From a believer's perspective, articles mentioned affidavits, eye-witness testimony, court cases being filed, and important, trusted people saying something along the lines of "there is evidence the courts are not even considering!" Presumably if that same believer dug deep enough into individual court cases and affidavits and statements by the judges dismissing cases, they may have changed their mind.
But I don't dig that deep, and obviously neither do the believers. We are wired to our inclination of confirmation bias. When we are already programmed and motivated to find evidence of what we already believe, we do not tend to exhaust every option possible to validate it. We stop when we cross the smallest of hurdles of validation.
We are in a tough place.
What I trust is that if Trump had serious allegations with evidence, that Republican election officials in Georgia would treat them seriously rather than debunking them in the midst of death threats. Or that some Republican judge, especially one of those nominated by Trump would have allowed a lawsuit to get traction.
Reading the transcript of the call to the SoS, and reading a couple of the legal opinions on one of the lawsuits, is worth more than a million news articles to me. Trump said there were thousands of dead people who voted; the SoS said there were two, in the face of people calling for his execution as a RINO. That's compelling.
I also trust peers with a similar threshold. If none of my intelligent friends and family members with a history of digging deeply into fantastic claims believe the current fantastic claim, I don't tend to feel the need to do such digging myself. If one of them was suddenly making a grandiose claim, I would sit up and notice and have to investigate further.
I choose things to read based on my perception of their average reliability, but I don't assume that something is true because it comes from a good source. If I did, how could I know the source was good in the first place? The causality goes from good articles -> good source, not the other way around.
I just don't think you can give anyone any benefit of the doubt. If you're not forming your opinions bottom-up, you risk getting drawn into a divergent reality like so many people these days.
I'm also reminded of how some people on HN like to mention the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect". You can't expect that smart people automatically know about any random thing, if it doesn't impact their life whether they are right or wrong.
I disagree. There's no way they would have changed their minds. It's just an excuse. A thin veneer of plausible deniability while they willingly keep their heads in the sand. The simple explanation is no one is that stupid, that fascist, but, maybe they are. Maybe this is the effect of a decades long campaign by conservative politicians & pundits to constantly gaslight America & try to keep the electorate uneducated.
Either way, people clinging to these obvious falsehoods are seditious at worst or useful idiots at best.
People generally don’t like to change their minds on deeply held beliefs, and all the falsehoods Trump and Qanon are spreading have become deeply held beliefs for many of those people.
They end up supporting fascists but they won’t realise it until too late.
In an ideal world is there way to prove definitively that there was no fraud? Or is this something unprovable.
Poll workers for instance, get drafted from a lottery right near the election instead of a voluntary system so there's no way a team of confederates could scheme behind the scenes.
There's also multiple tabulating and verification steps. The ballots are both machine and hand counted. The people and machines are chosen at random and nobody could rig all the machines because nobody has access to all of them. Nobody can coordinate an effort for subordinates to rig them because again, the teams are formed via a random draft.
Test ballots get fed through the machines by teams of observers who get randomly assigned to polling stations for surprise inspections.
Furthermore the top 6 candidates independently verify the tally. They each get essentially an open book of the records. Statistical spot check surveys are done as a further confirmation etc. There's lots of international observers, etc
Every voter gets a copy of the ballot and a confirmation number that they can go and check the record of.
Maybe someone else can find a place where corruption in the tabulation could occur but it looks pretty airtight to me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Venezuela#Polling...
* - It's worth noting I'm not saying anything about the outcome of the elections or the politics. Voter intimidation and disinformation could still happen, lots of objectionable things. But their tabulation of votes seems to be pretty clean. Dictators, if that's your opinion here, can stay in power without lying about the vote count by, say, deciding what makes it on the ballot in the first place. For an extreme example, this election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_German_parliamentary_elec... could have been exemplary - as clean as mathematically possible, and had the same outcome.
> Dictators [...] can stay in power without lying about the vote count by, say, deciding what makes it on the ballot in the first place.
Reminds me of the situation in Hong Kong. Concerning the Chief Executive elections since 2017, there was a reform proposal in 2015 [1] to:
1. allow universal suffrage in Hong Kong, but
2. Beijing effectively could screen candidates.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-32397179
Strongly opposed as “fake democracy”, the proposal eventually did not go through (due to a very silly technical error from pro-Beijing side).
