24 ms·

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/896/censorship https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/896/censorship > In general, sedition is defined as tr

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/896/censorship https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/896/censorship > In general, sedition is defined as trying to overthrow the government with intent and means to bring it about; the Supreme Court, however, has been divided over what constitutes intent and means. > These acts made it a federal crime to speak, write, or print criticisms of the government that were false, scandalous, or malicious. It is frightening to me that so many U.S. citizens get their perception of reality through social media channels; that is to say they get messages that are amplified by algorithm with insufficient regard to refutability (and a requirement of evidence to refute or confirm.) As someone who cannot visit every single polling place in the country (I visited zero and voted by mail) I cannot with absolute certainty proclaim that there there was no widespread, coordinated and shockingly well-concealed election fraud. As a person of logic and reason and based on multiple sources of information that I consider reputable, I strongly believe this did not take place, and I would need multiple, reputable sources of information and likely trusted peer acceptance before I would change my mind to believe it did. My way of trying to only accept what I believe to be accurate information will always be imperfect, and, at times, fail me. But I believe it is only shades different from what someone who believes in election fraud does. Their sources include the content of speeches made by the President of the United States, news anchors and journalists of conversatively-biased news, and perhaps most importantly, peers they trust liking and sharing those same speeches and articles with them as a stamp of acceptance. That's a complex and very human problem that is not readily solved with gut reactions, broad strokes and absolutes.

