I think the side which is getting all their lawsuits dismissed (and with prejudice) is probably the one with the baseless claims.

I also think that the side on which the biggest (public) provable liar/narcissist of all time is on has a chance of having the most baseless claims.

Occam's Razor also applies. What is more likely: a massive conspiracy to rig the election, only in specific swing states, only for the presidency and nothing else on the ballot, requiring massive coordination and having no proof. Or... The president is a huge liar and the people in the GOP are afraid to go against him lest he turn his cult against them too.

> Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening

I'm genuinely unsure how you're genuinely unsure, except if you attribute the same weight to Fox News / OANN and other propaganda networks as you do sources of information with actual credibility.

There is zero doubt to be had.

Even if you support the President and his policies, I don't see how you could be surprised at his rather large loss in 2020.

He lost the popular vote in 2016 by around 3 million votes. And he was running against someone very unpopular.

He ran in 2020 against someone who is much more popular than his 2016 opponent.

His approval rating never touched 50%, IIRC.

The economy is terrible right now. Never a great sign for an incumbent.

And that's all to say nothing about the fervor of the people who oppose him.

There's absolutely no reason to believe that he wouldn't have lost by >3 million this time around.

What doesn't make sense to me are all the statistical anomalies everywhere. How did down ballot republicans outperform Trump everywhere, when Trump's approval ratings among republicans were incredibly high?

The bellweather counties perplexes me.

The crazy turnout in specific counties that far exceeded demographically similar counties that wouldn't have the impact to flip the election. The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties.

The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all.

Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines.

There are reasons to doubt things. The doubt needs to be addressed with transparency and in court, and so far, all of the municipalities that are raising suspicion are fighting tooth and nail against transparency.

If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country.

> What doesn't make sense to me are all the statistical anomalies everywhere. How did down ballot republicans outperform Trump everywhere, when Trump's approval ratings among republicans were incredibly high?

The general polls were super, duper, off. Biden was supposedly leading by 3 points in Florida and then lost by 3 points, for a net of 6 point error.

I'm not shocked by polls being wrong.

I think, if you accept that polls can be wrong, it's pretty easy to imagine the voters who were lifelong Republicans might have continued to vote R but left the top slot blank.

> The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties.

He BARELY won in 2016 because of a few thousand votes in three states. The geographic distribution of votes matters. Just because he picked up a few percentage points on minority demographics (still far behind Biden, just more than he had against Clinton) doesn't matter unless you tell me WHERE he picked up those margins. One of the places was south Florida and he won Florida. So there's nothing here that surprises me or seems suspicious at all.

> The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all.

No. We all knew for MONTHS that Trump would look better on election night than he would as the rest of the votes were tallied. We knew for MONTHS that Pennsylvania was not allowed to START counting mail in votes until AFTER polls closed on November 3rd. We knew it so well that they even coined a cutesy term for it: the "red mirage". We were repeatedly warned that we would see the red mirage on election night. You should not have been perplexed. I'm sorry.

The only statistically impossible ratio of votes for Biden are those that are over 100%.

> Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines.

What lack of security, specifically? What thousands of witnesses? What activities were "strange"? All I've seen or heard is a bunch of people who are very ignorant of the election process pointing to video clips from the live streams and saying "OMG, this worker just filled out a ballot!" when the person in question was clearing performing "ballot curing".

Maybe HN wasn't exploding because there isn't anything to see here.

That's not to say that the election was perfect. No election is. I'm in Florida. We can't do an election to save our lives down here. But a nationwide conspiracy that would require thousands of individuals to coordinate in key counties in key states (many of which are run by Republicans) is basically "moon landing didn't happen" levels of conspiracy.

> If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country.

I've seen and read many real rebuttals against all kinds of claims. From "poll workers were ejected" to "suitcases full of ballots". Similarly I saw something about a Dominion machine that supposedly flipped Trump votes to Biden votes that was summarily debunked.

There was nothing surprising about the results except that Georgia flipped blue. But I think that says more about Trump and Georgia's demographics than it does about the election. Remember that 2016, when he eeked out his EC win, it was because he barely flipped the "blue wall" states. The fact that they went back blue this year is not at all surprising.

Credible by repetition only, at this point. They've shown themselves at the same level, and the most self-righteous networks have proven the most hypocritical, and they don't even seem to see it.

Don't forget, not only do they only care about the battleground states Trump lost, but also the congressional victories which were on the same ballot are not similarly being questioned.

Republicans picked up seats in the House. They did better in the Senate than expected. No one is questioning the results of those races.

Why?

This is a good overview why you should be skeptical.

https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect...

Democrats did do everything in their power. I’m not sure what you expect, do you want them to try to be totally corrupt and step outside of their constitutional role? Because they made sure it was a really honest process:

1. They made sure investigations happened to determine the validity of any claims. Investigations from trusted intelligence officials and even from the Republican-controlled senate confirmed the same thing. 2. They impeached trump based on the evidence provided by the investigations. 3. When the republicans didn’t vote to remove him, they focused a lot on the election and driving voter turnout.

>why wouldn't Democrats do everything in their power to get him removed from office?

Correctly, people note that a sure marker of a conspiracy theory is that the absence of evidence supports the claim. (ie, there must have been a cover-up!)

This is definitely true, but another aspect which doesn't get enough attention is an argument which relies totally on psychoanalysis. "Group X would surely want to do x, and therefore they probably did!"

The truth is that you generally don't understand people's incentives as well as you might guess. Further, simply because there is an incentive does not mean there is a capability.

But, most importantly, claims require evidence. Reading incentives is pretty flawed regardless. At best, it must be backstopped by real, hard evidence. This total lack of evidence is why these cases are being unceremoniously tossed out of court.

I will come out and say I have not looked at a single court case nor do I look at Trump twitter nor do I read any social media beyond Hacker News. My interest in politics is not partisan. I am not here to debate the likelihood of any sort of fraud because internet debates about this kind of thing are pointless.

