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The stolen election thing is very dumb, but people forget the same argument was made in 2016 with Russia “hacking the election” with no evidence found.

by 46756e 4y ago

runnerup 4y ago
And the same argument was made over the 2000 elections against Diebold in Ohio and Florida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy
- ajross 4y ago
  Not by major thought leaders or elected representatives. That was a popular conspiracy theory among the too-connected internet left. The problem in the modern world is that you have elected republicans and talking heads on FOX News saying the same thing to millions of believing partisans.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  That doesn't allege that hacking happened; it alleges (and demonstrates) that voting machines at the time were really shittily secured.
standardUser 4y ago
There is plenty of evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, to the point where it's impossible to say they did not with a straight face. Just because it wasn't directly "hacked" doesn't mean there was not overwhelming evidence of interference. But in the end, very few people considered that election "stolen".
- whiddershins 4y ago
  If Russia can be said to have interfered in the 2016 election, a literal cabal (their words not mine) certainly ‘interfered’ in 2020. https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. An information campaign and a disinformation campaign are hardly the same.
  - standardUser 4y ago
    Domestic groups and individuals are expected to be involved in elections. Foreign ones, by law, are not. An obvious difference and I doubt you're unaware of it.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    Providing voters with accurate information about how and where they can cast their ballot is not the same as buying ad space on Facebook to run ads with doctored images and outright false information.
    - mgkimsal 4y ago
      > false information Can we normalize just saying "lies" when things are lies?
  - elliekelly 4y ago
    The Intercept published an interesting (and, I suspect, related) article[1] today about the chamber of commerce no longer being the darling of the GOP. Retribution for not loyally supporting the big election lie, perhaps? [1]https://theintercept.com/2022/09/19/house-republicans-chamber-commerce/ https://theintercept.com/2022/09/19/house-republicans-chambe...
- douglasroth3 4y ago
  [dead]
  - themitigating 4y ago
    How many democrats voted against certifying election results compared to 2020. How much news time was dedicated to discussing these claims. How many court cases occurred because of them. How many people attacked government buildings? Did the Democrats attempt to send a second set of electors? Did any Democrat state party make false claims of election fraud part of their platform? "We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States," https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-republican-party-passes-resolution-denying-legitimacy-of-bidens-victory-in-presidential-election/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-republican-party-passes-r...
    - hgfddnfhgf 4y ago
      - mgkimsal 4y ago
        Hrm... that article just says "protestors" - doesn't mention party affiliation.
        hgfdhgdfhgf 4y ago
      - bogwog 4y ago
        1. That had nothing to do with the 2016 election, it was about George Floyd 2. Democrats are not the only people who were (are) pissed about the murder of George Floyd
        hgfdhgdfhgf 4y ago
mgkimsal 4y ago
Not sure I'd say 'no evidence' at all. It wasn't "hacking" in a technical sense as much as "social media hacking" - bots, trolls, huge numbers of lies spread via memes, etc. Some (much?) of that was traced back to Russia, IIRC.
- Sebb767 4y ago
  Attribution is notoriously hard. Also, general propaganda pretty much to be expected. It's the same thing in the last election, it's absolutely expected that some people did commit voting fraud and that some votes were counted wrong. The big question is the scale of the operation and whether it impacted the results. It appears to me that the opinion people have is very related to how much they like the result.
  - mgkimsal 4y ago
    We investigated 'russia' election interference allegations. Some 'interference' was found, largely pushing down HRC and aiding (even if indirectly) Trump. We investigated claims of 'stolen election' (Arizona, other states) and found marginally more votes for Biden in subsequent recounts. Even if that had been reversed, the numbers would have not have been impactful. Other investigations in the last few years have turned up smatterings of 'voter fraud', and it usually seems to be Trump supporters voting fraudulently. My opinion is that we've always had small bits of 'bad' votes (intentional or not), but with continued drumbeats on that topic, it's motivating some Trump supporters to commit fraud in an effort to try to balance out what they believe (wrongly) to be 'the other side' committing fraud. I had a friend die on Election Day 2020. He'd cast an early ballot. I often think of him when we get these refrains of "dead people voting!!! it's fraud!!!". I do not know if his vote was counted or not (I assume it would have been) - this was in southeastern PA, so there may have been some recounts that removed ballots like that???
ajross 4y ago
