For those downvoting OP, Democrats have voted against certifying 2000, 2004, and 2016: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/democrat-republic...

HUGE leap to compare those to Trump and his attorneys falsely asserting widespread election fraud in public, and filing over 50 lawsuits across states

> Al Gore presided over the meeting in 2001. He overruled these objections because no senator joined them

> Senator Barbara Boxer [...] joined Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones [...] lodge a formal objection to Ohio’s electoral votes. The objection compelled Congress to spend two hours in debate

Two hours in debate! You're really comparing that?

(There was no vote in 2000 or 2016, so that isn't true)

The individual members of Congress aren’t the President.

You can form whatever opinion you like on the merits of the objections, but the end result is the same. In three separate elections this century there were Democrats in Congress who voted against certifying the election results.

You can hand wave it away as much as you like. The facts will remain. It’s on the voting record.

> In three separate elections this century there were Democrats in Congress who voted against certifying the election results.

No, there weren’t. The only votes on objections to an electoral tally prior to 2020 in this century (counting 2000 as “in this century”, to avoid ambiguity) were in 2004.

In 2000 and 2016 there were no votes, because votes only occur after the count is stopped for debate on an objection, which only occurs when a legal objection is filed, which (1) must be in writing, and (2) must be signed by both a Senator and a member of the House of Representatives.

In 2000 and 2016 some members of the House engaged in floor stunts proposing objections which were not signed by a member of a Senate, which resulted in no debate or vote as they were ruled out of order because, well, they were out of order.

> You can hand wave it away as much as you like. The facts will remain. It’s on the voting record.

Yeah, the voting record is against you here, so you probably want to stop waving your hands in its general direction.

The individual members of Congress voted based on the president's actions.

> there were Democrats in Congress who voted against certifying the election results

Right, and one of them was a two hour debate.

You'd be gullible enough compare that to not supporting a campaign of bad-faith lawsuits across states that were clearly not based in voter fraud (and usually dismissed as a result). The most specific thing they have in common is "members of Congress voted."

Al Gore and George Bush had lawsuits going for many weeks that ultimately went to the Supreme Court.

Florida counties ran an automated recount, as required by law. Under Florida law, candidates could request a manual recount as well. Bush sued to stop the recount, and won. Gore conceded on December 13.

Details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...

Contrast this to 2020, where there were 86 lawsuits after the election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related...

> I have looked at even just some of the evidence and just alone the statistical data indicates extremely strongly that at least something was clearly wrong that would cause any good faith and rational person to at least want to look further at the data. And there are several instances like that, not even just one that I found.

Are you talking about something other than the Beneford's law stuff or the lead changing overnight in places that count in-person votes before they count mail-in votes or that finish counting rural areas before they finish counting urban areas?

If what you say is true, then didn't Trump appointed judges and Republican judges not evaluate the evidence and sworn affidavits? Why didn't Barr, a heavily partisan and biased Trump sycophant who meddled with prior investigations, not investigate all that being the head of the DoJ? If he somehow turned rogue, why didn't Trump fire him and replace him with someone who would investigate?

Do you have any reasonable explanation for the above? Mine is that all the evidence was hearsay and even Trump and Republicans knew it wasn't credible, he just did that to get this campaign to make even more money by fooling people, and for political gain.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-fundra...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-11/trump-rea...

> NONE of the courts have even looked at the evidence this time

This is as incorrect a statement as one can possibly make. Multiple lawsuits did look at evidence (Law v. Whitmer, Bowyer v. Ducey, and King v. Whitmer, for example), and the evidence submitted was found to be far from sufficient to support the complaint.

> not just dozens, of sworn affidavits that certify that fraudulent activities were witnessed

I just don’t understand why the fixation on the number of affidavits. The quantity of affidavits is rather meaningless on its own; it’s the quality that is far more important. There’s a good reason why defendants have won despite submitting far fewer depositions and/or affidavits in relevant cases: because ultimately it’s the quality of evidence that matters, and a few high-quality depositions/affidavits are worth more than an ocean of inadmissible fluff.

> I have looked at even just some of the evidence and just alone the statistical data indicates extremely strongly that at least something was clearly wrong that would cause any good faith and rational person to at least want to look further at the data.