The rationalistic question is something along the lines of "how do you adjust your priors of voter fraud based on the rhetoric of the party alleged of committing the fraud." The lazy answer is "your voter fraud prior should always be zero." Is that the right answer? There's are interesting discussions to be had here. They likely cannot be had on Hacker News.

Many people have beliefs about Trump where, IF I had the same beliefs I'd totally be on board with voter fraud to get him out of office.

>Many people have beliefs about Trump where, IF I had the same beliefs I'd totally be on board with voter fraud to get him out of office.

I wouldn't, but this is because of the game theory sort of nature of democracy. If I can do it, so can my opponents. Suppose Trump is evil, and defeated, and next election my side has a truly wonderful and excellent candidate. (again, I'm just being theoretical.) I don't want the other side to be able to beat my candidate using voter fraud. Ideally, no one can beat anyone using voter fraud.

>The rationalistic question is something along the lines of "how do you adjust your priors of voter

I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you mean "this party has previously had issues with voter fraud, and therefore it's not stretch to be concerned about it again." If I have you correct, I'd again say that this is a fine suspicion, but then evidence must be produced. If evidence cannot be produced, then the priors alone are not enough. To use a very flimsy metaphor, suppose in a small town there is a kid who has robbed a convenience store. Later, when another convenience store is robbed it might make sense to suspect the kid. But, you had better not charge or convict him unless you can produce some real evidence. (and to be clear, I am not comparing either party to a common criminal, I just wanted a simple metaphor which I thought best explained the argument.)

Just to pull the thread a little further, what if you already believed that the other side was using unfair tactics to achieve their political goals. Gerrymandering, unfair court appointments, electoral college unfairness, racially based voter suppression.

I'm hard pressed to believe that someone who believes these are going on AND that the current president is a Russian asset (for example) would not support voter fraud.

And that's exactly the problem. Republicans are indeed benefiting from the backwards or technically legal but scummy tactics you outlined.

Democrats are not trying to fight fire with fire, they're just trying to make it easy to vote for anyone who is entitled to vote. It just happens that there are more of those people than there are people supporting Republicans. Quite a bit more.

You just can't imagine someone wouldn't stoop that low when you would.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here, so I'm going to address both possibilities as I understand them:

#1 - Could there be anyone, anywhere, who believes that voter fraud is warranted because they believe the situation is so dire?

Sure, I'll bet there are some people who feel this way.

#2 - Does the possibility that some people, somewhere feel this way suggest that there is real possibility of fraud?

Without evidence, no. Remember that "some democrats" feeling this way is actually not very useful. Instead, various and multiple people with different levels of the election oversight process would need to 1) feel this way, and 2) be willing to risk a federal crime despite all other incentives, and 3) have the actual capability of carrying this out. Each step in the process here carries further inter-dependencies.

For example, the people who really feel this way must be multiple election officials in multiple locations. Recall that there are no "state" elections, but rather multiple districts, which are then collected for the state elections. And so there has to be fraud in multiple locations, and it must be coordinated. Before we go any further, it's important to understand that when we're supposing that we know "how people would feel," we suddenly mean "I know the motivations and incentives of multiple strangers, whose jobs and lives I know nothing about." This is where our ability to judge a person's incentives really falls apart. If we're considering scenario #1, where an imagined other might feel some way, that's probably fine. By the time we're in scenario #2, we already do not know enough information to determine all the incentives involved. One pole worker may be a republican, another a democrat. One pole worker may have a strict credo they live by (in other words, they wouldn't break the law no matter what) while others may be much more open to malicious actions. Some might be risk averse, so might be risk addicted. The point is we don't have factual information about all these different competing incentives.

Even if we could establish the various incentives, there's further information we don't have: What is the structure of the various election boards? Which individuals would be required to coordinate malicious to reach the desired outcome? And, which of those individuals do we think have the "wrong" incentives? In other words, were enough bad actors in the right place?

Lastly, (and shortly since I'm getting too wordy) supposing we could work out the first two problems, do we think such a group could escape the nigh-historical oversight which has been playing out after this election?

Did they not?

Have you been following the news at all in the past year or so?

I have edited my comment to make it clearer.

You would realize they haven't been trying very hard at all if you've been paying attention.

I agree that their tactics were terrible. Their concerns are mainly about optics and they get caught up in their own coattails.

But you can't claim that they weren't trying to use legitimate means to remove him from office. That is just absurd.

The could have impeached Trump on N things, where N is way more than one. They impeached him on one thing. Yes, I would say they were not trying hard at all.

Again, that's a question of tactics, not strategy.

Tactics, strategy, you're just shuffling. The point is that the Democrats could easily have done much more with the impeachment and they didn't.

So what? Completely irrelevant.

You're acting like a jilted lover, not a participant in democracy.

Lol, good place to retreat to buddy

He was impeached, was he not?

> why wouldn't Democrats do everything in their power to get him removed from office?

Because they believe in the process, the integrity of our country and our Constitution, the voice of the people and the validity of the election. (That doesn't mean Democrats are knights in shining armor, but with many politicians following the President's lead on fighting the integrity of our own country, many find it preferable that Democratic politicians refrain from taking that same low road. Sometimes the high road works. Often it doesn't.)

How do you explain "Russiagate"? I just got through 4 years of unbridled partisanness that puts your entire post in to question.

Democrats believe in the process so much they would rather waste four years convincing themselves a red herring is more than a fish. If they were as conniving as you have been implying, they would have either gotten results or switched tactics sooner.

They're rule-followers. That doesn't mean they're smart.

I'm not a fan of the partisan nature of our politics, or the political theater of Russiagate.

Out of curiosity, did you mean: partisanism?

I accepted that President Donald Trump won the electoral college in 2016, and that he lost it in 2020. I don't think Democrats trying to get a few million people in on an election fraud conspiracy would have been good for the country, and I don't think Democratic politicians believed that was a good idea either.