> same argument was made in 2016 By who? A handful of internet nutjobs, surely. No one in a position of power or influence ever claimed that the election results were fraudulent in the sense that today's elected republicans are straight up claiming. (What was claimed, and largely substantiated, was that one campaign appeared to be coordinating closely with Russian interests during the campaign. And indeed people were upset by that. But again, that's not a claim about the election.)
- seneca 4y ago
  > By who? A handful of internet nutjobs, surely. No one in a position of power or influence ever claimed that the election results were fraudulent This is 100% revisionist history, and a typical ploy to try to excuse bad behavior. 'Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election' https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The full paragraph has a lot more nuance: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-rodham-clinton-trump-is-a-corrupt-human-tornado/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-rodham-clinton-trump-is... > "No, it doesn't kill me because he knows he's an illegitimate president. I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used – from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did," she said. ("Hacking" here refers to the undisputed hacking of Democrats' internal emails, not the voting machines. https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-russia-hacking-only-on-ap-dea73efc01594839957c3c9a6c962b8a https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-russia-hacking-...)
    - onionisafruit 4y ago
      I’m not sure it’s entirely undisputed. Some people think it was leaked by a Bernie supporter who worked for the DNC and wanted to expose them rigging the primaries against him.
duxup 4y ago
Depends on what you mean by "hacking the election". Attempts to influence the election existed. But that phrase specifically, I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
phailhaus 4y ago
Mueller's report explicitly said that it found extensive interference by Russia, and that Trump and his team "expected to benefit" from it. The conversation wasn't about "hacking the election", it was about "collusion" in the run-up.
clint 4y ago
How can you say there was no evidence found of Russian interference in the 2016 election? There was, in fact, a startling amount of evidence uncovered and made public.
adamj9431 4y ago
I admit I'm biased, but I don't remember this. I do remember concerns that Russia had interfered with the election, which is was found to be true (see Mueller report, Cambridge Analytica, etc.) There were also less well founded concerns that Trump himself was not only helped by but actually colluding with the Russians, which all evidence points to being false. Most importantly, Hillary Clinton conceded the election the next day, as did Al Gore in 2000 once it was clear he didn't have a path to victory. Both pledged to support the victor. Trump hasn't done that, two years on.
acdha 4y ago
Can you provide citations? The claims which dominated mainstream coverage were not about hacking the election system itself but interference with things like social media campaigns or hacking the DNC’s email service to mine for PR dirt, which is by now well-documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... Please identify specific people and times for any claims - I’m sure you can find some nut on truthout.org claiming that the GRU hacked voting machines but that’s not the same as a lie becoming the most important GOP litmus test leading to a violent assault on the U.S. Congress trying to prevent the election process from being accurately completed.
babypuncher 4y ago
Nobody with real power suggested Russia actually hacked the 2016 election. Hilary Clinton conceded the election, and she certainly didn't send an army of crazed supporters to take over the capitol in a poor attempt to overturn the results. We didn't have Democratic governers and Attorneys General suing to overturn the results of their own elections. In 2016, Russian hackers hacked both the DNC and GOP, and selectively released information collected from the DNC in order to hurt their ongoiong campaign. Russian actors also ran interference campaigns on social media. These are all established facts. They are also not allegations of fraud, simply pointing out that these actions quite possibly had an impact on the outcome of the election. What Republicans have been claiming for almost two years now is that Democrats have committed outright election fraud. They have accused Democrats of everything from tampering with voting machines to ballot stuffing to throwing out Republican votes, and they make all of these accusations without a shred of evidence. Many Republicans in office today have taken the hard stance that Joe Biden was not elected President.
NoGravitas 4y ago
Yeah, Russiagate is QAnon for liberals.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Then how do you explain the Mueller report (authored by a Republican prosecutor, who was appointed by a Republican DAG, who was nominated by a Republican President and confirmed by a Republican majority Senate); and the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference (chaired by a Republican Senator with a majority of Republican members), both concluding that Russia, in fact, interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump; and that the Trump campaign, at best, passively welcomed this help, but at worst actually invited and facilitated it?