germinalphrase 6y ago
One difference, of course, is that despite there being a significant number of ‘trusted’ sources claiming extensive election fraud - there has been near zero evidence presented by these same sources to defend the claims. That alone should be a red flag that the claims are mere assertions rather than statements of fact.
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  I might be convinced to be skeptical if judges say, woah this is damaging EVEN if those judges are Trump appointed, by the same token though, if a Trump appointed judge laughs Trump's team out of the court with a frivolous law suit, I'm doubly sure that there's absolutely no chance of fraud. The RIGHT, people who supported/enabled Trump have said, nope - nothing to see, all's legit, got any better proof? Kemp for instance was a HUGE Trump supporter, Pence has no reason not to support Trump, yet now he's a "traitor" for doing his job. Seriously. I'd hate to play any board game with these people, you could never win, they'd throw a fit if they lost until you admit they won...
- neogodless 6y ago
  From my perspective, every article on Reuters included the phrase "claimed without evidence" in regards to election fraud. For me, trusting Reuters, that is sufficient information. From a believer's perspective, articles mentioned affidavits, eye-witness testimony, court cases being filed, and important, trusted people saying something along the lines of "there is evidence the courts are not even considering!" Presumably if that same believer dug deep enough into individual court cases and affidavits and statements by the judges dismissing cases, they may have changed their mind. But I don't dig that deep, and obviously neither do the believers. We are wired to our inclination of confirmation bias. When we are already programmed and motivated to find evidence of what we already believe, we do not tend to exhaust every option possible to validate it. We stop when we cross the smallest of hurdles of validation.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    The utility of (and general lack of consequences for using) these dishonest rhetorical strategies is unlikely to go away as they are a culmination of the general obstructionist political environment of the DNC/RNC duopoly since (at least) the early 90’s. We are in a tough place.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    they may have changed their mind I disagree. There's no way they would have changed their minds. It's just an excuse. A thin veneer of plausible deniability while they willingly keep their heads in the sand. The simple explanation is no one is that stupid, that fascist, but, maybe they are. Maybe this is the effect of a decades long campaign by conservative politicians & pundits to constantly gaslight America & try to keep the electorate uneducated. Either way, people clinging to these obvious falsehoods are seditious at worst or useful idiots at best.
    - bra-ket 6y ago
      >maybe they are or maybe liberal propaganda is very effective.
      - 6y ago
- warent 6y ago
  I found the confirmation hearing on Wednesday to be very informative on this. There were countless objectors attempting to invalidate the Pensylvannia vote, all echoing each other on a variety of reasons including voter fraud. Republican house members made very convincing arguments on the floor that caused me to wonder what information I was missing. The democratic house members who argued against the objections easily tore down their arguments. Their largest point with respect to voter fraud was that there were was actually _no_ legal action mentioning voter fraud brought up in the many many court cases launched by Trump's team. The reasoning being because lawyers can have their licenses revoked for intentionally lying about serious accusations and no lawyer was willing to put their career on the line for something they had no evidence for. I respect everyone's views and consider myself to be somewhat moderate, but damn overall republican house lost a ton of respect from me that night.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    If you want more details on the various court cases, I can recommend the "Legal Eagle" channel on Youtube, run by a trial lawyer from DC. This video is specifically on the minutiae of many election fraud court cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-nblE8ps2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-nblE8ps2M (Not affiliated, just a fan.)
- dominotw 6y ago
  shouldn't the onus of proving that there was no fraud be on the govt, instead of the other way around. In an ideal world is there way to prove definitively that there was no fraud? Or is this something unprovable.
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    There's better ways to run an election with verification systems. Venezuela does it pretty well, probably because they know there's an invasion itchy trigger finger pointed at them.* Poll workers for instance, get drafted from a lottery right near the election instead of a voluntary system so there's no way a team of confederates could scheme behind the scenes. There's also multiple tabulating and verification steps. The ballots are both machine and hand counted. The people and machines are chosen at random and nobody could rig all the machines because nobody has access to all of them. Nobody can coordinate an effort for subordinates to rig them because again, the teams are formed via a random draft. Test ballots get fed through the machines by teams of observers who get randomly assigned to polling stations for surprise inspections. Furthermore the top 6 candidates independently verify the tally. They each get essentially an open book of the records. Statistical spot check surveys are done as a further confirmation etc. There's lots of international observers, etc Every voter gets a copy of the ballot and a confirmation number that they can go and check the record of. Maybe someone else can find a place where corruption in the tabulation could occur but it looks pretty airtight to me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Venezuela#Polling_procedure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Venezuela#Polling... * - It's worth noting I'm not saying anything about the outcome of the elections or the politics. Voter intimidation and disinformation could still happen, lots of objectionable things. But their tabulation of votes seems to be pretty clean. Dictators, if that's your opinion here, can stay in power without lying about the vote count by, say, deciding what makes it on the ballot in the first place. For an extreme example, this election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_German_parliamentary_election_and_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_German_parliamentary_elec... could have been exemplary - as clean as mathematically possible, and had the same outcome.