GOP doesn't want Trumps cult to turn on them, Democrats don't want the cult on the left to turn on them either ;)

It's a bit funny both sides proclaim that only the other side is in a bubble.

It's funny to pretend that 2016 election interference from the Russians didn't happen, even though every single intelligence agency (under Trump, by the way) agreed that it did.

I don't see how Russiagate is at odds with what neogodless said. The democrats collected evidence, went to court, and lost. Russiagate, however misfounded, was legal. To imply that there were no other avenues for them to go down so they turned to voter fraud is laughable.

Also, I will try to say this in the nicest way possible, but you are repeating, nearly verbatim, talking points that the President has been using for months in various rallies. The idea that the democrats needed to turn to voter fraud to ensure Biden won a Trump talking point - not something born out of any sort of rumor or leak. What is particularly nefarious about this talking point is it's not something he crafted out of the blue, but it is one that he has been forming since at least July. He has carefully planned to use pandemic and the growth in mail in ballots to throw chaos into the electoral process. In other words, I'm asking you take a step back and consider if voter fraud is a credible rumor or if its something that has been manufactured by the right wing media machine.

>The democrats collected evidence, went to court, and lost. Russiagate, however misfounded, was legal. To imply that there were no other avenues for them to go down so they turned to voter fraud is laughable.

You forgot a few steps. First, they claimed there was fraud (w/o evidence). Then they 'leaked' the Steele dossier and other nonsense documents. Then, there was 24/7 wall to wall coverage for months and months of it (including insane stuff like the pee tape) to manufacture consent. High profile Democrats happily went on TV expressing fake concern and repeated unproven allegations. They happily were the 'inside source' to NYTimes, rollingstone, nymag, etc, etc for more ridiculous stories. Then, they wasted tax payer money knowing full well that it was bogus.

Respectfully, I would invite you to do the same as you ask others. Take a step back, and consider (even if you aren't convinced) whether you've been had by the Dems on the most ridiculous story (if not on all of them) about Trump.

I agree. This is all established fact. Look at the FISA and the Carter Page lawsuit. A government informant leaked fake information to the press and the FISA warrant was based on that information. They literally made up information to get a warrant. That's literally a baseless allegation and all the documents that have come out in discovery back that up.

I think there are two fundamentally different worlds here. Many of the people in this thread, and in big tech, still trust CNN/FOX/MSNBC/NYTimes. But if you look at the past four years, they've constantly given us bad information, or used misleading headlines (most people don't read past the headlines), and often the content of the post itself contradicts the headline.

That's why this YouTube thing is so important. People like Shapiro, Megan Kelly, Tim Pool, Viva Frei, No Agenda .. they actually dig through this stuff and expose how corrurpt the media really is .. and they are insanely corrurpt.

We've had months of "mostly peaceful protestors" and I've watched people all around me on the left defend the burning and looting. "It's just property." The media is corrurpt and this shows YouTube/Google is just as corrurpt, trying to use their massive influence to control a narrative; making something absolute that should be brought deeply into question.

We are not in 1984. We've been in 1984 for decades. It's just now the Internet has allowed people to see that for themselves, and Big Tech wants to take that away and tell people what to think again.

I think there is a larger portion of regular folks who dislike the nutty behavior on both sides (I'm one of them) and just want to move on to more important things than the current fake-outrage news cycles over irrelevant drama/gossip.

We might be screwed in the short-term, and if people out of choice/ignorance no longer care about certain democratic ideals, then it is impossible to force it upon them. Having said that, I trust people more than I trust systems. So it might take time, but I believe we're going to get past this eventually.

I don't listen to right wing media. Or left wing media. They're both terrible. (I pay for my news to try an avoid the nonsense.)

I will say this nicely as well, you should re-read my argument to see where the depth lies. I take caution to ask a simple "IF/THEN" question that's really just a latent criticism of media including social media. The idea that "voter fraud" is some "Trump concocted nefarious scheme" is also rather ridiculous. Voter fraud gets claimed after every election.

I hope our new censorship overlords are fair and honest in their censorship.

> I pay for my news to try an avoid the nonsense.

I sincerely applaud your paying for news, but a person who gets all their news via the free AP News and Reuters newsfeeds, cspan, PBS, VOA, Propublica, NPR, and so on can be very well informed and avoid a fair amount of nonsense.

> I don't listen to right wing media. Or left wing media. They're both terrible.

One is substantially more terrible than the other, and seems to be perpetually stuck in lala land.

> Voter fraud gets claimed after every election.

Not at this scale.

The democrats impeached him. You were saying?

This type of "reddit" comment is not appropriate for HackerNews.

I just want to be sure here. Is he a huge national security threat? If so, is he big enough of a threat to justify voter fraud?

Foolish question with a faulty premise.

No one is required to respond to this in earnest, just like there is no requirement for Google to publish materials just because they were uploaded to their servers.

A stable belief system is not shaken by a hypothetical question. You can dodge the question if you'd like but it probably doesn't make your world view appealing to outsiders.

"Stable belief system" is orthogonal to "belief system aligned with verifiable facts".

Are you nice because it is required to be nice? "Requirement" is a loaded term, but I would hope Google employees show some decency and hold up their liberal values and bolster free expression that they claim to value so much.

The rules were changed prior to the election, in a way that clearly favours the democratic party. That should raise suspicion.

We also had :

1. Unusually low mail in ballot vote rejection rate (0.02 vs 6% previous elections)

2. Unusually many voters

3. Unusually high turnout in specific areas (90%+)

4. Delay in announcing results

5. Results that don't match (6000 votes flipped back to Trump after "glitch"

Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190

> The rules were changed prior to the election, in a way that clearly favours the democratic party. That should raise suspicion.

Meaning voting was made easier for millions, hence they voted. Meaning Republican suppression of Democratic voters was less effective, hence more voters.

There is one of the two parties fighting for election security and it's not the republicans. Mitch McConnell has a few election security bills on his desk that were never brought to a vote.