What analyses did you look at?

And that also begs the question: did you look further into the analyses? Because most, if not all, the ones I’ve seen tend to either fall apart as soon as one takes a closer look (e.g., 700+% turnout for a nonexistent county/township), are incomplete (Dr. Ayyadurai’s analysis), or are rather meaningless (the statistical analysis submitted in Texas v. Pennsylvania).

> how is it that of the bellwether districts that have all, for the last 10 presidential elections essentially all gone to the winning candidate … both Democrat and Republican … all but two went to Trump this time.

Because such correlation is not causation. They’ll be right right up until they aren’t.

Same thing with statements like “Republicans need Ohio to win”. There’s no inherent reason why that must be the case, so when it isn’t you can’t draw strong conclusions from that.*

And Trump's team had tens of lawsuits across Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, and Michigan. Many of them dismissed without merit.

You're comparing that to Bush v Gore?!

What's wrong with lawsuits? You should want the election contested legally. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I agree you should want the election contested legally.

Trump and his attorneys falsely asserting widespread election fraud in public statements you should not want.

Absolutely agree. We should want elections contested legally, in the courts, no matter what the whacked out crazy or inherently false claims there might be. That's what the courts are there for and it's really IMO why they are a third branch, not a subsidiary, of the government. Let the lawsuits go forward. Let the courts decide on their merits, so we have finality and case law for the future. IMHO it was a mistake for the Supreme Court not to hear the Texas lawsuit. It almost certainly was not going to prevail, but by summarily declining to even hear the case, it undermines the judiciaries independence.

The courts DID decide on the Texas case, though. When a case is presented to the SC that "is almost certainly not going to prevail", this often (and undoubtedly so in the texas case) means that there is a fundamental misunderstanding or misrepresentation of law that is so egregious there is no opinion to be had. This is exactly what the SC justices said in this case:

> The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot. [1]

The courts essentially decided the cases have no merit to rule on.

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/121120zr_p86...

Hillary is asking for a 2016 election investigation.

She also said this summer Biden shouldn't concede under any circumstance.

There's dirt everywhere if you look for it.

I see an awful lot of hand waving in your response. “But this situation is different”

The crux of the issue isn’t how much time they wasted it’s the fact that they objected to a legitimate election.

Google needs to grow a pair and take a stand. But they won’t because it was never about that in the first place.

The situation is different. Objections in 2000 (in particular) were not about the overall result of the election, but complaints about long lines and voting access not being good enough and shining a light on changing things in order to get more voting accessibility. 2020 was about tossing out legitimate votes results in states that people didn't like the overall results of. Note that none of the re-elected candidates in the states in 2020 were saying their election was in any way invalid despite how much shade they were throwing on the entire system.

And this situation is about complaints about poll observers not having a proper access to observe the voting process. And ultimately, the objections in 2000 changed the overall result of the election.

> And ultimately, the objections in 2000 changed the overall result of the election.

There weren’t any objections even technically filed. There were attempts to offer objections that didn’t meet the legal standard, which were ruled out of order.

If you mean the recount and associated lawsuits, then, no, that didn’t either. Bush won both before and after that.

Now, if you slice apart some subset of the recount/lawsuit process apart from others, you can say that, but that’s a rather artificial definition, and, anyway, there is a difference between lawsuits over who should be certified in a state and throwing out a state’s electoral votes in Congress.

> And ultimately, the objections in 2000 changed the overall result of the election

How so?

The title is "Google won't donate to members of Congress who voted against election results". There was no vote in either 2000 or 2016.

Reading that link.. and no they didn't, they filed objections. It only went to a vote once in 2004, and Barbra Boxer was the only one in the Senate that voted to reject Ohio's electoral vote count, and she's retired now.

I'd guess down votes are because the comment is ignoring the scope of the objections, the magnitude of the objections, the basis for the objections, the outcome sought by the objectors, and the response of the candidate for whom the objections were intended to benefit.

For 2000 in particular, the objections differed massively from the 2020 objections on every one of those points.

I feel like every presidential election the loser/loser's party tries to de-legitimize the results in some way.

This is not good and we've seen what it can lead to with the capital riot.

