I also want to say that the sources of reported votes isn't a mystery, and the author could easily have found out that they were early votes if they had wanted to. Either they didn't check, or didn't want to inform people of those very relevant facts. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-wi-pa-mi-vote-spikes-idUSKBN27Q307 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-wi-pa-mi-vote-s...
- adjkant 6y agoThis type of stuff was posted on HN and pretty well debunked / rejected by most commentors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031344 My comment and some discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031443
- huntermeyer 6y agoI don't believe it was stolen. I think we should be able to see how our vote was recorded. The whole system is based on trust. Right now that trust is being threatened (eroded?). Since there isn't a way to individually inspect the system, we have to rely on the word of others to validate it. The government doesn't always act in the best interest of the populace and often outright lies to it. This begs the question, should we take their word for it?
- Swenrekcah 6y agoThat is impossible to square with a secret vote. The tried and tested way to hold free and fair elections are paper ballots, simple boxes with obvious seals, and observers from all parties as well as international ones.
- ehsankia 6y agoSure but these people had zero problem trusting the system when they won in 2016 by a very similar margin. Also, the "government" who is overseeing the election is controlled by the very same party that lost. I would understand conspiracies if Obama's administration was in control, but when you can't believe the words of Republican officials like those in Georgia, then there is nothing that can convince such a person.
- dillondoyle 6y agoBecome a poll watcher. Pretty much every single vote is viewed by an election worker (or three), one Republican, one Democrat. Sometimes other parties. And this year many counts were filmed and streamed live because some Republicans complained that 6 feet was too far away with COVID - that challenge got thrown out in court.
- th48 6y agoAbsolutely, given how polarized things are, I have little trouble believing poll workers and others with the ability to put their thumbs on the scales would do just that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dlp211 6y agoYou believe this because you have no idea how incredibly scrutinized the process is. There is a reason that there are Poll Watchers from both parties, including lawyers and independents to ensure that poll workers don't put their thumb on the scale.
- th48 6y ago> incredibly scrutinized At best you could say there wasn't enough fraud to tip the balance, but this "no fraud," "most secure election ever" nonsense is ridiculous. People like you probably also would have claimed dependent tax credit fraud was incredibly rare (from Snopes, a "FACT CHECK" site, no less): > https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/declaration-of-non-dependents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/declaration-of-non-depende...
- dlp211 6y agoOh for fucks sake, I never made such a claim and the election is incredibly scrutinized. It is the reason that we know about the handful of fraud cases that have happened. Of course no one believes that there is literally no fraud. Why do we need to be so perfectly specific that the amount of fraud that does happen is less than .0001%? Stop being obtuse, all you are doing is eroding trust for the sake of eroding trust. It's also hilarious how much of the fraud that does happen is perpetuated by Republicans because their party tells them that Democrats commit fraud.
- MichaelZuo 6y ago“ Of course no one believes that there is literally no fraud. Why do we need to be so perfectly specific that the amount of fraud that does happen is less than .0001%?” To be fair to the person your replying to I think that percentage you wrote is the crux of the whole thing. Quite large segments of the american population believe fraud >>0.0001% whereas other quite large segments share your view that it is ~0.0001%. And perhaps there is a segment that truly believes it is <<0.0001%. Though I am unsure what the null hypothesis should be in this case it does seem that the probability of the reality being >>0.0001% is above zero.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoMy techie friends pre-2016: "The CIA and FBI are corrupt. Don't trust mainstream media. Voting systems are incredibly hackable." My techie friends 2020: "The FBI is our savior. What the mainstream media says is true and anyone that otherwise is a conspiracy theorist. This was the most secure election in history."
- RhodoYolo 6y agoIt's not about whether the 'election was stolen' and the court cases weren't in regard to 'fraud'. The court cases were on whether or not the federal government had the right to audit the state votes. The court cases decided that no, you can't. The states have all the power to run their own elections on their own accord, fraud be damned.