1. If huge swaths of Americans are forced to vote by mail, wouldn't you expect the rate to decrease?

2. Trump is incredibly polarizing, so, sure

3. What was the previous turnout / percentage increase?

4. The GOP specifically passed laws that disallowed counting ballots until election day in many districts, which, combined with lots of mail-ins, makes things much slower

5. This was an accident, and was corrected

1. No, I would expect people filling out a mail-in ballot for the first time to get it wrong (and thus have the ballot rejected) more often than people who have done it before. This would track with previous elections, where first-time mail-in voters are more likely to have their ballots invalidated.

Protections on mail-in ballots have unambiguously been reduced this election - many states skipped signature validation, for instance. This may be acceptable, but IMO should not have been implemented due to being easy fodder for conspiracy theorists. Yes, the mere appearance of illegitimacy is reason enough to not do something when it comes to potentially contested elections.

2. This election turn out was 2 standard deviations above average. That has never happened in the past.

3. Detroit region of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Oakland had a 15% increase in turnout compared to 2016 and Macomb was up 18%. More black people came out to vote for Biden than Obama in these historically Black counties.

https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/11/see-2020-election-tur...

1) Didn't happen. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...

2) Both Democrats and Republicans had greater turnout. This was expected since Trump is a highly polarizing figure. Not relevant to claims of fraud.

3) Like, say, Utah, which voted for Trump? https://www.fox13now.com/news/election-2020/utah-reports-90-... Please show relevance.

4) Expected, due to increased mail-in ballots and delay in counting mail-in ballots required by law in several states.

5) A glitch that was fixed. Relevance?

1) "The total rejected ballots data is not yet available for 2020." from the fact check. So how can the fact check be used to disprove Trump's statements, or that it "Didn't happen".

More worrying, its been weeks since the election, and we still don't have definitive results. You don't find that suspicious? Most countries have final results on election night.

Okay, so if the total rejected ballot data isn't available what is your basis for claiming that it did happen? The burden of proof rests on the accuser. In any case we know that the signature rejection rates for Georgia in past elections were low.

What do you mean we don't have definitive results? Biden's win was certified by the states in the last week, in accordance with the law. It will only get more definitive when the electoral college votes next week. This is nothing new in the U.S., it's the way the process works.

These seem to be the most up to date numbers. "Rejected absentee/mail-in ballots as a percentage of total absentee/mail-in ballots returned, 2016-2020"

Georgia 2016 6.42%

Georgia 2020 .60%

Source https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...

Which cites the official Georgia election website as source of the raw data.

If you check the footnote there it seems Ballotpedia computed this rate themselves. It seems exceedingly unlikely this has anything to do with fraud, since other states handily won by Trump like Alaska and Iowa show similar large drops in 2020. I think fundamentally the data here is incomplete for 2020 and nothing meaningful can be said about it yet.

Is Google also going to ban all the people who pushed the baseless Russia-made-trump-win nonsense? What a giant waste of time and money that was.

Do it equally for everyone, or don't do it at all.

We don't know if Russia made Trump win, we only know that they helped him.

Likewise, we don't know if Trump himself worked with Russians, we only know his campaign chairman Paul Manafort did.

These are both facts that have been verified by the Republican controlled Senate Intel Committee.

You are free to read their report yourself.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

>We don't know if Russia made Trump win, we only know that they helped him.

That's a bit like saying we know there is election fraud in 2020 because we found 2 voting irregularities. Minor voting irregularities happen in every election and are also facts.

Sorry, it goes both ways. Both sides need to provide evidence and prove it in court before making such statements. If you don't know, then the right thing to do is to say nothing unless it has been proven.

Have any democrats been implicated in voter fraud?

You are completely ignoring the high level of coordination that has been proven, between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

It's impossible to know what the effect was, but we know for sure they tried, which is illegal.

Can you find any example of a "voter irregularity" that has the same level of intent and coordination with an official of the Democratic party?

It only "goes both ways" when you are blatantly lying and discounting reality.

Many of the states in question are run by Republicans. Are you saying that Republicans conspired to steal the election from Trump?

>You are completely ignoring the high level of coordination that has been proven, between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

No high level of co-ordination to steal the election was "proven". I don't know what kind of "news" you read.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-mill...

>It's impossible to know what the effect was, but we know for sure they tried, which is illegal.

If you don't know what the effect was, what is your point again?

>It only "goes both ways" when you are blatantly lying and discounting reality.

Childish name-calling? Nice..

>Many of the states in question are run by Republicans. Are you saying that Republicans conspired to steal the election from Trump?

Actually, I'm claiming both sides are in their own bubble clutching their little (R) and (D) flags and waving them frantically.

To claim something false is lying. To point out lying is not "name calling".

> No high level of co-ordination to steal the election was "proven". I don't know what kind of "news" you read.

Here, try this:

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

Ctrl+F "manafort" if you are having trouble finding it.

> Actually, I'm claiming both sides are in their own bubble clutching their little (R) and (D) flags and waving them frantically.

Bro, is this not name calling? At least I am actually offering evidence. All you is your sense of superiority.

Also, the whole cover of partisanship is just so intellectually lazy. You can literally dismiss any evidence or reality just by claiming partisanship.

I am sure partisanship is involved, but that is not a rebuttal to the evidence presented.

What a poor use of time to have a conversation with you.

So you keep posting the same old tired link claiming its "evidence". I don't think you understand what that document actually says.

I don't rebut evidence, I accept it, if courts accept it when used as evidence in a case. I don't know what rebutting evidence means, or what that would accomplish. After four years of nonsense investigations there were no indictments on this so called "collusion". This fact alone makes anyone involved in making those allegations look completely nutty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment

No indictment = no charges = no case = no conviction = innocent until proven guilty. Regardless of this report, if Dems had solid evidence to bring criminal charges, I'd bet my life savings that they'd have brought cases by now, and we'd know about it.