The rest is history.
After lots of subsequent development, just this week there was a mass arrest of pro-democracy lawmakers and activists [2], for otherwise the pro-democracy camp may have enough say in the election of the next Chief Executive, after the landslide victory in the district council election of 2019.
Why though. What makes this an unique problem.
The democratic house members who argued against the objections easily tore down their arguments. Their largest point with respect to voter fraud was that there were was actually _no_ legal action mentioning voter fraud brought up in the many many court cases launched by Trump's team. The reasoning being because lawyers can have their licenses revoked for intentionally lying about serious accusations and no lawyer was willing to put their career on the line for something they had no evidence for.
I respect everyone's views and consider myself to be somewhat moderate, but damn overall republican house lost a ton of respect from me that night.
The RIGHT, people who supported/enabled Trump have said, nope - nothing to see, all's legit, got any better proof? Kemp for instance was a HUGE Trump supporter, Pence has no reason not to support Trump, yet now he's a "traitor" for doing his job. Seriously. I'd hate to play any board game with these people, you could never win, they'd throw a fit if they lost until you admit they won...
> That's a complex and very human problem that is not readily solved with gut reactions, broad strokes and absolutes.
Sadly, though I feel the same as you, this kind of mindset is a vanishing minority in the US, or so it would seem based on most allowed speech these days. One can daily find entire reddit threads about how one side or another is absolutely unreasonable, and one shouldn't even consider that the other side may have reasons. And this goes for all sides. For those of us who try to remain objective and rational, the only option is increasingly to remain silent or find safe spaces (ironically, from the very crowd that popularized the concept of safe spaces). That's the main reason I started spending more time on HN. I've written before, this is one of the few popular places on the internet where being rational and impartial is common, though even here that seems to slowly be changing.
Name it. What sources? Every major news source has been complaining about "election theft" for 4 years and warning about election theft in 2020.
The issue with corrupt elections has been around at least since 2000 ( Bush v Gore ).
Here is an NYU professor giving a lecture about it in 2008 ( about the bush election theft ).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPhL53ol0DE
You'll notice the exact same issues voting machines, ballots, etc discussed.
Any person of logic and reason will conclude there was election fraud. Both the democrats and republicans have had 4 years to prepare for it. But also reason and logic says that if both cheated then so be it. The national election system is designed specifically to be gamed. It's not just local voting that has problems - gerrymandering, voting suppression, etc., but the national election as well.
There is no doubt in my mind that Trump and Hillary cheated in 2016. I think the DNC's hubris underestimated Trump and that's why he won. I think this time, Trump's hubris cost him. I mean "china, china, china" gets old after a while.
Rational people understand that both sides cheated and the better cheater won. Only democratic political activists think there was no cheating and only republican political activists think we should overturn the election because of cheating. Rational people understand there was cheating and are willing to live with it because both sides cheated and the system is designed to make it impossible to prove cheating.
The ballots are lost in time, like tears in rain.
As I said in 2016, I will say it in 2020, let the better cheater win. If Trump and the GOP really wanted to win, they should have worked harder.
And yet the media, academics, politicians, etc all bring up over and over. I wonder why?
> However there are tons and tons of evidence that foreign powers like Russia and China troll and spread millions of fake stories to fool more gullible Americans
Tons? Where?
> I don't recall a single democrat saying "the dominion voting machines are fake data!"
Other than warren, klobucharm, wyden, etc?
https://www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/letters/warren-klobu...
Warren even wanted to get rid of voting machine to make our election secure.
https://time.com/5613673/warren-election-security/
Also, as I noted, issues with voting machines were mostly a democratic concern in the 2000s due to the Bush victories. Voting machine problem isn't a new issue. It's been around for decades.
See:
- Hanging chads (ballot got fixed)
- Gerrymandering (currently getting legislated away)
- Russian interference (more oversight currently)
- Electronic voting machines (no longer used...oh wait)
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/facebook-p...
The article you linked says that the ballots were processed "legally". I explicitly said that they were probably processed legally, but intentionally deceitfully.