The stolen election thing is very dumb, but people forget the same argument was made in 2016 with Russia “hacking the election” with no evidence found.

by 46756e 4y ago

The stolen election thing is very dumb, but people forget the same argument was made in 2016 with Russia “hacking the election” with no evidence found.

runnerup 4y ago

And the same argument was made over the 2000 elections against Diebold in Ohio and Florida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy

ajross 4y ago
Not by major thought leaders or elected representatives. That was a popular conspiracy theory among the too-connected internet left. The problem in the modern world is that you have elected republicans and talking heads on FOX News saying the same thing to millions of believing partisans.
ceejayoz 4y ago
That doesn't allege that hacking happened; it alleges (and demonstrates) that voting machines at the time were really shittily secured.

standardUser 4y ago

There is plenty of evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, to the point where it's impossible to say they did not with a straight face. Just because it wasn't directly "hacked" doesn't mean there was not overwhelming evidence of interference. But in the end, very few people considered that election "stolen".

whiddershins 4y ago
If Russia can be said to have interfered in the 2016 election, a literal cabal (their words not mine) certainly ‘interfered’ in 2020. https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. An information campaign and a disinformation campaign are hardly the same.
- standardUser 4y ago
  Domestic groups and individuals are expected to be involved in elections. Foreign ones, by law, are not. An obvious difference and I doubt you're unaware of it.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  Providing voters with accurate information about how and where they can cast their ballot is not the same as buying ad space on Facebook to run ads with doctored images and outright false information.
  - mgkimsal 4y ago
    > false information Can we normalize just saying "lies" when things are lies?
- elliekelly 4y ago
  The Intercept published an interesting (and, I suspect, related) article[1] today about the chamber of commerce no longer being the darling of the GOP. Retribution for not loyally supporting the big election lie, perhaps? [1]https://theintercept.com/2022/09/19/house-republicans-chamber-commerce/ https://theintercept.com/2022/09/19/house-republicans-chambe...
douglasroth3 4y ago
[dead]
- themitigating 4y ago
  How many democrats voted against certifying election results compared to 2020. How much news time was dedicated to discussing these claims. How many court cases occurred because of them. How many people attacked government buildings? Did the Democrats attempt to send a second set of electors? Did any Democrat state party make false claims of election fraud part of their platform? "We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States," https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-republican-party-passes-resolution-denying-legitimacy-of-bidens-victory-in-presidential-election/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-republican-party-passes-r...
  - hgfddnfhgf 4y ago
    - mgkimsal 4y ago
      Hrm... that article just says "protestors" - doesn't mention party affiliation.
      - hgfdhgdfhgf 4y ago
    - bogwog 4y ago
      1. That had nothing to do with the 2016 election, it was about George Floyd 2. Democrats are not the only people who were (are) pissed about the murder of George Floyd
      - hgfdhgdfhgf 4y ago

mgkimsal 4y ago

Not sure I'd say 'no evidence' at all. It wasn't "hacking" in a technical sense as much as "social media hacking" - bots, trolls, huge numbers of lies spread via memes, etc. Some (much?) of that was traced back to Russia, IIRC.

Sebb767 4y ago
Attribution is notoriously hard. Also, general propaganda pretty much to be expected. It's the same thing in the last election, it's absolutely expected that some people did commit voting fraud and that some votes were counted wrong. The big question is the scale of the operation and whether it impacted the results. It appears to me that the opinion people have is very related to how much they like the result.
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  We investigated 'russia' election interference allegations. Some 'interference' was found, largely pushing down HRC and aiding (even if indirectly) Trump. We investigated claims of 'stolen election' (Arizona, other states) and found marginally more votes for Biden in subsequent recounts. Even if that had been reversed, the numbers would have not have been impactful. Other investigations in the last few years have turned up smatterings of 'voter fraud', and it usually seems to be Trump supporters voting fraudulently. My opinion is that we've always had small bits of 'bad' votes (intentional or not), but with continued drumbeats on that topic, it's motivating some Trump supporters to commit fraud in an effort to try to balance out what they believe (wrongly) to be 'the other side' committing fraud. I had a friend die on Election Day 2020. He'd cast an early ballot. I often think of him when we get these refrains of "dead people voting!!! it's fraud!!!". I do not know if his vote was counted or not (I assume it would have been) - this was in southeastern PA, so there may have been some recounts that removed ballots like that???