    - hker 6y ago
netsharc 6y ago
> As someone who cannot visit every single polling place in the country (I visited zero and voted by mail) I cannot with absolute certainty proclaim that there there was no widespread, coordinated and shockingly well-concealed election fraud. As a person of logic and reason, I strongly belief this did not take place, and I would need multiple, reputable sources of information and likely trusted peer acceptance before I would change my mind to believe it did. I have the same views. There are actually some "They stole my election!" people on HN, so maybe they'll read this and reconsider their "reality", but Biden won by several thousands in the 3 disputed states, to pull off voter fraud to swing that many votes require a lot of work, and probably a lot of people, and the problem with having many people is that it's hard to keep something like that secret. And if they were going to steal the presidency, why did some GOP candidates in those states still win seats, why not flip enough things Dem so that the "tyrants" have a comfortable majority? I think Trump's "They stole it!" proclamations are a scheme to keep his base heated so they can donate to his retirement fund, although yesterdays "We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue!" (only for him to take the limo back to the White House) probably goes beyond that, that was an incredible "Release the hounds!" moment. It's infuriating that a significant percentage of the country doesn't listen to reason, haven't even looked at how flimsy the court arguments that Team Total Landscaping have made, but are just screaming everywhere "I know the truth, and the truth is, they stole it!". Then again, many probably would get lost in the first paragraph if they tried to read any court filing. (Not being insulting, but hey, someone must've thought years ago "why spend money to educate children if they're just going to vote you out.".) This is turning to a rant, but it seems the seditionists in congress who are also still claiming voter fraud without evidence (like Cruz or Hawley) just want to keep the Trump base very very pissed off, and very very motivated.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > it seems the seditionists in congress who are also still claiming voter fraud without evidence (like Cruz or Hawley) just want to keep the Trump base very very pissed off, and very very motivated. Or they want to keep the crazies on their side, rather than being turned on suddenly the way the insufficiently strident (e.g.,.most visibly recently, Pence) have often been. Still had the effect of contributing to radicalization, but the intent may be more avoiding becoming a target.
disown 6y ago
> As a person of logic and reason and based on multiple sources of information that I consider reputable Name it. What sources? Every major news source has been complaining about "election theft" for 4 years and warning about election theft in 2020. The issue with corrupt elections has been around at least since 2000 ( Bush v Gore ). Here is an NYU professor giving a lecture about it in 2008 ( about the bush election theft ). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPhL53ol0DE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPhL53ol0DE You'll notice the exact same issues voting machines, ballots, etc discussed. Any person of logic and reason will conclude there was election fraud. Both the democrats and republicans have had 4 years to prepare for it. But also reason and logic says that if both cheated then so be it. The national election system is designed specifically to be gamed. It's not just local voting that has problems - gerrymandering, voting suppression, etc., but the national election as well. There is no doubt in my mind that Trump and Hillary cheated in 2016. I think the DNC's hubris underestimated Trump and that's why he won. I think this time, Trump's hubris cost him. I mean "china, china, china" gets old after a while. Rational people understand that both sides cheated and the better cheater won. Only democratic political activists think there was no cheating and only republican political activists think we should overturn the election because of cheating. Rational people understand there was cheating and are willing to live with it because both sides cheated and the system is designed to make it impossible to prove cheating. The ballots are lost in time, like tears in rain. As I said in 2016, I will say it in 2020, let the better cheater win. If Trump and the GOP really wanted to win, they should have worked harder.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  Agreed. Ours is a system of Darwinism. We provide a very high bar to clear to accuse someone of cheating and it's not often cleared. However, the opportunity is always there to fix vulnerabilities for the next election (see: Russian interference). You can't be mad if you lose, you just have to make sure it doesn't happen again (for the same reason). See: - Hanging chads (ballot got fixed) - Gerrymandering (currently getting legislated away) - Russian interference (more oversight currently) - Electronic voting machines (no longer used...oh wait)
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  An yet in 20 years, no one has presented any proof of actual election fraud. However there are tons and tons of evidence that foreign powers like Russia and China troll and spread millions of fake stories to fool more gullible Americans. I don't recall a single democrat saying "the dominion voting machines are fake data!" And yet here we are with a President seeing election fraud everywhere with not one solid piece of evidence. Only accusations.
silicon2401 6y ago
