6 ms·

Donald Trump was the one saying the 2016 election had massive voter fraud. He was saying it before, after, and during that election. His words in 2016 and 201

by enkid 6y ago

Donald Trump was the one saying the 2016 election had massive voter fraud. He was saying it before, after, and during that election. His words in 2016 and 2017 we're much worse in spreading distrust in the electoral system than any democrat since the Civil War. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/politics/donald-trump-voter-fraud-popular-vote/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/politics/donald-trump-voter-f...

roenxi 6y ago
Kamala Harris in 2020 was helping to bail out people arrested for instigating race rioters, and she turns out to be great material for a VP pick. This isn't a new low, this is accepted behaviour in US political protesting. If the Democrats hadn't spend 3 years pushing the idea that the electoral system was compromised then maybe there'd be a more credible argument that this protest was new or problematic. Certainly if the world wasn't just fresh out of the BLM protests. But honestly, standards were set and there isn't anything unusual happening here, except it is right-wingers instead of leftists. American politics has a certain symmetry to it. Which is why this escalation is troubling.
- starfallg 6y ago
  Yes. The US electorial system is compromised. By Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression. Both proven by facts. Whereas Trump just pulled his 'electoral fraud' claims from a hat and his lawyer got laughed out of court.
  - AuryGlenz 6y ago
    You could easily see the same for Democratic gerrymandering and policies that make it easy for people to commit fraud - lack of voter ID being the biggy.
    - wtallis 6y ago
      Gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics have quantifiable effects on the outcome of elections. Voter ID requirements have quantifiable effects on the amount of voter fraud that is committed. Looking at any half-decent estimates of the size of those effects will show that you're drawing a false equivalence. There simply is no quantitative argument in support of voter ID requirements, because the kind of fraud they defend against is already practically non-existent and definitely not prevalent enough to sway the outcome of elections. Analyzing voter ID as a voter suppression technique shows it easily has more harmful impact on election integrity than its notional benefits of preventing the kind of fraud that doesn't really happen to begin with. And this is why any calls for the institution of voter ID requirements in the US should not be taken at face value. Your comment would have made a much stronger argument if you hadn't tossed in such an obvious, tired and deeply flawed talking point.
      - AuryGlenz 6y ago
        How would we know that the fraud that would be prevented with voter ID is insignificant? It seems we have no real election auditing in our country, which frankly should be something that's done automatically at least on a spot-check basis. One large category of fraud that it would prevent would be illegal immigrant voting. In my state you can register by having someone that is already registered vouch for you. That's it. No other identification needed. I'd honestly like to know what voter suppression tactics are happening in America. From what I've heard from Europeans they tend to be pretty amazed at how lax our process is.
        wtallis 6y ago
        > How would we know that the fraud that would be prevented with voter ID is insignificant? The fraud made possible by not requiring voters to show ID is the possibility that someone could impersonate a registered voter and cast their ballot. There are natural limiting factors on how much this form of fraud can be scaled up. Any one person impersonating other registered voters can probably get away with at most casting one ballot per voting location, lest they be recognized as a repeat visitor. Each person voting fraudulently needs to pick a specific registered voter to impersonate at each location, and memorize basic information about this voter (eg. name and address), and physically travel to each voting location. And if any of the marks picked to impersonate end up trying to vote for themselves, the attempted duplicate voter will be detected. So each participant in such a fraud scheme is good for optimistically a dozen fraudulent in-person votes over the course of any one election day, and if committed at scale with a large number of people, the risk of detection quickly becomes very high. The real-world rate of detection of this kind of fraud is extremely low, so we can be confident that this impractical form of fraud is in fact seldom attempted. > It seems we have no real election auditing in our country, which frankly should be something that's done automatically at least on a spot-check basis. I don't think this statement is about voter