ajross 4y ago

> same argument was made in 2016 By who? A handful of internet nutjobs, surely. No one in a position of power or influence ever claimed that the election results were fraudulent in the sense that today's elected republicans are straight up claiming. (What was claimed, and largely substantiated, was that one campaign appeared to be coordinating closely with Russian interests during the campaign. And indeed people were upset by that. But again, that's not a claim about the election.)

seneca 4y ago
> By who? A handful of internet nutjobs, surely. No one in a position of power or influence ever claimed that the election results were fraudulent This is 100% revisionist history, and a typical ploy to try to excuse bad behavior. 'Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election' https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  The full paragraph has a lot more nuance: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-rodham-clinton-trump-is-a-corrupt-human-tornado/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-rodham-clinton-trump-is... > "No, it doesn't kill me because he knows he's an illegitimate president. I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used – from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did," she said. ("Hacking" here refers to the undisputed hacking of Democrats' internal emails, not the voting machines. https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-russia-hacking-only-on-ap-dea73efc01594839957c3c9a6c962b8a https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-russia-hacking-...)
  - onionisafruit 4y ago
    I’m not sure it’s entirely undisputed. Some people think it was leaked by a Bernie supporter who worked for the DNC and wanted to expose them rigging the primaries against him.

duxup 4y ago

Depends on what you mean by "hacking the election". Attempts to influence the election existed. But that phrase specifically, I'm not sure exactly what you mean.

phailhaus 4y ago

Mueller's report explicitly said that it found extensive interference by Russia, and that Trump and his team "expected to benefit" from it. The conversation wasn't about "hacking the election", it was about "collusion" in the run-up.

clint 4y ago

How can you say there was no evidence found of Russian interference in the 2016 election? There was, in fact, a startling amount of evidence uncovered and made public.

adamj9431 4y ago

I admit I'm biased, but I don't remember this. I do remember concerns that Russia had interfered with the election, which is was found to be true (see Mueller report, Cambridge Analytica, etc.) There were also less well founded concerns that Trump himself was not only helped by but actually colluding with the Russians, which all evidence points to being false. Most importantly, Hillary Clinton conceded the election the next day, as did Al Gore in 2000 once it was clear he didn't have a path to victory. Both pledged to support the victor. Trump hasn't done that, two years on.

acdha 4y ago

Can you provide citations? The claims which dominated mainstream coverage were not about hacking the election system itself but interference with things like social media campaigns or hacking the DNC’s email service to mine for PR dirt, which is by now well-documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... Please identify specific people and times for any claims - I’m sure you can find some nut on truthout.org claiming that the GRU hacked voting machines but that’s not the same as a lie becoming the most important GOP litmus test leading to a violent assault on the U.S. Congress trying to prevent the election process from being accurately completed.

babypuncher 4y ago

Nobody with real power suggested Russia actually hacked the 2016 election. Hilary Clinton conceded the election, and she certainly didn't send an army of crazed supporters to take over the capitol in a poor attempt to overturn the results. We didn't have Democratic governers and Attorneys General suing to overturn the results of their own elections. In 2016, Russian hackers hacked both the DNC and GOP, and selectively released information collected from the DNC in order to hurt their ongoiong campaign. Russian actors also ran interference campaigns on social media. These are all established facts. They are also not allegations of fraud, simply pointing out that these actions quite possibly had an impact on the outcome of the election. What Republicans have been claiming for almost two years now is that Democrats have committed outright election fraud. They have accused Democrats of everything from tampering with voting machines to ballot stuffing to throwing out Republican votes, and they make all of these accusations without a shred of evidence. Many Republicans in office today have taken the hard stance that Joe Biden was not elected President.

NoGravitas 4y ago

Yeah, Russiagate is QAnon for liberals.

ModernMech 4y ago
Then how do you explain the Mueller report (authored by a Republican prosecutor, who was appointed by a Republican DAG, who was nominated by a Republican President and confirmed by a Republican majority Senate); and the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference (chaired by a Republican Senator with a majority of Republican members), both concluding that Russia, in fact, interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump; and that the Trump campaign, at best, passively welcomed this help, but at worst actually invited and facilitated it?