Nobody's saying they don't have a right to challenge irregularities, but many government officials say this was the most secure election in American history and deny any evidence of systemic fraud: https://apnews.com/article/top-officials-elections-most-secu...

I agree it was a secure election. What I mean to say is that this is a perception issue. There is a belief along many on the right that elements of the civil service, the media, and the educated classes are strongly biased against Donald Trump and would like to undermine him. To be honest, they are probably right (although I would argue that the bias is warranted given Trump's abysmal job performance). They therefore think that the left would try to undermine the electoral process to remove Trump at all costs and that their intent is fundamentally malicious. The way you deal with this problem is through transparency and patience. You allow Trump unencumbered access to the largely republican courts and if any irregularities exist Trump is allowed his day in court. Once that is over, you then say we have dealt with you in good faith and you can see we weren't trying to screw you over. We now expect the same from you. This gives you the moral high ground and makes you look reasonable. If Trump refuses to cooperate you can then say he is breaking the law and remove him.

There will be some on the right that will never be convinced that this election was legitimate, but this pacifies the more reasonable people on the right. Trying to kick the Republicans while they are down , chastising them them for using legal means to fight the outcome of the election, or engaging in grievance politics just further reinforces the perception that the left isn't operating in good faith.

Remember once all of this is over we still have to live with these people.

> Trying to kick the Republicans while they are down , chastising them them for using legal means to fight the outcome of the election, or engaging in grievance politics just further reinforces the perception that the left isn't operating in good faith.

You're getting this backwards. The legal means are not there to fight the outcome of the election, they are there to make sure every vote is counted properly. This is a subtle but important difference: nobody denies that there may be minor and insignificant improprieties in this election, as there are whenever a country of 300 million people votes. What is being denied is that there was whole-scale interference with the election system. I'm fairly confident that they will not be able to convince a court that there was, but that doesn't make it ok that they are filing lawsuits on no evidence. People being upset about an election outcome is no reason to ignore the reality of this situation.

> I'm fairly confident that they will not be able to convince a court that there was, but that doesn't make it ok that they are filing lawsuits on no evidence.

I agree and so do the courts which is why this problem will likely solve itself if you just let it play out.

I'm not arguing doing anything more than letting it play out and reporting accurately on what's going on. You seem to think we shouldn't be discussing it as such. I think it's important to talk about what they're doing, because it's poisonous to our democracy.

Trump was not prevented access to court. He and his prior are however not allowed to make public claims about fraud unopposed. The patience you suggest would lead to public that hears what he says, but does not hear about claims being bogus.

The kind of pacification you call about is not something Trump or republican party awarded to anyone last 4 years. They enjoyed to trigger libtards. There was no patience I could detect.

What you suggest does not work, because it demands one side to follow norms that other side does not have to follow.

There is no real right to file frivolous lawsuits (which the lawyers know in their hearts are frivolous, let's be abundantly clear), that is a complete myth.

I never said there was. The lawsuits that have been frivolous have been swiftly thrown out by the courts so frivolous lawsuits are largely a non-issue.

That's wrong. Frivolous lawsuits made with the intent to overturn a legitimate election result may be legal, but they're incredibly dangerous for the health of our democracy.

The probability of a frivolous lawsuit succeeding in such a way that it could overturn the results is literally zero. Frivolous suits are not legal, the courts have identified and nullified all frivolous lawsuit attempts so far, and they have signaled that they will not be tolerated. If Trump wants to bring frivolous suits then it only makes him look less legitimate in the eyes of everyone and bolsters the case for forced removal if need be. These events really don't pose any danger to our democracy. The danger to our democracy occurs when you allow one side to build a narrative that the election isn't legitimate and that one side (the left) is refusing to even hear out the right when they claim a lack of legitimacy.

Give them their time and then we can all move on.

So to clarify, you're agreeing that the GOP is trying to overturn a solid election result, but you think the left poses a greater danger to democracy, because they are talking about what the GOP is doing? If we're sitting next to each other reading books and you start yelling about how I just hit you and stole your wallet, I'm not in fact required to hear you out on that if I did not just hit you and steal your wallet.

> So to clarify, you're agreeing that the GOP is trying to overturn a solid election result, but you think the left poses a greater danger to democracy, because they are talking about what the GOP is doing?

No, I don't think this and never said anything like that. I believe the right ultimately poses the greater danger in this context. What I am saying is it's very obvious what Trump wants to do: he wants to build and support a narrative that this election is illegitimate. He wants to do it through stoking resentment against the left and center and suggesting systemic bias. We resist this by calmly saying that we as a nation are committed to fair elections, and we agree that we need to investigate any cases of impropriety that he can find in courts which are independent (and if anything are largely friendly towards his party).

If he fails to discover any issues, we say we cooperated fairly / openly, he failed to produce evidence of impropriety, this suggests the process was fair, and now we can move on. What we don't do is scream that he's wasting our time, that Republicans are assholes, that they're trying to undermine democracy, and that this whole process is bullshit. If we do, it allows Trump to say "SEE?! I told you they are biased against us! What are they trying to hide??? Why are they so impatient?!" It hands him the ammunition to build the narrative that there has been a conspiracy. If there was no conspiracy, why is the left so impatient and hostile? Why are they trying to subvert the process? Politics isn't just about facts it's about feelings and opinions. At the end of the day we want Republicans to accept the results willingly, and in my opinion that's best served by being calm and patient in our dealings with them rather than by being angry or impatient. This is a lesson the left generally fails to grasp: screaming at people and calling them assholes is not a particularly effective way to get them to agree with you.

The most effective thing we can do is allow Trump et al to burn themselves out.

>At the end of the day we want Republicans to accept the results willingly, and in my opinion that's best served by being calm and patient in our dealings with them rather than by being angry or impatient.

The thing is, most Republicans already accept the result. And I'm not saying the whole process is bullshit! Nobody is saying that. It is pretty bad that we can have an election with the popular vote won by five million and counting and have the result disputed, but that's mostly orthogonal to this situation.