ID. > One large category of fraud that it would prevent would be illegal immigrant voting. In my state you can register by having someone that is already registered vouch for you. That's it. No other identification needed. The Voter ID proposals that have been so controversial in the US in recent years (since ~2006) are not about showing ID to register to vote. They're about showing ID on election day, even if you're already legally registered and have been voting without trouble for decades. If you are saying "voter ID" but you mean to talk about tighter controls on the voter registration process rather than on the process of voting on election day, then you should use different terminology rather than using a term that has a different meaning in current common usage. But aside from that terminology issue: requiring people to show ID when registering to vote ahead of the election is not the only practical way to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. Even if a prospective voter does not show current government issued photo ID when registering to vote, they still have to provide identifying information as part of the registration process. This can be audited before election day.
  - whatthesmack 6y ago
    I don't believe any of the electoral fraud claims were actually judged... it's all been rejected for a lack of standing. People saying courts rejected the fraud claims are generally mistaken, because the evidence never got presented.
    - mewse 6y ago
      Were there actually any fraud claims in court? I seem to recall that when actually in court, the attorneys were all very careful to explain that they weren't making any claims of fraud.
    - cmurf 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related... Not all for lack of standing. The evidence that has been presented for fraud is ordinary and could not have affected the outcome of the election. That's consistent with what every one of the ~3000 county clerks in the U.S. will tell you about every election. A much bigger issue is election fraud including voter suppression. What has pissed off Republicans this time around, is expansive mail-in balloting as a result of COVID mitigation. It managed to expand the voting pool against their wishes by making it generally easier for people to vote. It's difficult for judges to look at this and go, "ok so your legislative intent is to make it hard for some people to vote, but these are still legally cast votes per the legislature's own legislation, and you just don't like the outcome so you want me to disenfranchise them?" That's a no. A judge isn't going to do that.
      - no-s 6y ago
        >> The evidence that has been presented for fraud is ordinary and could not have affected the outcome of the election. I feel this is a dangerous cop-out. Some people feel this should be examined[1]. The evidence of actual problems in the election is suppressed by refusal to allow court proceedings and audit. This in turn renders remarks like yours more anecdotal than quantifiable. I'm not saying this is Venezuela, but there does indeed appear there are trout in the milk. [1]https://hereistheevidence.com https://hereistheevidence.com
marcusverus 6y ago
Democrats spend two years telling the public that the President of the United States was a Russian asset. They convinced half of the country that Trump colluded with the Russians.[0] When a two year investigation found nothing, Democrat leadership, including the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, refused to acknowledge the president's innocence. Instead, she used her position to advance the conspiracy theory with lines like "The president was not exonerated!", which is weasel-speak for "The president was not proven innocent!" Democrats are happy to undermine our democratic institutions when it suits them. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-poll/despite-report-findings-almost-half-of-americans-think-trump-colluded-with-russia-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKCN1R72S0 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-poll/des...
- thefucnjosh 6y ago
  Which is wrong, and given Twitter's stance of issuing corrections for tweets, probably should have made her a ripe target. However, that doesn't excuse Trump's use of terrorism.
  - skindoe 6y ago
    Terrorism?
- metabagel 6y ago
  There was effectively no Senate trial, because Republicans refused to call witnesses. It was a sham. If Trump was innocent, they would have been happy to call witnesses, but they exercised raw power to make it go away. To me, that constitutes “undermining our democratic institutions”.
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    You're referring to the impeachment process, the basis for which was a shady phone call during which Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to open an investigation of Joe Biden. That had absolutely nothing to do with the Russian Collusion investigation.
- 6y ago