> My way of trying to only accept what I believe to be accurate information will always be imperfect, and, at times, fail me. But I believe it is only shades different from what someone who believes in election fraud does. > That's a complex and very human problem that is not readily solved with gut reactions, broad strokes and absolutes. Sadly, though I feel the same as you, this kind of mindset is a vanishing minority in the US, or so it would seem based on most allowed speech these days. One can daily find entire reddit threads about how one side or another is absolutely unreasonable, and one shouldn't even consider that the other side may have reasons. And this goes for all sides. For those of us who try to remain objective and rational, the only option is increasingly to remain silent or find safe spaces (ironically, from the very crowd that popularized the concept of safe spaces). That's the main reason I started spending more time on HN. I've written before, this is one of the few popular places on the internet where being rational and impartial is common, though even here that seems to slowly be changing.
jtxxwl 6y ago
>Their sources include the content of speeches made by the President of the United States, news anchors and journalists of conversatively-biased news, and perhaps most importantly, peers they trust liking and sharing those same speeches and articles with them as a stamp of acceptance. Their sources also include the statements and behaviors of news anchors and journalists and politicians and political activists and others with a left-leaning bias (and to a lesser extent right-leaning figures that opposed Trump, e.g. Bush, Romney, McCain). For the past 5 years, the only major position on the left is that Trump is a grave threat to our democracy and to the lives and well-being of nearly everyone on this earth. Rightly or wrongly, they have accused him of being a Russian asset, being elected thanks to (perhaps welcomed) foreign interference in the election, cruelly separating children from their parents at the border, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands due to negligence in handling a pandemic, inciting racial hatred, disenfranchising voters, ignoring or exacerbating the climate crisis when we have little time to spare in addressing it, misusing his power, attempting to take away health care from millions, attempting to set back womens' rights, and so on. See [1] for a recent example. The rhetoric and actions of the left (and anti-Trump right) leave no room for doubt in the mind of Trump supporters that the left would do nearly anything to get Trump out of power, including cheating in the election (and that anti-Trump republicans would be happy to see it happen). How could they justify not doing so, if they truly believe the things I listed above? Do they believe the threat to democracy posed by cheating in the election is greater than the threat to democracy posed by Trump ruling for another 4 years? Does it compare to the magnitude of destruction already wrought against our people and our planet as a result of the 2016 election loss? If not cheating makes a repeat of 2016 more likely, how could they justify running the election fairly? Add to that the undisputed pandemic-related restrictions put in place on election observers, and tell me how the right could possibly believe anything else. The lack of smoking gun physical evidence is not convincing when the relevant materials are under the control of the very people that are believed to have done the crime, and they are not forthcoming with providing access to them. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25688158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25688158
- arolihas 6y ago
  The onus is on your side to show how this election was stolen. All of your rhetoric about the left hating trump is not evidence of any fraud. One could’ve said the same things about Hillary Clinton in 2016, who’s been reviled by the right for decades.
snowflake_ptr 6y ago
There's no evidence for election fraud due to a combination of officials and media intentionally not searching for it, and events that make it difficult or impossible to determine that fraud actually ocurred. As an example of the latter: Georgia election officials intentionally deceived journalists and (Republican) observers into leaving a vote-counting event by lying to them and telling them that they were done for the night, then pulling out hidden containers of ballots and counting them[1][2], which resulted in 98% of ballots being for Biden. This was backed up by sworn testimonies from two observers[3], news reports from multiple stations[4](see [2] for links to other news organizations that reported this - none were Fox News), and video footage[1]. The above is not only being ignored by the majority of media outlets (intentional ignorance), but there's no way to prove that voter fraud didn't occur when the voting process was completely unmonitored. I don't believe that the situation was actually illegal[5] - but there's no way that a sane person can look at the above circumstances and conclude that the election officials weren't trying to hide something, and a reasonable person would look at that batch of 98% of ballots being for Biden (which stand out among the counting for that entire evening) and conclude that that was almost certainly fraud. Moreover, there's either no legal action, or no legal resolution (due to e.g. courts dismissing cases on technicalities, and not even considering an evidentary hearing) for these issues. Hence, no good evidence for voter fraud only because of intentional ignorance and deceit to prevent such evidence from being obtained. PostScript: This deceit was committed by the country government. That fits the criteria of "coordinated" at a technical level (i.e. multiple individuals working in concert). [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1335057722560155651 https://mobile.twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1335057722560... [2] 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... [3] https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20420331-mitchell-harrison-affidavit https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20420331-mitchell-h... [4] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pipe-bursts-atlanta-arena-causing-hour-delay-processing/story?id=73981348 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pipe-bursts-atlanta-arena-ca... [5] https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-21/chapter-2/article-11/part-1/21-2-408 https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-21/chapter-2...
- gilbetron 6y ago