The article says that a claim that was debunked was that the ballots were kept in "suitcases". I never claimed that they were - nor does my argument rest on that claim.
The article says that an Richard Barron claims that "No announcement was ever made to leave, for anyone to leave", which was not a sworn statement, and is directly contradicted by the sources I already linked: two sworn statements, and (at least) two articles by independent news stations, including 11Alive, which is one of the stations mentioned in the article you linked, and ABC News[1] - meaning that the Fulton County elections director straight-up lied - at which point, why should we trust anything else coming from the Fulton County elections team?
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pipe-bursts-atlanta-arena-ca...
https://news.yahoo.com/georgias-top-election-investigator-de...
I'm all for transparency, verification, and audits, and think we need to ditch all electronics and go all paper, with tons of observation, but there's no there there in all this "fraud". If you are propagating this now it is because you have an agenda oblique to democracy.
You're wrong. The accusations are wrong. Our judges, some Trump appointees, said the accusations are baseless. Stop buying into bullshit because reality is uncomfortable.
I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
You didn't read the other sources I linked, which contain sworn statements from two observers, as well as articles published by several news stations stating that observers (and news) were told to go home because they were done for the night. Resuming counting after observers and news have left is intentionally deceitful, and no rational person actually interested in a fair democratic system would claim otherwise.
> liar
Assuming ill intent. You aren't interested in holding a dicussion, just labelling. Typical anti-intellectualism coming from the political party that won the election.
> seditionist
Look up the definiton of that word before using it: "Overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order." Mind-blowingly false - I neither said nor implied any sort of rebellion. You're literally just using the worst labels you can think of, without any truth to them whatsoever, to avoid actual conversation.
Then don't write hidden? Just write 'ballots'. Or write 'ballots that were sealed because the counting stopped, but then re-opened when the counting resumed'.
> You didn't read the other sources I linked, which contain sworn statements from two observers, as well as articles published by several news stations stating that observers (and news) were told to go home because they were done for the night.
Yes. Thats what the video in the tweet said. Thats basically what I wrote when I described what the video said.
> You aren't interested in holding a dicussion, just labelling. Typical anti-intellectualism coming from the political party that won the election.
The source that you cited contradicted your claim of 'hidden ballots'. You are a liar.
This is false. You need to also look up the definition of "liar" - it exclusively refers to intentional deception. I did not intentionally deceive you - I just thought that they were hidden when they were not.
You're zero for two while acting in the most malicious way possible. Perhaps try taking a step back and not only looking up words before you use them, but stop assuming the worst about people who disagree with you.
When it comes to elections, the burden of proof should always be on those conducting the election that it was done fairly and transparently.
Especially if rules weren't followed to the letter of the law.
Moreso where procedures were changed by someone other than the legislature.
Innocent until proven guilty. If you are claiming an election was conducted illegitimately then you are accusing multiple election officials of fraud. This requires evidence, something the Trump legal team didn’t have.
Even civil suits only require a "preponderance of evidence."
But elections are not court actions.
The results (not the overturning) of elections must be believed to be fair with almost certainly, especially by the losing side.
> The results (not the overturning) of elections must be believed to be fair with almost certainly, especially by the losing side.
According to whom? What will make you think this is fair? To me it seems like the only way Trump supporters and Trump will be convinced of the results is if they say he won.
And an election that was not properly conducted does not require that a crime be committed.
Same goes for everyone refusing audits and 1:1 observers for counting.
If you can't agree (legislatively) to rule changes (even in a pandemic) you don't change the rules.
precludes the need for any "proof" whatsoever.
However, lacking that, yes, the election officials should be made to prove that the procedures that were actually used were fair.
It's a retroactive proving of the process. A security audit in light of a system change. If that can be done, there's no need to prove a negative.
Your objection about the rule changes is, of course, that it allowed more of the wrong kind of people to vote legally. It's naked anti-democratic BS, attempting to masquerade as a valid concern.
Disagreements between branches of state government should have defaulted to the legislature, but didn't in most of the states in question. Especially true in PA, where the legislature specifically voted against implementing the same rules that the court then imposed anyway.
