> If you actually look at the primary sources, only a small minority of people don't trust US elections as a whole. Define a small minority? 60% of republicans

> If you actually look at the primary sources, only a small minority of people don't trust US elections as a whole. Define a small minority? 60% of republicans don't trust elections [1]. > Welcome to Blackstone's formulation. It is honestly a lot better that 100 guilty people go free than that 1 innocent gets punished. Yes, that means that some guilty people go free, but maybe you should be okay with that because the other side has a very different idea of who ought to be in jail than your side does, and the presumption of innocence keeps everyone out of jail. I was not saying Presumption of Innocence is a bad thing. Rather, that it's non-existent with jury trials. Having people determine your innocence based on "the cut of your gib" is incompatible with the current political climate. > This narrative of "stolen" when both parties technically played by the rules (albeit playing dirty) is a big part of how third-world countries end up devolving into dictatorships - One side thinks that someone stole something that was rightly theirs, and changes the rules to make them more "fair" (in terms of getting what they want). In fact, in some of these countries, court packing is almost a meme: one side gets power and doubles the size of the courts to take control (since "they stole seats from us"), then the other side gets power and doubles them again in retaliation, and this continues until the court doesn't function at all. You were originally arguing American democracy isn't that fragile. This is exactly why I say it is fragile. > Thinking of the 2015 nomination of Garland, that was pretty dirty of Mitch McConnell, and I hope he pays for it by losing some of his party's appointees. If you are referring to the other two Trump appointees as stolen, no. He won the 2016 election (see the above comment on trusted elections) - those seats were up to him to appoint. The reason Trump was in a position to appoint a third judge is because Ruth Bader Ginsberg was afraid to resign, given what happened to Gorsuch. And then she died. And then they filled her seat immediately after lying about "A president has never confirmed a judge in their last year of office." These are two stolen seats. This has nothing to do with Mitch, this is the entire Republican party. In general, I wouldn't assume everyone with non-centrist ideas is somehow drinking kool-aid. Protecting the status quo is, itself, a massive bias. And this particular line is puzzling > the other side should win about half the time in a healthy democracy. What other side? Can a functioning democracy have only two sides? I would think a functioning democracy is one where the people's interests are represented. As the country grows more left year over year, should republicans still win half the time? You might think of people passionate about their political agendas as unenlightened people rooting for politicians that don't care about them to begin with, but consider that saying "Both sides are the same and people should be happy with gridlock because change is scary" is equally ridiculous to others