> Democrats have voted against certifying 2000, 2004, and 2016

This is false. There were no votes against certifying in 2000 or 2016. (For there to be a vote, there must first be an objection signed by at least one member of each house.) An objection so raised triggers a debate in each house, after which there is a vote in each house.

In 2000 and 2016, no objection meeting the requirement was filed, so there was never anything for anyone to vote on.

In 2004 one objection was raised to Ohio’s votes with the required signatures (and that case was a very different thing than the 2020 one; the group of objectors — Senator Barbara Boxer and a number of members of the House — explicitly stated at the time that the purpose of their objection was to have the debate and draw attention to the issue of electoral reform, not to overturn the results; and they weren’t part of a broader movement headed by the defeated candidate painting the outcome as illegitimate.)

I downvoted OP because "Well they did it too." is a BS defense. I would hope that some more substantive comments would appear above that here.

Let's "raise the bar" of debate.

I don't think that is a very charitable reading of this conversation.

The topic of the post is career / financial implication of voting against the certification of elections. I think fleshing out exactly what that means is an important part of the "debate", as you say.

I don't think pointing out that Democrats voted against certification in 2004 is a defense of what Trump and the Republicans did in any way. I think its an important clarifying point in deciding how we want to treat voting against certification.

Crying whataboutism is a very tempting way to avoid nuance. I see a lot of people propose dramatic, sweeping action. When the consequences and implications of those actions are brought up, everyone cries whataboutism.

> We should defund all politicians who vote against certification

> Voting against certification is a normal thing that people from both parties have done, maybe we should come up with better criteria?

> How dare you bring up $PartyA, I only want to talk about $PartyB

FWIW I think the overall conversation is well worth having, I was tone-policing a specific comment.

> I think its an important clarifying point in deciding how we want to treat voting against certification.

> Crying whataboutism is a very tempting way to avoid nuance. I see a lot of people propose dramatic, sweeping action. When the consequences and implications of those actions are brought up, everyone cries whataboutism.

Two things: #1) I pretty much agree with you. #2) Aren't you avoiding nuance when you employ rhetorical devices like "everyone cries".

(FWIW, I'm not decrying "whataboutism" above, I'm tone-policing. It's also an odious practice, and I feel a little low and preachy doing it, but WTF, let's go ahead and try to have the nuanced and informed conversion if we can, eh, yo?)

I feel like it's on all of us to take a deep breath and step back from the drama. We have shared values and common ground. Instead of shouting on Twitter and in the streets, let's talk.

FWIW I know of a few formal methods for communication that seem to hold promise, I'll mention NVC ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication ) and E-Prime ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime ).

Well, that's just how it is. Every election cycle one side will use the tactics of the other side and everyone will call each other hypocrites for it. As a result no one's mind is changed and nothing gets done besides normalizing the worst behaviors and tactics, like violence and censorship.

There were no votes in 2000 and 2016. The only certification vote taken before 2020 was in 2004, since both a house member and a senator needs to object for a vote to be taken at all.

Yes, they did, and it was universally understood by everyone involved, including both candidates for the presidency, that these were protest votes. No one was promised that an election would be overturned (or winked at that the Storm was happening or whatever).

The Trumpist attempt to overturn the election was doomed electorally and legally, but it was presented to the voting base as a very real effort. Congressional republicans were going to go to congress and fix this fraudulent election.

And it was all a lie. Everyone involved knew it was a lie. And eventually a mob stormed congress because of that lie.

That's an interesting look back in history.

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/952883116/objecting-to-electo...

The only obvious difference is the argument between voter suppression and widespread election fraud, but the actual act of objecting to the certification of election results was ultimately the same. A less obvious difference was the way citizens forced their way into the Capitol Building just before the certification and objections took place.

A question one might ask is did the Democrats (that objected) believe there was really sufficient voter suppression to swing the vote, or did they just use this as a tactic to try to change a legitimate election?

And did the Republicans (that objected) believe there was sufficient widespread election fraud to swing the vote, or did they just use this as a tactic to try to change a legitimate election?

Our default assumption, particularly in the House, should be that they're doing what they think will give them the best chance of being re-elected. (Of course they may or may not be correct about that.)