Even worse, they ignored Alito's court order to segregate ballots. (Which admittedly ended up being a moot point, other than showing general non-compliance.)
So yes, I think the rule changes are a reason to disqualify either votes or an entire election.
>It's naked anti-democratic BS, attempting to masquerade as a valid concern.
That's a political opinion, not a legal one. Which makes it the legislators decision, not the state court's.
The judges properly disagreed with your absurd conclusion that it was "a reason to disqualify either votes or an entire election." That was far too large an ask.
>was legally justified.
Yes it does. That's what everyone is saying. Don't follow the rules, it doesn't count.
If Pence opened envelopes from the Trump electors on Wed, I'd bet you'd think the rules for which votes to reject were important again.
>The judges properly disagreed
No. They punted, based on discretional original jurisdiction and/or standing, depending on the case. (Both based on bad caselaw, themselves.)
Which is ashame, because had they heard the case, it could have prevented all of this.
Complete nonsense that somehow manages to stay somewhat intelligible.
If you're arguing in a court case that the election was conducted illegitimately and should be overturned, then yes of course you are correct that the onus is on you to make your case, and there will be a somewhat high standard of evidence required.
If you're trying to convince some random person one way or another, then of course the onus is on you to provide arguments, and the standard of evidence is basically whatever can be convincing to your audience.
That is not the only thing, but that is the big one for me.
Of course if Trump had won, I would have trusted that the election was not rigged in his favor by Democrats even given the restrictions on observers, because I don't know of any plausible reason why they might have done so.
There is far too much opportunity for the election workers to cheat for me to trust them if they aren't closely observed, no matter what they say afterward. That's why observers were put there in the first place.
If the elections workers are not good at cheating, they may leave behind evidence, but a lack of evidence would not be convincing to me, because not all forms of election fraud will necessarily leave behind evidence, and there is too much opportunity for them to get rid of it.
I think probably several different kinds of election fraud took place because observers were too far away. If election observers are 6 feet away, they can't read the letters written on a piece of paper, so can't tell if an election worker is, for instance, allowing someone to vote multiple times and crossing off some other name instead, or accepting a ballot with a signature that doesn't match the voter's records. If election observers are 20 feet away, they can't even tell if there's any writing on a piece of paper, so election workers can let through blank mail in envelopes, or switch papers around, or put papers in the wrong box, or pull papers from a box into the wrong stack.
>coordinated fraud
Do you think it's implausible that a group of people that have all been selected at some level by democrat politicians, who have a deep seated hatred of Trump, would have some difficulty coordinating to engage in illegal activity?
>because an election official was watching from too far away
No, election observers were too far away. I do not trust election officials in these controversial areas, because they are, at some level, there because democrat politicians want them to be.
>And no hard evidence of this conspiracy anywhere exists, but it totally happened.
I don't know if it exists at this point. Some forms of election fraud would be very easy to get away with carrying out without any evidence remaining. How would you ever know if an election worker got two mail in envelopes, one obviously fake and the other real but from a part of town that goes heavily republican, took the inner contents of the fake one and put it in the good pile, and took the inner contents of the real one and put it in the bad pile? If an observer couldn't tell it was happening, how could anyone find out after the fact? How hard would it be for a box of invalid election materials to never be found again? Do you think the FBI is rummaging through the garbage of all of these facilities?
>Is this your position?
Allow me to turn it around on you. Is it your position that it would be unjustified for the democrat election officials and workers to cheat to make sure Trump lost, given the list of things they (I assume sincerely) believe about him that I posted above? (Owned by Putin, elected due to russian interference, climate change, women's rights, racial hatred, border separations, voter suppression, undermining democracy, etc etc)
How are these people risking their livelihood any more than any other group engaged in criminal activity, like people cooking the books for banks? Why would they expect the democrat local district or city attorney to come after them? Why would they expect their fellow lifelong committed Democrats to turn on them, ever?
The officials in these cities could only influence the elections for us representatives that represent their congressional district, which are seats that Democrats always win anyway. They could only meaningfully influence Senate races, which many believe they did in at least two states, and gubernatorial or other statewide races, of which there were none this cycle in the 6 contested states.