germinalphrase 6y ago

One difference, of course, is that despite there being a significant number of ‘trusted’ sources claiming extensive election fraud - there has been near zero evidence presented by these same sources to defend the claims. That alone should be a red flag that the claims are mere assertions rather than statements of fact.

gremlinsinc 6y ago
I might be convinced to be skeptical if judges say, woah this is damaging EVEN if those judges are Trump appointed, by the same token though, if a Trump appointed judge laughs Trump's team out of the court with a frivolous law suit, I'm doubly sure that there's absolutely no chance of fraud. The RIGHT, people who supported/enabled Trump have said, nope - nothing to see, all's legit, got any better proof? Kemp for instance was a HUGE Trump supporter, Pence has no reason not to support Trump, yet now he's a "traitor" for doing his job. Seriously. I'd hate to play any board game with these people, you could never win, they'd throw a fit if they lost until you admit they won...
neogodless 6y ago
From my perspective, every article on Reuters included the phrase "claimed without evidence" in regards to election fraud. For me, trusting Reuters, that is sufficient information. From a believer's perspective, articles mentioned affidavits, eye-witness testimony, court cases being filed, and important, trusted people saying something along the lines of "there is evidence the courts are not even considering!" Presumably if that same believer dug deep enough into individual court cases and affidavits and statements by the judges dismissing cases, they may have changed their mind. But I don't dig that deep, and obviously neither do the believers. We are wired to our inclination of confirmation bias. When we are already programmed and motivated to find evidence of what we already believe, we do not tend to exhaust every option possible to validate it. We stop when we cross the smallest of hurdles of validation.
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  The utility of (and general lack of consequences for using) these dishonest rhetorical strategies is unlikely to go away as they are a culmination of the general obstructionist political environment of the DNC/RNC duopoly since (at least) the early 90’s. We are in a tough place.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  they may have changed their mind I disagree. There's no way they would have changed their minds. It's just an excuse. A thin veneer of plausible deniability while they willingly keep their heads in the sand. The simple explanation is no one is that stupid, that fascist, but, maybe they are. Maybe this is the effect of a decades long campaign by conservative politicians & pundits to constantly gaslight America & try to keep the electorate uneducated. Either way, people clinging to these obvious falsehoods are seditious at worst or useful idiots at best.
  - bra-ket 6y ago
    >maybe they are or maybe liberal propaganda is very effective.
    - 6y ago
warent 6y ago
I found the confirmation hearing on Wednesday to be very informative on this. There were countless objectors attempting to invalidate the Pensylvannia vote, all echoing each other on a variety of reasons including voter fraud. Republican house members made very convincing arguments on the floor that caused me to wonder what information I was missing. The democratic house members who argued against the objections easily tore down their arguments. Their largest point with respect to voter fraud was that there were was actually _no_ legal action mentioning voter fraud brought up in the many many court cases launched by Trump's team. The reasoning being because lawyers can have their licenses revoked for intentionally lying about serious accusations and no lawyer was willing to put their career on the line for something they had no evidence for. I respect everyone's views and consider myself to be somewhat moderate, but damn overall republican house lost a ton of respect from me that night.
- majewsky 6y ago
  If you want more details on the various court cases, I can recommend the "Legal Eagle" channel on Youtube, run by a trial lawyer from DC. This video is specifically on the minutiae of many election fraud court cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-nblE8ps2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-nblE8ps2M (Not affiliated, just a fan.)
dominotw 6y ago
shouldn't the onus of proving that there was no fraud be on the govt, instead of the other way around. In an ideal world is there way to prove definitively that there was no fraud? Or is this something unprovable.
- kristopolous 6y ago
  There's better ways to run an election with verification systems. Venezuela does it pretty well, probably because they know there's an invasion itchy trigger finger pointed at them.* Poll workers for instance, get drafted from a lottery right near the election instead of a voluntary system so there's no way a team of confederates could scheme behind the scenes. There's also multiple tabulating and verification steps. The ballots are both machine and hand counted. The people and machines are chosen at random and nobody could rig all the machines because nobody has access to all of them. Nobody can coordinate an effort for subordinates to rig them because again, the teams are formed via a random draft. Test ballots get fed through the machines by teams of observers who get randomly assigned to polling stations for surprise inspections. Furthermore the top 6 candidates independently verify the tally. They each get essentially an open book of the records. Statistical spot check surveys are done as a further confirmation etc. There's lots of international observers, etc Every voter gets a copy of the ballot and a confirmation number that they can go and check the record of. Maybe someone else can find a place where corruption in the tabulation could occur but it looks pretty airtight to me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Venezuela#Polling_procedure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Venezuela#Polling... * - It's worth noting I'm not saying anything about the outcome of the elections or the politics. Voter intimidation and disinformation could still happen, lots of objectionable things. But their tabulation of votes seems to be pretty clean. Dictators, if that's your opinion here, can stay in power without lying about the vote count by, say, deciding what makes it on the ballot in the first place. For an extreme example, this election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_German_parliamentary_election_and_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_German_parliamentary_elec... could have been exemplary - as clean as mathematically possible, and had the same outcome.
  - hker 6y ago