- prucomaclu 6y agoI do believe the election was stolen. This is because I have yet to see any honest attempt to refute the claims that have been made. Refutations in the media generally boil down to "its been dismissed by dozens of judges and is therefore baseless". Very rarely have I seen the media try to address specific claims. The courts likewise generally have dismissed on procedural grounds and not merits. The rulings that have looked at the merits provide very limited rationale for their findings. The claims are dismissed as baseless conspiracy theories without explaining why. It does not provide confidence that the claims were honestly considered. AG Barr likewise has not provided any transparency into his investigation. It does not appear there even was an investigation. Again, it does not inspire confidence. Media likes to tour the cybersecurity official's statement that "this was the most secure election in history". They fail to mention that he was specifically referring to electronic threats, and not fraud or other irregularities. When you take all of the above into context, the media doesn't feel like they need to address the claims being made. The claims have already been addressed, they say. But they haven't. There are hundreds of testimonies illustrating that entire counting centers were behaving contrary to law. There are reports that adjudicated ballots were fraudulently assigned to Biden, and the challenges were ignored. By law, challenges have to be recorded, and they weren't. It was escalated to supervisors and their supervisors who also ignored. Again, by MI law, challenges have to be recorded. Its not something where discretion comes into play. The fact that fraud was happening and the people running that election center were ignoring challenges is evidence, to me, of widespread election laws being broken, if not fraud. In court, their testimony has been dismissed as either hearsay (but won't let them testify in court) or just dismissed as wild conspiracy theories. The substance of their claims have not been addressed. Then you have things like the State Farm video in GA. What happened there may be legitimate but it looks suspicious as he'll and the SOS's explanations do not make sense. We are told repeatedly that they did not tell the observers that counting was done for the night. But that is contrary to: 1. The affidavits of the observers 2. 3+ media outlets reporting that night that counting there was put on hold 3. The video which shows the woman telling people to leave 4. The SOS's own explanation for why ballots were placed under a skirted table. For #4, the SOS said that election officials placed ballots under the table because they thought counting was done for the night. He wants us to believe that the election officials thought counting was done, but the observers were to have just left on their own accord? He should just admit that a mistake was made and they were told to leave. It wouldn't be a big deal, but covering it up makes it worse. Then of course the ladies are on video running the ballots, with no observers late at night, repeatedly being tabulated 3 times. I don't think the SOS ever did explain that part, and it happened at the same time there was a massive spike in Biden votes. It might be a coincidence and be fully legitimate. But the lack of transparency and investigation does not inspire confidence. There are many categories of claims being made: 1. Constitutional issues of SOS/gov acting outside authority 2. Poll watchers not allowed to do their job 3. Individual observations of fraud and ignored challenges 4. Dead people voting, nonresident voting, etc 5. Statistical anomalies 6. Hacking Number 6 is baseless as I haven't seen any evidence of hacking. Number 5 is suspicious but doesn't prove anything by itself. Number 4 happens in every election. Probably not enough to flip but hard to say with general lack of transparency. Numbers 1, 2, 3 do have a legitimate basis and are fairly well documented, and account for 100s of thousands of possibly illegal votes. Right or wrong, agree or disagree, these are serious issues that need transparency and resolution. Sweeping them under the rug as wild conspiracies does nothing except create division and distrust.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwawaylolx 6y agoYeah, I do based on the evidence presented (https://hereistheevidence.com/ https://hereistheevidence.com/), the lack of legal cooperation and understanding from the Democrats, and the premature media dismissal and disrespectful treatment of the Republicans. I know a large part of the evidence is not compelling, but the combination of factors before, during, and after the election made me require a proper localized audit for several key places to be convinced fraud hasn't happened. I'm not satisfied with the care that was taken to guarantee the election was not fraudulent.
- MacTavish 6y agoBecause if there’s one thing we’ve learned today, it’s that Republicans deserve respect
- throwawaylolx 6y agoHalf of your country doesn't deserve respect? Democrats need to listen to themselves first and then maybe they'll learn to listen to others too.
- MacTavish 6y agoHalf? Don’t make me laugh. I think a more accurate figure is 80-90%. Not surprising you just assume I’m a democrat, though, given your first post.
- fingerlocks 6y agoI clicked one of the disputed sources "1,600+ voters born 1800 and 1900 voted by mail in NC"[0] and this looks more like an error with how the age was recorded into the spreadsheet from the ballot. E.g., there's number of outliers with the age of 267 years old. A few people aged between 240 to 255, then everyone else is 100-120 years old. That particular list is also evenly split between dems and repubs. It also includes non-mail voters, so at a minimum the title is wrong. [0]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k9ZBKgSf3mBp0W6vd_PM6IF9usivD7iH_JPhATC7DIA/edit#gid=731307020 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k9ZBKgSf3mBp0W6vd_PM...