On the one hand we have only the word of a known liar and his band of sycophants. On the other we have the sworn testimony and/or judgments of literally thousands of election officials and judges, including from states with Republican legislatures (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona). Maybe the "right" should get out of their bubble and join everyone else.
I don't have any reason to believe it would be possible to prove in a court that election fraud took place at this point, outside of confessions. That doesn't mean it didn't take place, or that it isn't reasonable to believe it took place.
Prove it in court or shut up. Seriously, it's that simple. Don't spam us with links and tell us to "look at the evidence". That's what the courts are for.
If Trump is so certain that he's right, he should say all he's saying under oath. Surely he's brave enough to do that right?
You can choose to believe in shadowy conspiracies of "Democrat officials" and "left-leaning Republicans". That's your right. But compared to that complex story, "liar continues lying" is far more likely.
I don't think you read my comment. My point is not to prove anything in court, or to argue that anything related to the election can be proved in court. It is to argue that it's completely reasonable for right-leaning people to doubt the integrity of the election. Probably you are aware that a lot of crimes are very difficult to prove in court. That doesn't mean they didn't happen, or that people should not believe they happened.
>Don't spam us with links and tell us to "look at the evidence".
I did neither of those things.
>That's what the courts are for.
I have no standing in court to sue anyone over this.
>If Trump is so certain that he's right, he should say all he's saying under oath. Surely he's brave enough to do that right?
I don't know or care how certain Trump is of anything. I know many on the political right are certain, for excellent reasons, that the Democrats were motivated to bias the election against Trump, and had the ability to do so, and so many on the right are not going to trust the results.
>But compared to that complex story
Is cheating in elections really a complex story from your point of view? It happens all of the time across the globe.
>"liar continues lying" is far more likely.
Can you point out something I've said that relies on taking Trump's word for something?
Sure. But in this case, a known liar with a lot of motivation to lie is alleging the crime. And there's no evidence, even though you'd need thousands of mostly ordinary people to coordinate the crime and subsequent coverup. If even one of them breaks ranks, everyone else is going to jail. Look at it completely objectively: taking out the names, parties, policies and so on, if you were a betting man/woman, who would your money be on?
> I know many on the political right are certain, for excellent reasons, that the Democrats were motivated to bias the election against Trump,
Here's the problem though. The only way, the only way, they'd be 100% convinced the election was fair is if had Trump won. They simply won't entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, most voters aren't so enamored of their guy as they are. If you refuse to accept, without violence, the result of an election as fair unless your candidate won then it's not a democracy.
> Can you point out something I've said that relies on taking Trump's word for something?
This whole election fraud this is a Trump invention. He knew he was going to lose and sowed the seeds well in advance. He's sued dozens of times and lost nearly every single case.
> Is cheating in elections really a complex story from your point of view?
Across multiple states, parties, officials, and judges? With no leaks, no whistleblowers, no emails or texts? I'm not saying it's impossible in theory. But in this particular case, when it's a known liar making the allegations, color me skeptical. If Trump had a history of probity and honesty in his past conduct, I might be more inclined to listen.
Maybe some would. But I'll tell you, if the democrats wanted it to look like they were running a fair election despite their vitriolic hatred of Trump, they could have done quite a few things differently. For one, the measures they put in place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus were an absolutely unprecedented obstruction of the ability of observers to watch the process. An election observer should be able to see everything every election worker does as closely as the election worker sees it. If they wanted the other party to believe the results, they would have found some other way.
>This whole election fraud this is a Trump invention.
How does your assertion that Trump said election fraud first mean my statements of fact rely on his word for their validity? Can you answer the actual question I asked? (You can't)
>He knew he was going to lose
According to the official tallies, he lost by a combined total of 42,976 votes across three states (if AZ, GA, and WI went Trump, it would have resulted in a 269-269 tie). How could anyone have known he was going to lose, unless they were part of a coordinated effort to fix the election against him?
The mask isn't supposed to over the eyes, only the mouth and nose. Do you have any concrete examples of "unprecedented obstruction" and their effects? Or evidence that it didn't affect both sides equally? These are just random insinuations.