netsharc 6y ago

> As someone who cannot visit every single polling place in the country (I visited zero and voted by mail) I cannot with absolute certainty proclaim that there there was no widespread, coordinated and shockingly well-concealed election fraud. As a person of logic and reason, I strongly belief this did not take place, and I would need multiple, reputable sources of information and likely trusted peer acceptance before I would change my mind to believe it did. I have the same views. There are actually some "They stole my election!" people on HN, so maybe they'll read this and reconsider their "reality", but Biden won by several thousands in the 3 disputed states, to pull off voter fraud to swing that many votes require a lot of work, and probably a lot of people, and the problem with having many people is that it's hard to keep something like that secret. And if they were going to steal the presidency, why did some GOP candidates in those states still win seats, why not flip enough things Dem so that the "tyrants" have a comfortable majority? I think Trump's "They stole it!" proclamations are a scheme to keep his base heated so they can donate to his retirement fund, although yesterdays "We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue!" (only for him to take the limo back to the White House) probably goes beyond that, that was an incredible "Release the hounds!" moment. It's infuriating that a significant percentage of the country doesn't listen to reason, haven't even looked at how flimsy the court arguments that Team Total Landscaping have made, but are just screaming everywhere "I know the truth, and the truth is, they stole it!". Then again, many probably would get lost in the first paragraph if they tried to read any court filing. (Not being insulting, but hey, someone must've thought years ago "why spend money to educate children if they're just going to vote you out.".) This is turning to a rant, but it seems the seditionists in congress who are also still claiming voter fraud without evidence (like Cruz or Hawley) just want to keep the Trump base very very pissed off, and very very motivated.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> it seems the seditionists in congress who are also still claiming voter fraud without evidence (like Cruz or Hawley) just want to keep the Trump base very very pissed off, and very very motivated. Or they want to keep the crazies on their side, rather than being turned on suddenly the way the insufficiently strident (e.g.,.most visibly recently, Pence) have often been. Still had the effect of contributing to radicalization, but the intent may be more avoiding becoming a target.

disown 6y ago

> As a person of logic and reason and based on multiple sources of information that I consider reputable Name it. What sources? Every major news source has been complaining about "election theft" for 4 years and warning about election theft in 2020. The issue with corrupt elections has been around at least since 2000 ( Bush v Gore ). Here is an NYU professor giving a lecture about it in 2008 ( about the bush election theft ). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPhL53ol0DE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPhL53ol0DE You'll notice the exact same issues voting machines, ballots, etc discussed. Any person of logic and reason will conclude there was election fraud. Both the democrats and republicans have had 4 years to prepare for it. But also reason and logic says that if both cheated then so be it. The national election system is designed specifically to be gamed. It's not just local voting that has problems - gerrymandering, voting suppression, etc., but the national election as well. There is no doubt in my mind that Trump and Hillary cheated in 2016. I think the DNC's hubris underestimated Trump and that's why he won. I think this time, Trump's hubris cost him. I mean "china, china, china" gets old after a while. Rational people understand that both sides cheated and the better cheater won. Only democratic political activists think there was no cheating and only republican political activists think we should overturn the election because of cheating. Rational people understand there was cheating and are willing to live with it because both sides cheated and the system is designed to make it impossible to prove cheating. The ballots are lost in time, like tears in rain. As I said in 2016, I will say it in 2020, let the better cheater win. If Trump and the GOP really wanted to win, they should have worked harder.

jimbob45 6y ago
Agreed. Ours is a system of Darwinism. We provide a very high bar to clear to accuse someone of cheating and it's not often cleared. However, the opportunity is always there to fix vulnerabilities for the next election (see: Russian interference). You can't be mad if you lose, you just have to make sure it doesn't happen again (for the same reason). See: - Hanging chads (ballot got fixed) - Gerrymandering (currently getting legislated away) - Russian interference (more oversight currently) - Electronic voting machines (no longer used...oh wait)
stjohnswarts 6y ago
An yet in 20 years, no one has presented any proof of actual election fraud. However there are tons and tons of evidence that foreign powers like Russia and China troll and spread millions of fake stories to fool more gullible Americans. I don't recall a single democrat saying "the dominion voting machines are fake data!" And yet here we are with a President seeing election fraud everywhere with not one solid piece of evidence. Only accusations.

silicon2401 6y ago

> My way of trying to only accept what I believe to be accurate information will always be imperfect, and, at times, fail me. But I believe it is only shades different from what someone who believes in election fraud does. > That's a complex and very human problem that is not readily solved with gut reactions, broad strokes and absolutes. Sadly, though I feel the same as you, this kind of mindset is a vanishing minority in the US, or so it would seem based on most allowed speech these days. One can daily find entire reddit threads about how one side or another is absolutely unreasonable, and one shouldn't even consider that the other side may have reasons. And this goes for all sides. For those of us who try to remain objective and rational, the only option is increasingly to remain silent or find safe spaces (ironically, from the very crowd that popularized the concept of safe spaces). That's the main reason I started spending more time on HN. I've written before, this is one of the few popular places on the internet where being rational and impartial is common, though even here that seems to slowly be changing.