> Edit: A lot of the responses here seem to be unaware of Texas’ lawsuit and the ramifications. I expect the conspiracy claims to be separated out from the genuine concerns if the Supreme Court chooses to hear that suit.

I'm not sure why you think that. I doubt any legally-minded individuals think there's any merit to that lawsuit.

1. It's dubious Texas even has standing. Texas has extremely limited influence, if any, over the manner in which other states manage their elections. If Pennsylvania wanted, they could divvy out their electoral votes via coin flip in future elections. As far as I'm aware (and I'm not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt), a state suing another state for the way it handles elections is entirely without precedent.

2. There's the issue of laches. If mail-in voting is unconstitutional, the time to make that argument was months ago. Courts are already hesitant to change election procedure near election day for fear of confusing voters. They are far less willing to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters after ballots have already been cast.

1. It is not dubious at all. The U.S. Constitution is actually quite clear about this. 2. Claims depend on damages. Judges tend to avoid ruling on hypotheticals.

I would say those claims based on the absence of evidence, or evidence that was proven fraudulent or incorrect would be baseless.

It's impossible to prove something didn't happen, so we need proof something did happen. None was provided, just look at all the lawsuits.

In the case of ballots, each ballot should have a recorded chain of custody, so it's actually not 'impossible' to prove something didn't happen. If the accusations are "There are a bunch of ballots that were entered into the counts without proper chain of custody" that can be easily proven or disproven.

If the accusation is "Signatures were required to be verified and bipartisan representatives were legally supposed to witness the process" which apparently is the case in many jurisdictions, that too would be easy to prove or disprove. There will be records associated with those observations and chain of custody records of those ballots.

Unfortunately, some ballot envelopes have already been 'thrown away' so they cannot be audited to see if counts match, to see how many ballots were indeed signed (sometimes a witness is required), or be able to be verified against other controls (such as numbering, ensuring the name on the ballot matches who it was sent to, etc).

The law says you must hold an election, and exactly what steps you need to take to hold such an election. If you didn't follow the steps, there wasn't a lawful election. That's more or less what some of the lawsuits are about.

Are these claims 'baseless'? I don't think so. There's no shortage of sworn affidavits and statements from election officials about how the processes weren't followed. There's also court cases (such as in Georgia) where the executive branch possibly unlawfully struck an agreement with Democrats to relax certain requirements.

The only remaining question is, how heavily should this evidence be weighed, and is it enough to affect the outcome of the process. TBD.

>"There are a bunch of ballots that were entered into the counts without proper chain of custody" that can be easily proven or disproven."

And unfortunately due to the amount of bad faith in play, I would be concerned of the party hoping that there was a break in the chain of custody to employ an insider to perform a break in the chain of custody in order to get the result they want... throwing everything out in hopes of getting a different outcome. The conspiracies will never end. Sigh.

In PA at least, they could have not kicked out GOP observers, literally cheering as they were thrown out. In other counties, observers had to stand far away for "COVID" reasons, while dozens or counters of DEM observers were crammed together at tables.

In Georgia, observers were told to go home, and then people continued to count behind closed doors, unobserved. There is video and no matter how many news sources yell "debunked" ... there is no reasonable explanation for it. There was no water pipe burst. It was a lie and it LOOKS TERRIBLE.

If you want an honest election, then people have to not make up this shit. But everyone sees every single GOP/Republican as some evil racist Nazi, so some of these things could have been totally on the books, but people threw out observers due to media fueled hate. The trouble is ... it's impossible to tell. The percentage of rejected mail-in ballots due to signatures is far far below what is has been before.

It looks bad. It stinks. Anyone who is in the center and is truly looking at everything is likely going to make the judgement, even if their party won, the election was shady as fuck.

It only looks bad to people who have only gotten interested in politics in the past 4 years, and for many had never known the actual process, but without any past data claim that this year's process looks "shady".

A large problem is you've seen everyone else as the other group, and your group as persecuted, so to me, it looks like you are accepting right wing talking points without critical thought. I promise you I don't think every single GOP/Republican is a nazi, but some of them are feeding you misinformation.

For example, there were no observers kicked out in PA. This claim famously went to court where the Trump's lawyers were forced to admit that they had the same number of observers as democrats before having their case thrown out [1].

Likewise in GA, where you have a completely Republican controlled voter apparatus, you have come to believe that the governor, secretary of state and many of the republican workers for the state have decided to sloppily tilt the state in Biden's favor, for seemingly no reason.

Also consider, that in many of these cases, they are being presided over by Republican judges (or judges appointed by Republican presidents), as is the case with the majority of our judicial system. McConnell famously prevented Obama from making many court appointments, while Trump has made hundreds. The further you look into this, the voter fraud story would have required co-ordination between not only the democratic party across the country, but also with several Republican staffers and judges. Voter Fraud of this magnitude would require an incredible grand conspiracy but somehow that is more believable to many than the fact Trump lost.

Again, I don't believe every single GOP/Republican is a Nazi, but the media wing seems to be working incredibly hard to make you believe that there is something nefarious going on in this election when there hasn't been any credible proof there is. Maybe that's not what a Nazi would do, but I implore that you take an unbaised look at what is being said, and what is actually happening on the ground.

[1] https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1324485343274557443

I don't see in your [1] where they admitted to any such thing. It seems they came to an agreement in court, that from that point forward, each party could have 60 representatives present.

So, based on this thread alone (which was written as happening live on Nov 5), which you provided, we don't know if at any point election observers were previously kicked out, how many, when or where, or for what reasons. We also don't know if the observers were allowed to observe much of anything (there's something about not allowing them within 100 feet in that thread).

The rest of what you wrote is speculation. Nobody need be concerned with the 'why' someone did something, merely the facts. Were the elections carried out in accordance to the law, or weren't they. That's what's being litigated.

In some cases, the chain of custody records (allegedly) aren't even available, so what are you supposed to do about that situation?

In my mind, that begs the question, how can these elections even be 'certified?' What due diligence did election officials perform to ensure everything was fair and square?