- hansvm 6y ago> Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? Not me, but plenty of friends and family have such views. Every argument voiced to me so far from those sources has been some variant of the following two arguments: 1) <ludicrous thing> happened, therefore the election was rigged 2) <ludicrous thing> happened, therefore <verifiably false thing> happened, therefore the election was rigged Elaborating slightly, <ludicrous thing> is defined here to be something designed to appeal to your common sense -- something that without close inspection would be plainly incompatible with a non-rigged election to any reasonable person. That's probably ordinarily a fine enough chain of reasoning, but all the instances I bothered to examine had the property that reality directly contradicted one's gut reaction; they seemed cherry-picked to be easy to believe and repeat while also being false (not to assume malice, I think that's exactly the kind of reasoning you'd expect if you went fishing for evidence to support a theory you believe to be true). As a specific example, one argument was that the exact vote tallies for Biden and Trump were the same across many voting locations, therefore a computer program must have generated the result. This sounds reasonable on the surface because it seems unlikely that if you drew vote counts out of a hat they would coincide, and most people aren't equipped to be able to analyze such a statement further -- it's "ludicrous" to imagine that in a fair election that kind of anomaly would happen by accident. In practice though, combining the facts that most combinations of votes are comparatively unlikely (few locales would have a 0/N split for example) with the large number of voting locations and a healthy dose of the birthday paradox, many repeated vote tallies are _exactly_ what one would expect from a fair election. Their absence would in fact be a suspicious property indicating some kind of large-scale fraud. Anywho, I didn't investigate every theory (there were a lot), but I did check out the first 10 or so which came my way and a randomly selected 5 or so (till I grew tired or bored) from each subsequent batch. There might be a valid argument in there somewhere (and independently of their ability to come up with a valid argument there _might_ have been some kind of massive fraud), but the best evidence I've seen is pretty shoddy.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago> believe the election was stolen? I don't "believe" but I do understand why people would. Every time someone questions the result, their questioning is seen as motivated and the premise that there has already been a satisfactory investigation is assumed. This is awkward because it would be a lot easier to talk people down if there was in fact an investigation that resolved concerns to show them. > I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present a cogent argument. As I said, I don't "believe." But I'd certainly like an explanation of the two videos (one in Georgia and one of a thumb drive handoff) and perhaps some reasonable handling of the claims by observers that they weren't effectively permitted to do their jobs (asked to leave, prevented from seeing the ballots, challenging ballots that were ignored, etc.) [0] https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2020/12/03/the-georgia-ballot-underground-railroad/ https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2020/12/03/the-georgia-ballot... [1] https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2020/12/04/that-is-some-handoff-herschel-walker-shares-video-of-woman-trying-to-hide-handing-usb-drive-to-fellow-election-worker/ https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2020/12/04/that-is-some-handof...
- baud147258 6y agoI think there had been some frauds, but even without any fraud (from either side), the result would have been the same.
- ansible 6y agoWhat I don't get is why anyone would believe that the Presidential election was stolen, yet not also believe that down-ballot races were also stolen. Oh, right, because they weren't. Yes, Dems, barely managed to flip the Senate. That that was just a +3 / +1 affair. But... Look at all the House races. Repubs won all the red-leaning districts, nearly all the purple ones, and even some light-blue ones. They did better than expected in all states including the ones where 45 lost in the Presidential race. If you're going to steal the election of the President via a comprehensive, super-sneaky, multi-state conspiracy, why the fuck would you also not also steal House and Senate seats? That makes no goddamn sense. You're going to alter ballots, inject fake ballots, etc., etc., etc., and not bother with the Congress and local elections too? Moronic. Totally moronic. How fucking stupid do you have to be to believe that only the Presidential race was stolen, but everything else was fine. Who out there is a supporter of 45, that believes the Dems don't hate Moscow Mitch nearly as much as 45 himself? Or Louie Gomert, Devin Nunes, Matt Gates, or the other lackeys? "Yeah, let's steal the election for Biden, but then leave in place all the other assholes. Great idea! That will work out perfectly!" Morons.