jtxxwl 6y ago

>Their sources include the content of speeches made by the President of the United States, news anchors and journalists of conversatively-biased news, and perhaps most importantly, peers they trust liking and sharing those same speeches and articles with them as a stamp of acceptance. Their sources also include the statements and behaviors of news anchors and journalists and politicians and political activists and others with a left-leaning bias (and to a lesser extent right-leaning figures that opposed Trump, e.g. Bush, Romney, McCain). For the past 5 years, the only major position on the left is that Trump is a grave threat to our democracy and to the lives and well-being of nearly everyone on this earth. Rightly or wrongly, they have accused him of being a Russian asset, being elected thanks to (perhaps welcomed) foreign interference in the election, cruelly separating children from their parents at the border, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands due to negligence in handling a pandemic, inciting racial hatred, disenfranchising voters, ignoring or exacerbating the climate crisis when we have little time to spare in addressing it, misusing his power, attempting to take away health care from millions, attempting to set back womens' rights, and so on. See [1] for a recent example. The rhetoric and actions of the left (and anti-Trump right) leave no room for doubt in the mind of Trump supporters that the left would do nearly anything to get Trump out of power, including cheating in the election (and that anti-Trump republicans would be happy to see it happen). How could they justify not doing so, if they truly believe the things I listed above? Do they believe the threat to democracy posed by cheating in the election is greater than the threat to democracy posed by Trump ruling for another 4 years? Does it compare to the magnitude of destruction already wrought against our people and our planet as a result of the 2016 election loss? If not cheating makes a repeat of 2016 more likely, how could they justify running the election fairly? Add to that the undisputed pandemic-related restrictions put in place on election observers, and tell me how the right could possibly believe anything else. The lack of smoking gun physical evidence is not convincing when the relevant materials are under the control of the very people that are believed to have done the crime, and they are not forthcoming with providing access to them. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25688158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25688158

arolihas 6y ago
The onus is on your side to show how this election was stolen. All of your rhetoric about the left hating trump is not evidence of any fraud. One could’ve said the same things about Hillary Clinton in 2016, who’s been reviled by the right for decades.

snowflake_ptr 6y ago

There's no evidence for election fraud due to a combination of officials and media intentionally not searching for it, and events that make it difficult or impossible to determine that fraud actually ocurred. As an example of the latter: Georgia election officials intentionally deceived journalists and (Republican) observers into leaving a vote-counting event by lying to them and telling them that they were done for the night, then pulling out hidden containers of ballots and counting them[1][2], which resulted in 98% of ballots being for Biden. This was backed up by sworn testimonies from two observers[3], news reports from multiple stations[4](see [2] for links to other news organizations that reported this - none were Fox News), and video footage[1]. The above is not only being ignored by the majority of media outlets (intentional ignorance), but there's no way to prove that voter fraud didn't occur when the voting process was completely unmonitored. I don't believe that the situation was actually illegal[5] - but there's no way that a sane person can look at the above circumstances and conclude that the election officials weren't trying to hide something, and a reasonable person would look at that batch of 98% of ballots being for Biden (which stand out among the counting for that entire evening) and conclude that that was almost certainly fraud. Moreover, there's either no legal action, or no legal resolution (due to e.g. courts dismissing cases on technicalities, and not even considering an evidentary hearing) for these issues. Hence, no good evidence for voter fraud only because of intentional ignorance and deceit to prevent such evidence from being obtained. PostScript: This deceit was committed by the country government. That fits the criteria of "coordinated" at a technical level (i.e. multiple individuals working in concert). [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1335057722560155651 https://mobile.twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1335057722560... [2] 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... [3] https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20420331-mitchell-harrison-affidavit https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20420331-mitchell-h... [4] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pipe-bursts-atlanta-arena-causing-hour-delay-processing/story?id=73981348 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pipe-bursts-atlanta-arena-ca... [5] https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-21/chapter-2/article-11/part-1/21-2-408 https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-21/chapter-2...

gilbetron 6y ago