In Georgia, I believe, there were reports of multiple USB drives found that weren't initially counted during the recount. Did anyone know how many people voted in those precincts and who was in charge of ensuring the numbers were square?

It seems like a complete circus.

If there is a truth to be gleamed here, it's that U.S. elections as they're presently conducted are a train wreck. Even the parties seeking to prove a fair election took place are being thwarted by incompetence.

That's really the entire point, IMO. If the people holding the election can't prove they did everything by the letter, how do they know they did everything by the letter? You're talking 100's or 1000's of different precincts across an entire state.

Some things have been claimed without a single shred of evidence. A complete lack of evidence points to claims as being baseless.

(That doesn't mean that YouTube's removal of those will help the situation. Though letting baseless claims be a part of polarizing the country does not appear to have been the correct solution, given where we are now.)

> I would genuinely like to know why you are so confident about what claims are and aren’t baseless.

Because he continues to lose in court time and time again, often to judges that were appointed during his administration and yet the rhetoric and allegations continue at the same pace.

So far, the vast majority of court cases are getting tossed out due to lack of evidence. The courts are asking for more evidence but there is none.

At what point would you be agree that the claims are baseless? Like, what has to happen for you are confident about it?

Texas' lawsuit is frivolous and will get denied.

>Do you have inside knowledge that the public doesn’t posses? Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening ... default skeptical about all claims in every direction.

No inside knowledge necessary. Just read the court decisions themselves. They are public documents.

I don't have the time or the inclination to dig up all 50+ court rulings, many of which explain in great detail, the deficiencies of the claims that have been made and/or are unsupported by evidence.

If you are unaware of these court rulings (along with the claims being made by both sides, the arguments for and against and the opinions of the judges), that's because you haven't looked. Each and every case is in the public record.

Don't believe anyone who tells you there was/wasn't widespread electoral fraud/irregularities. Look at the documents yourself. They are publicly available (yes, I know I'm repeating myself).

Hell, even a bunch of the ballot counting processes across the country were live-streamed.

I wrote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25354086 to explain why Texas v Pennsylvania is going to be dismissed by SCOTUS. There are at least six reasons to dismiss that don't even involve any consideration of the merits, with standing far and away the most likely reason to dismiss.

This lawsuit: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...

As a former resident of Texas, I'm particularly entertained by irregularity #2:

"Intrastate differences in the treatment of voters, with more favorable allotted to voters–whether lawful or unlawful–in areas administered by local government under Democrat control and with populations with higher ratios of Democrat voters than other areas of Defendant States."

Check out Tarrant, Dallas, Harris, and Travis counties:

https://redistricting.capitol.texas.gov/docs/19R0036_86th_Se...

> I would genuinely like to know why you are so confident about what claims are and aren’t baseless.

I'm confident that no good explanations have been offered for certain claims, and my epistemology is that the truth value of claims depends on having good explanations for those claims. Someone might have a different epistemology which admits claims of the form "X is true despite there being no good explanation of X being true," but note that such an epistemology effectively allows for all claims being true (the existence of unicorns, the claim that the Universe's existence began 1 millisecond ago and will end in the next 1 millisecond, etc.).

The Supreme Court isn't going to hear Texas's suit. They've already strongly signaled that by rejecting the Pennsylvania suit without any dissents; Texas is basically trying to sue Pennsylvania for the same things, again.

You're mistaking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with the U.S. Supreme Court. Don't feel bad, The New York Times is perpetuating this confusion.

No, you're misinformed. The (Federal) Supreme Court rejected the Pennsylvania case unanimously.

That's correct. It's the "Miscellaneous Order" on 12/08/20 here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/ordersofthecourt/20

Here's the direct PDF link: https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120820zr_bq7...

No I believe it is true that a plaintiff from Pennsylvania who was suing Pennsylvania was denied in the SCOTUS, but this was after Texas files their suit which was more inclusive, so the two might relate.

Edit: SCOTUS declined to hear that case, possibly in anticipation of hearing the Texas one instead, possibly because they intend to hear neither.

You can believe what you want, it's (for now) a free country. But the SCOTUS has not ruled on anything yet.

Not what I said.

You edited your post. How about some good faith here?

To clarify. But I never said what you thought I said.

There’s nothing secret or private about any of this. Go read what the judges’ responses where to the Trump legal team’s claims were. Some of these judges were appointed by Trump. The Supreme Court has struck down multiple claims. Those are public too. Election officials have investigated and found to evidence of fraud. The people Trump is attacking in Georgia for example are Republicans. Barr’s investigation found no evidence of fraud that would have changed the election.

Every person that was actually involved in the election has said Biden won fairly. They made public statements. It’s all out there in the open available for you to see. If that doesn’t convince you I don’t know what evidence would.

You're spreading misinformation. Should you be censored?

> "Some media outlets have incorrectly reported that the Department has concluded its investigation of election fraud and announced an affirmative finding of no fraud in the election," the spokesperson said. "That is not what the Associated Press reported nor what the Attorney General stated. The Department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible." [0]

[0]: https://www.newsmax.com/politics/doj-william-barr-fraud-ball...

How is the person above spreading misinformation? They stated that no evidence of fraud has been found. No evidence of fraud has been found. The fact that the AG will pursue any evidence of it if it is found is doesn’t contradict that in any way?

The court case record is a decent barometer. The fact that the Trump campaign's cases have almost unanimously tossed out quickly tells us that reality is likely one of two:

1. They have approximately no evidence of anything substantive.

2. All of the courts in all of the states where this is happening are conspiring against the President. Including those with Republican-appointed judges.

Can I argue that it must be #1 the same way I can use the laws of physics to argue that a hammer will fall to the ground when I drop it? No. Is it WAY beyond my own reasonable doubt? Yep.

Some courts are refusing to even allow lawyers to present evidence.

Additionally, many of the Trump cases reported by the media are not, in fact, Trump Campaign cases.

