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.