- Proziam 6y agoHere's what I can say from where I sit as someone who did not vote in this election. For the sake of intellectual honesty, I'll post this on my main account. Strong odds it doesn't go well, but transparency is worth striving for. I have seen [3,4,5]quite a bit of evidence that there was at least some fraud taking place, and that the evidence of that fraud has been suppressed. Whether the fraud was enough to change results, no clue. I have also seen people attacking the character of everyone presenting or talking about said evidence, rather than addressing the actual content of the claims. The above is concerning, but it doesn't lead me to believe an election was stolen. However, the narrative that's being played out is that Joe Biden, a 78 year old segregationist who was crucified publicly by his now running mate Kamala Harris for those policies, and who basically didn't campaign or hold rallies, and who has [0]received most of his money from the 'upper class', won nearly 12 Million more votes than Barack Obama in 2008. He did this while [1]winning in substantially fewer counties than Barack Obama. However, most importantly, the majority of the lawsuits have [2]not been addressed based on their merits but have instead been dismissed based for procedural reasons (e.g. legal standing, injury). As a result, there has not been a transparent process through which the evidence that has been presented has been addressed. One would expect that these dismissals, and the evidence presented would have become major news. That has not happened, and that leaves people who have seen some of the evidence or who have heard about it feeling concerned. Now, I'm hesitant to bring up the Hunter Biden story because the media narratives on it are hyper-polarizing. But, many of the claims about the contents are true and some (many?) of the videos and emails have been leaked. This story was smothered by social media, just like the election-related concerns. This has led to a complete eradication of trust in the media as a whole by a huge portion of the population. - PERSONAL OPINION - The issue is not what happened, the issue is that we have become divided. Until we have more transparency we will not see people coming back together. There is no way to fix the division until the concerns of both sides can be addressed publicly, transparently, and without media (including social media) interference. Seeing videos of raw footage being marked as misinformation by twitter eradicates whatever trust people had in them. This election cycle, and the way the media is operating, reminds me of the way we found ourselves in the middle east. Everyone knew([6,7]except our allies) there were WMD's until there weren't. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-election-trump-biden-donors/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-election-trump-biden... [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/09/fact-check-joe-biden-won-most-votes-ever-and-fewest-counties/3865097001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/09/fac... [2] https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/dec/10/donald-trump-has-lost-dozens-election-lawsuits-her/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/dec/10/donald-trump-... (CTRL+F "lawsuits been disposed") [3] https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1896 https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1... [4] DISCLAIMER I am aware of the bias of the individual presenting, but the content is what is important here. https://youtu.be/XH9ihoLi1NA https://youtu.be/XH9ihoLi1NA [5] https://www.youtube.com/user/veritasvisuals https://www.youtube.com/user/veritasvisuals [6] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/who-lied-to-whom https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/who-lied-to-wh... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries
- someonehere 6y agoI’ve seen the Georgia video with the black containers placed under a table. After all the poll watchers were asked to leave, the table is moved out of the way and ballots were pulled out of the containers. Nobody has explained that from what I’ve read and it doesn’t really make any sense why it was hidden and why was it pulled out after all the witnesses were asked to leave at the end of the night?
- tchock23 6y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2020/12/04/no-atlanta-didnt-count-ballots-in-secret-or-in-suitcases/?sh=2864ca0e5a42 https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2020/12/04/no-atlanta-...
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoOh, that's easy. All the stuff the republicans said is contradicted by the democrats, the video shows normal ballot handling procedures, the investigation is still open so you can't see the report, but somebody somewhere filed a sworn affidavit that everything is A-OK and we can proceed with the plan to remove trump.
- sergefaguet 6y agoi believe so, but for reasons different from Trump's arguments. the key point is that the media was extremely supportive of Biden and not of Trump. the margin of victory was small in key states. so if the media was presenting an even-handed position and not doommongering the whole time, it seems quite probable that Trump would have won. so the argument is that the media elite has manipulated the population into doing something the population would not have done by itself. this is not certain of course, but it is a reasonable hypothesis. hence the US is not a democracy but a country controlled by a tiny media elite which has cohered around its preferred candidate.