> Some courts are refusing to even allow lawyers to present evidence.

That is a misleading interpretation. The cases are being dismissed for procedural reasons, which (depending on the specific case) can amount to "you should have brought your suit sooner" or "your evidence is inadmissible in the court of law" or "even if everything you say is true, you have not demonstrated that you have been harmed." The lawyers aren't being allowed to present evidence because they haven't even managed to demonstrate that they have a reason to present evidence--which is a pretty low bar to clear.

In some cases, it is a jurisdictional ruling. Meaning that the only solution is to appeal to a higher court until you get to the court with jurisdiction to rule on the case. This is largely why these rulings are happening in rapid succession, there's a procedure that must be followed and deadlines to meet.

The Texas Attorney General likely has short circuited this process by filing a claim that can only be resolved by a federal court. And now 11 other states (at my last count) have joined on as plaintiffs and the U.S. Supreme Court has placed it on the docket.

> The Texas Attorney General likely has short circuited this process by filing a claim that can only be resolved by a federal court.

Having read the claim, there is no chance that SCOTUS will do anything other than deny it per curiam.

> And now 11 other states (at my last count) have joined on as plaintiffs

They have not joined as plaintiffs. They filed an amici brief. And it's actually 17. And reading the amici brief, they don't even attempt to justify why Texas has standing in the case, which is the biggest reason to dismiss the case.

> and the U.S. Supreme Court has placed it on the docket.

You're aware that means absolutely nothing? To be refused to be docketed is an exceptionally high bar that requires the court to think you a vexatious litigant. Several thousand cases are docketed a year, and yet there's only around 200-ish that are even considered petitions worthy of commentary, and only 70-ish are actually heard.

The actual bar you're looking for is if SCOTUS accepts the petition which, (for a leave to file motion in original jurisdiction) requires 5 justices to agree to hear the case, and will not be decided before the reply brief is filed tomorrow. I suspect it will be discussed at the regular Friday conference, and likely disposed of in the Monday orders list, although the justices may decide it's important enough to release in a Friday orders list.

I've said elsewhere why the case is likely to be go absolutely nowhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25353139.

> They have not joined as plaintiffs. They filed an amici brief. And it's actually 17. And reading the amici brief, they don't even attempt to justify why Texas has standing in the case, which is the biggest reason to dismiss the case.

You are correct, they are not plaintiffs, but a third of U.S. states are now in support of this action.

I would argue that if a U.S. state has made unconstitutional election changes and thus has conducted an unconstitutional election then other U.S. states not in violation of the constitution have standing to dispute the election results with federal implications in accordance with the 12th Amendment.

This is not totally unprecedented, however, as the Election of 1824 resulted in a contingent election where the candidate with the popular vote lost. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_United_States_presidentia...

> I would argue that if a U.S. state has made unconstitutional election changes and thus has conducted an unconstitutional election then other U.S. states not in violation of the constitution have standing to dispute the election results with federal implications in accordance with the 12th Amendment.

The process you are talking about involves the US House of Representatives, not suing the states in SCOTUS.

The legal basis for claiming injury in the face of improper elections is the notion of "vote dilution." However, vote dilution cannot happen in the Electoral College by definition. Texas gets 38 of the 538 votes in the Electoral College, and that is true no matter how tight or loose the voting restrictions are in Pennsylvania. The voting power of Texas residents remains unaltered no matter what the voting power of residents in Pennsylvania is. Texas's brief did not persuade me that it had standing to sue (although it does appeal to vote dilution), and none of the other briefs have attempted to address the issue of standing at all.

That the House has had to decide the election is not unprecedented (it has done so on three occasions, 1800, 1824, and 1876, where it delegated its decision to accept the votes to a separate commission). What is unprecedented is a state asking SCOTUS to overturn the results of another state.

Whichever way you slice it, and by whatever technicalities were employed, Bush v. Gore resulted in the Supreme Court deciding how a state could conduct their vote.

What you are saying is plausible, but I think it’s so silly to argue this when we will find out in a few short days whether the SCOTUS will hear it.

I for one will be surprised if they don’t.

> Whichever way you slice it, and by whatever technicalities were employed, Bush v. Gore resulted in the Supreme Court deciding how a state could conduct their vote.

On the basis of an appeal from a state supreme court, itself an appeal from lower courts, challenging the procedure. Which is basically the process that Kelly v PA went through, although SCOTUS declined to hear it yesterday.

I'm sorry. But you appear to be ignorant of the legal processes in the United States.

I suggest you educate yourself, as you keep saying things that don't comport with reality.

So a lawsuit goes through some filters before it ever gets to the "presenting evidence" stage.

One of them is standing. If I sue Hawaii for not providing trueluk with a beach house, no evidence gets heard. It gets dismissed because I am not trueluk, nor am I a resident of Hawaii, and therefore I don't have standing to bring the suit. The courts are not going to hear cases where party A files suit, claiming that party B damaged party C.

Another is failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted. If I sue Nebraska for not granting AnimalMuppet an oceanfront villa, I never get to present evidence. Nebraska has no oceanfront villas to give away, and a court order can't make them have any. (A more typical form for this to take is that some forms of relief are beyond the authority of the court to grant.)

Then there's... I forget the name of it. But the complaint is supposed to give an overview of the evidence. If that claimed evidence, even if true, doesn't give reason for the court to grant the requested relief, then the court isn't going to bother to listen to the evidence.

Most of the Trump (or on behalf of Trump) cases are falling on these hurdles. It's not that the judges are suppressing the evidence. It's that the lawsuits aren't even good enough to make it to the point of presenting evidence.

Note well: IANAL. Some detail and nuance may be missing from this post, but I think it's close to right. Don't take it as legal advice, though, because it's not.

So if I sue the state of Hawaii on your behalf and claim your HN username is AnimalMuppet, they would throw that out (as I don’t have standing)?

Yes. You aren't me; you don't get to sue on my behalf (unless you're my guardian or something).