Also there's a bit of karmic justice here, because if Trump had taken the pandemic more seriously in the first place maybe there wouldn't have been all these restrictions. Or maybe he deliberately sabotaged the response so he could blame the restrictions for affecting the result later. (See? It's so easy to make up accusations).
> An election observer should be able to see everything every election worker does as closely as the election worker sees it.
Do observers generally get closer than 6ft to workers? Even under normal circumstances that's considered personal space.
Also this would require a conspiracy among hundreds if not thousands of election workers to have any effect. Without a single person blowing the whistle.
> How could anyone have known he was going to lose,
The polls had him losing WI by a far larger margin so that was a hint. The WI race being so close, and the history of the Republican party's treachery in that state is more an indicator of a failed Trump steal. I don't believe that is the case either - it's more likely that it was bad polling.
> Can you answer the actual question I asked?
You haven't presented any facts - only vague accusations. What is there to answer? You're a concern troll. I'm done responding to you.
I have the same views. There are actually some "They stole my election!" people on HN, so maybe they'll read this and reconsider their "reality", but Biden won by several thousands in the 3 disputed states, to pull off voter fraud to swing that many votes require a lot of work, and probably a lot of people, and the problem with having many people is that it's hard to keep something like that secret. And if they were going to steal the presidency, why did some GOP candidates in those states still win seats, why not flip enough things Dem so that the "tyrants" have a comfortable majority?
I think Trump's "They stole it!" proclamations are a scheme to keep his base heated so they can donate to his retirement fund, although yesterdays "We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue!" (only for him to take the limo back to the White House) probably goes beyond that, that was an incredible "Release the hounds!" moment.
It's infuriating that a significant percentage of the country doesn't listen to reason, haven't even looked at how flimsy the court arguments that Team Total Landscaping have made, but are just screaming everywhere "I know the truth, and the truth is, they stole it!". Then again, many probably would get lost in the first paragraph if they tried to read any court filing. (Not being insulting, but hey, someone must've thought years ago "why spend money to educate children if they're just going to vote you out.".)
This is turning to a rant, but it seems the seditionists in congress who are also still claiming voter fraud without evidence (like Cruz or Hawley) just want to keep the Trump base very very pissed off, and very very motivated.
Or they want to keep the crazies on their side, rather than being turned on suddenly the way the insufficiently strident (e.g.,.most visibly recently, Pence) have often been. Still had the effect of contributing to radicalization, but the intent may be more avoiding becoming a target.
The odds that Donny dies of natural causes before 2024 are not nothing. Trying to position yourself as the inheritor of his base is a savvy political move (despite my personal horror at such a callous idea).
Technically, that's not necessarily true: if he is convicted the punishment can consist of any combination of removal and bar from holding future office. In theory, he could be removed but not barred on conviction, though that seems improbable and, AFAIK, every actual conviction in an impeachment trial (most such trials have been of federal judges) has resulted in both removal and bar.
> In general, sedition is defined as trying to overthrow the government with intent and means to bring it about; the Supreme Court, however, has been divided over what constitutes intent and means.
> These acts made it a federal crime to speak, write, or print criticisms of the government that were false, scandalous, or malicious.
It is frightening to me that so many U.S. citizens get their perception of reality through social media channels; that is to say they get messages that are amplified by algorithm with insufficient regard to refutability (and a requirement of evidence to refute or confirm.)
As someone who cannot visit every single polling place in the country (I visited zero and voted by mail) I cannot with absolute certainty proclaim that there there was no widespread, coordinated and shockingly well-concealed election fraud. As a person of logic and reason and based on multiple sources of information that I consider reputable, I strongly believe this did not take place, and I would need multiple, reputable sources of information and likely trusted peer acceptance before I would change my mind to believe it did.
My way of trying to only accept what I believe to be accurate information will always be imperfect, and, at times, fail me. But I believe it is only shades different from what someone who believes in election fraud does. Their sources include the content of speeches made by the President of the United States, news anchors and journalists of conversatively-biased news, and perhaps most importantly, peers they trust liking and sharing those same speeches and articles with them as a stamp of acceptance.
That's a complex and very human problem that is not readily solved with gut reactions, broad strokes and absolutes.