by enkid 6y ago

roenxi 6y ago

Kamala Harris in 2020 was helping to bail out people arrested for instigating race rioters, and she turns out to be great material for a VP pick. This isn't a new low, this is accepted behaviour in US political protesting. If the Democrats hadn't spend 3 years pushing the idea that the electoral system was compromised then maybe there'd be a more credible argument that this protest was new or problematic. Certainly if the world wasn't just fresh out of the BLM protests. But honestly, standards were set and there isn't anything unusual happening here, except it is right-wingers instead of leftists. American politics has a certain symmetry to it. Which is why this escalation is troubling.

starfallg 6y ago
Yes. The US electorial system is compromised. By Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression. Both proven by facts. Whereas Trump just pulled his 'electoral fraud' claims from a hat and his lawyer got laughed out of court.
- AuryGlenz 6y ago
  You could easily see the same for Democratic gerrymandering and policies that make it easy for people to commit fraud - lack of voter ID being the biggy.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    Gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics have quantifiable effects on the outcome of elections. Voter ID requirements have quantifiable effects on the amount of voter fraud that is committed. Looking at any half-decent estimates of the size of those effects will show that you're drawing a false equivalence. There simply is no quantitative argument in support of voter ID requirements, because the kind of fraud they defend against is already practically non-existent and definitely not prevalent enough to sway the outcome of elections. Analyzing voter ID as a voter suppression technique shows it easily has more harmful impact on election integrity than its notional benefits of preventing the kind of fraud that doesn't really happen to begin with. And this is why any calls for the institution of voter ID requirements in the US should not be taken at face value. Your comment would have made a much stronger argument if you hadn't tossed in such an obvious, tired and deeply flawed talking point.
    - AuryGlenz 6y ago
      How would we know that the fraud that would be prevented with voter ID is insignificant? It seems we have no real election auditing in our country, which frankly should be something that's done automatically at least on a spot-check basis. One large category of fraud that it would prevent would be illegal immigrant voting. In my state you can register by having someone that is already registered vouch for you. That's it. No other identification needed. I'd honestly like to know what voter suppression tactics are happening in America. From what I've heard from Europeans they tend to be pretty amazed at how lax our process is.
      - wtallis 6y ago
        > How would we know that the fraud that would be prevented with voter ID is insignificant? The fraud made possible by not requiring voters to show ID is the possibility that someone could impersonate a registered voter and cast their ballot. There are natural limiting factors on how much this form of fraud can be scaled up. Any one person impersonating other registered voters can probably get away with at most casting one ballot per voting location, lest they be recognized as a repeat visitor. Each person voting fraudulently needs to pick a specific registered voter to impersonate at each location, and memorize basic information about this voter (eg. name and address), and physically travel to each voting location. And if any of the marks picked to impersonate end up trying to vote for themselves, the attempted duplicate voter will be detected. So each participant in such a fraud scheme is good for optimistically a dozen fraudulent in-person votes over the course of any one election day, and if committed at scale with a large number of people, the risk of detection quickly becomes very high. The real-world rate of detection of this kind of fraud is extremely low, so we can be confident that this impractical form of fraud is in fact seldom attempted. > It seems we have no real election auditing in our country, which frankly should be something that's done automatically at least on a spot-check basis. I don't think this statement is about voter ID. > One large category of fraud that it would prevent would be illegal immigrant voting. In my state you can register by having someone that is already registered vouch for you. That's it. No other identification needed. The Voter ID proposals that have been so controversial in the US in recent years (since ~2006) are not about showing ID to register to vote. They're about showing ID on election day, even if you're already legally registered and have been voting without trouble for decades. If you are saying "voter ID" but you mean to talk about tighter controls on the voter registration process rather than on the process of voting on election day, then you should use different terminology rather than using a term that has a different meaning in current common usage. But aside from that terminology issue: requiring people to show ID when registering to vote ahead of the election is not the only practical way to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. Even if a prospective voter does not show current government issued photo ID when registering to vote, they still have to provide identifying information as part of the registration process. This can be audited before election day.
- whatthesmack 6y ago
  I don't believe any of the electoral fraud claims were actually judged... it's all been rejected for a lack of standing. People saying courts rejected the fraud claims are generally mistaken, because the evidence never got presented.
  - mewse 6y ago
    Were there actually any fraud claims in court? I seem to recall that when actually in court, the attorneys were all very careful to explain that they weren't making any claims of fraud.
  - cmurf 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related... Not all for lack of standing. The evidence that has been presented for fraud is ordinary and could not have affected the outcome of the election. That's consistent with what every one of the ~3000 county clerks in the U.S. will tell you about every election. A much bigger issue is election fraud including voter suppression. What has pissed off Republicans this time around, is expansive mail-in balloting as a result of COVID mitigation. It managed to expand the voting pool against their wishes by making it generally easier for people to vote. It's difficult for judges to look at this and go, "ok so your legislative intent is to make it hard for some people to vote, but these are still legally cast votes per the legislature's own legislation, and you just don't like the outcome so you want me to disenfranchise them?" That's a no. A judge isn't going to do that.
    - no-s 6y ago
      >> The evidence that has been presented for fraud is ordinary and could not have affected the outcome of the election. I feel this is a dangerous cop-out. Some people feel this should be examined[1]. The evidence of actual problems in the election is suppressed by refusal to allow court proceedings and audit. This in turn renders remarks like yours more anecdotal than quantifiable. I'm not saying this is Venezuela, but there does indeed appear there are trout in the milk. [1]https://hereistheevidence.com https://hereistheevidence.com

marcusverus 6y ago

Democrats spend two years telling the public that the President of the United States was a Russian asset. They convinced half of the country that Trump colluded with the Russians.[0] When a two year investigation found nothing, Democrat leadership, including the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, refused to acknowledge the president's innocence. Instead, she used her position to advance the conspiracy theory with lines like "The president was not exonerated!", which is weasel-speak for "The president was not proven innocent!" Democrats are happy to undermine our democratic institutions when it suits them. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-poll/despite-report-findings-almost-half-of-americans-think-trump-colluded-with-russia-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKCN1R72S0 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-poll/des...

thefucnjosh 6y ago
Which is wrong, and given Twitter's stance of issuing corrections for tweets, probably should have made her a ripe target. However, that doesn't excuse Trump's use of terrorism.
- skindoe 6y ago
  Terrorism?
metabagel 6y ago
There was effectively no Senate trial, because Republicans refused to call witnesses. It was a sham. If Trump was innocent, they would have been happy to call witnesses, but they exercised raw power to make it go away. To me, that constitutes “undermining our democratic institutions”.
- marcusverus 6y ago
  You're referring to the impeachment process, the basis for which was a shady phone call during which Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to open an investigation of Joe Biden. That had absolutely nothing to do with the Russian Collusion investigation.
6y ago