What would you learn from this, if it happened? Is it strong evidence that your name is not AnimalMuppet?

Yes.

> Some courts are refusing to even allow lawyers to present evidence.

Source?

> Additionally, many of the Trump cases reported by the media are not, in fact, Trump Campaign cases.

That doesn't really matter. The "denominator" is not the most important part. In other words, it's not so much that his campaign won 1/51 cases or if it was really 1/10 cases. I only care about how many his campaign won (1).

And are you being honest, or are you being technically truthful while trying to deceive me? In other words, if a case was brought by Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell, but not some legal entity called "The Trump Campaign", then it's all the same to me.

I'm being honest. The Trump Campaign has filed only a handful of suits.

Here's their suit in Georgia:

https://publicrecordsaccess.fultoncountyga.gov/app/RegisterO...

2,560 felons voted 66,247 underage voters 2,423 votes from people not registered 1,043 individuals registered at PO boxes 4,926 individuals who voted in Georgia after registering in another state 395 individuals who voted in two states 15,700 votes from people who moved out of state before the election 40,279 votes of people who moved without re-registering in their new county 30,000 - 40,000 absentee ballots lacking proper signature matching and verification

Bummer that I'd have to pay to read most of that.

Are the claims you listed actually supported with evidence? I don't know Georgia's laws, so maybe felons are allowed to vote under some circumstances.

How do you even get a ballot for someone who isn't registered? Also, could they have moved after casting their vote legitimately?

Votes from people who moved out of state before the election. When is "the election"? I hope and assume they mean "before mail in ballots could be requested and submitted" and not "before November 3rd".

And what is "proper" signature matching? Signature matching is tricky. Are they getting professionals to analyze the signatures? Probably not. I'm not sure some Joe Schmoe would be able to look at two of my signatures and confirm they match, so I'm not that interested in strict signature matching as a bar to clear.

Rest assured, that if these claims actually are true, I will be happy to see the issues resolved. But seeing as all of the claims so far have come up totally empty, I'm not holding my breath. Remember when Trump said that he had a TON of evidence that Obama wasn't born in this country? Forgive me if I remain skeptical.

If your world view is this simplistic, then you can argue anything.

> The law also blocks county election officials from rejecting absentee ballots because of mismatched signatures, and when information on a voter registration application doesn't match other government databases, the voter will remain on the rolls. [0]

That didn't age well...

[0]: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/709911541/georgia-governor-si...

It's not really "simplistic" to judiciously apply Occam's razor to extraordinary claims.

And what exactly is your claim? It's just not plausible that there was such a large amount of voter fraud in key states (a net of hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes for Biden. How many fraud votes for Trump are we willing to allow in this scenario?) and no tangible evidence for any of it. You have claim after claim from "internet sleuths" who think they saw something on video, but so far, it seems that all of these claims have only shown ignorance of the viewer (ballot curing being an example I saw).

And I'm not sure what point you're making with your link. Can you explain?

Three more states have joined Texas.

17 states now. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/17-states-trump-join-t...

And this is exactly why we need the social media companies to step in. Because Trump has successfully created uncertainty where there is in fact no question.

Trump didn't create the uncertainty. Statistically improbably events did that.

There is overwhelming evidence of fraud and breaking of rules. The media, including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, are censoring the evidence.

https://hereistheevidence.com/

"evidence" sourced from tweets, gab dot com posts, infowars(!) and youtube videos aren't good enough for me, and they aren't good enough for the courts... And I'm not dismissing them just because of their sources; a lot of those tidbits have been debunked or thrown out of courts on their merits already

Jesus Christ that website runs about 30 more scripts on my computer than it needs to. Under the root domain, no less.

You fell for a honeypot, bud.

Oh no... I got hacked and all my bank accounts are empty. Watamuhgunnado?!

Your IP address and associated shadow profile are recorded by multiple nation-state intelligence agencies, most likely. Or else by private groups who are interested in compiling an army of impressionable and easily-duped folks to continue using them as a weapon to subvert democracy.

This is not a far-fetched claim. If I was Russia, for example, I would do something exactly like this for exactly that reason. Not to mention that stuff exactly like this has happened and was later shown to be run by exactly the groups I'm referencing. It's Occam's razor.

What is your comment meant to imply? Your sarcasm is too thick to be interpretable.

The Supreme Court will absolutely hear that suit. Those four states bypassed thier legislatures in order to change their election laws.

To anyone willing to invest a few hours of his time, he'll find it's quite obvious this election was rife with fraud.

What's sad is that our officials refuse to audit the votes. What's sad is the GOP officials in Wayne County who tried to say there was a problem were doxed and threatened. After that, no one was willing to stand up for the truth. Is there anything more important than making sure every legal vote was counted and illegal votes are discarded? They don't want transparency. That's the issue.

> To anyone willing to invest a few hours of his time, he'll find it's quite obvious this election was rife with fraud.

And yet none of the president's lawyers have actually brought forth even 1 claim of fraud before a judge, despite their rhetoric. Every time when actually in court, they have shied away from claiming accusations of fraud.

So no, not only is it not obvious that the election was rife with fraud, it is in fact extremely obvious that no real amount of fraud has taken place at all (only using "real amount" instead of "any at all" because I'm certain that you'll find 1 or maybe 2 people somewhere who have stolen maybe a dozen votes).

> Those four states bypassed thier legislatures in order to change their election laws.

When these special measures were enacted in March to accommodate voting during a pandemic, ample time was given for public comment and legal challenge. Why weren't these suits raised at that time? It seems awfully suspicious that plantiffs had no issue with the mail balloting until they lost the election.

People did sue at the time

Dude...

There were multiple audits in a ton of states. Every time, it came out that the results were fair.

You're going to need to come up with much more than that.

What has anyone done that is explicitly illegal?

Cite the statutes and laws.

The fact is, those procedures (i.e., "bypassing legislatures") have been implemented precisely for situations like this. Don't get mad just because people actually use them.