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Here is an article detailing a substantial set of changes made to the election process just before 2020. These might have all been perfectly legal things to do

Here is an article detailing a substantial set of changes made to the election process just before 2020. These might have all been perfectly legal things to do but when you make enough changes all at once some people start to wonder. https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

awb 3y ago
I skimmed the article and it seems to outline how folks knew Trump wouldn't concede if he lost, so they were preparing to fight disinformation and preparing for potential legal battles. Could you elaborate on the changes you're taking away from the article that made people wonder about the integrity of the election?
- mantas 3y ago
  > Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.
  - throwaway626 3y ago
    [dead]
alkonaut 3y ago
People do have a right to wonder. And the process should both be transparent to observe, and possible to drag through courts if there are more questions. And with this election it sure was dragged through courts, for years. And there has been no evidence of any substantial irregularities. Changes or not, no one seems to find much to suggest the election wasn't decided fairly.
- yawboakye 3y ago
  absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence
  - alkonaut 3y ago
    That's not a very convincing argument if you are trying to make a fantastical claim without evidence. "Yeah I don't have any evidence thing X happened, but that doesn't mean it didn't!" What should people do with that information?
    - yawboakye 3y ago
      if you interpret absence of evidence as ‘i don’t have evidence’ then you’re right. but evidence doesn’t necessarily require possession to exist. worse it could even be perfectly hidden by your interrogator.
  - amalcon 3y ago
    Closely scrutinizing something, and noting that the null hypothesis explains those observations, is not absence of evidence. It is evidence of absence. Observation creates evidence, whether the observations were expected or not.
  - awb 3y ago
    While true, it's also nonsensical to ask people to believe in something without providing evidence of it. Carl Sagan has a good short story to this effect about a dragon in his garage: http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf > Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.
throwaway626 3y ago
[dead]

awb 3y ago

I skimmed the article and it seems to outline how folks knew Trump wouldn't concede if he lost, so they were preparing to fight disinformation and preparing for potential legal battles. Could you elaborate on the changes you're taking away from the article that made people wonder about the integrity of the election?

mantas 3y ago
> Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.
- throwaway626 3y ago
  [dead]

alkonaut 3y ago

People do have a right to wonder. And the process should both be transparent to observe, and possible to drag through courts if there are more questions. And with this election it sure was dragged through courts, for years. And there has been no evidence of any substantial irregularities. Changes or not, no one seems to find much to suggest the election wasn't decided fairly.

yawboakye 3y ago
absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence
- alkonaut 3y ago
  That's not a very convincing argument if you are trying to make a fantastical claim without evidence. "Yeah I don't have any evidence thing X happened, but that doesn't mean it didn't!" What should people do with that information?
  - yawboakye 3y ago
    if you interpret absence of evidence as ‘i don’t have evidence’ then you’re right. but evidence doesn’t necessarily require possession to exist. worse it could even be perfectly hidden by your interrogator.
- amalcon 3y ago
  Closely scrutinizing something, and noting that the null hypothesis explains those observations, is not absence of evidence. It is evidence of absence. Observation creates evidence, whether the observations were expected or not.
- awb 3y ago
  While true, it's also nonsensical to ask people to believe in something without providing evidence of it. Carl Sagan has a good short story to this effect about a dragon in his garage: http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf > Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.

throwaway626 3y ago

[dead]