So their main concern is just being on "the right side" of the issue, rather than necessarily having any actual impact.

Democratic objections in the past were symbolic, not substantive. They were about narrow but specific election flaws.

No expectation of reversing anything.

No threats.

No breakdown of Law and Order.

No takeover of the capitol.

No insurrection.

And absolutely, positively no malicious incitement by lame duck president of the United States.

Do you actually believe that the members of the House had an expectation of reversing the election? There were only 170 or so of them. And it’s not as if these individual members of Congress were involved in the riot, breakdown of law and order, “insurrection”, or takeover of the capitol.

> Do you actually believe that the members of the House had an expectation of reversing the election

No, they knew (or at least the mature ones knew) it was doomed. But their voters did not. They went in there lying to their base that this was going to fix what they presented as a "fraudulent" election. And that's not OK.

With a Democrat controlled House, it was impossible for the objections to reverse anything. Everyone knew the objection was symbolic.

> Everyone knew the objection was symbolic.

Voters did not. Even today, most republicans think the election was fraudulent. The people who should have been telling them the truth lied to them. And that's what this effort is about, not the very narrow sense of the objections. The objections were part of a coordinated effort across the whole party to lie to the american people in an attempt to subvert an election.

To be fair, voters thought the 2016 election was fraudulent too. Russia, Cambridge Analytica, #NotMyPresident.

This was already the new normal. We'll see it again in 2024 regardless of which side wins or loses.

And any elected politicians or major thought leaders in 2016 who told those voters the election was stolen or fed their paranoia about the candidate's lies should absolutely have been censured in exactly this way. There really weren't any. And that's why this is important. Our leaders need to behave like grownups.

I mean there are many many differences between complaints about the 2016 election and the 2020 election:

* The Republican presidential candidate won in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by a huge margin

* There was ample evidence of the malfeasance being complained about in the 2016 election, while there was no evidence of the malfeasance being complained about in the 2020 election

* The people who complained of a 'stolen' election in 2016 were pushing for reforms, and the protests were peaceful, while the people who complained about a 'stolen' election in 2020 were pushing for a violent overthrow of the democratic process, and there was subsequently an attempt to violently overthrow the democratic process.

I say all this as someone who is a cynic at heart, and I do my best to avoid hyperbolic media from either extreme on the political spectrum (and opinion pieces altogether), and to pay for and consume media that challenges my biases: Not everything is equal. Sometimes one of the options is worse than the other.

> The Republican presidential candidate won in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by a huge margin

The 2 point margin between Trump and Clinton was less than the margin between Bush and Kerry in 2004. Neither candidate cleared 50%. Clinton “won” the popular vote with a lower total percentage than Kerry lost the popular vote in 2004.

Also, these counter-factual are irrelevant. The popular vote doesn’t matter because nobody is trying to win the popular vote. That’s why Clinton didn’t campaign in Wisconsin (where Obama had racked up a huge margin in 2008 and 2012.) And that’s why Trump didn’t campaign in California. Changing the voting system would change how people campaign, so the popular vote tells you nothing. Also, if we moved to a “modern” voting system, we would use a run-off, like other countries have. Trump still might have won without the large libertarian vote eliminated.

> * There was ample evidence of the malfeasance being complained about in the 2016 election, while there was no evidence of the malfeasance being complained about in the 2020 election

Not in 2017 there wasn’t.

> * The people who complained of a 'stolen' election in 2016 were pushing for reforms

So were many of the people objecting to the 2020 election. With a Democratic House the objections were futile. They were symbolic.

> Clinton “won” the popular vote with a lower total percentage than Kerry lost the popular vote in 2004.

I sincerely don't understand why "won" is in quotation marks – I think you meant to say "the popular vote isn't something that can be won since we have the electoral college" – and if that's the case, let me clarify that what I mean is that she received a significantly higher number of votes than Trump did.

> The 2 point margin between Trump and Clinton was less than the margin between Bush and Kerry in 2004.

I don't understand the point you're making here.

>> There was ample evidence of the malfeasance being complained about in the 2016 election > Not in 2017 there wasn’t.

Russian hacking was discussed prominently during the presidential debates in 2016, so I have to disagree with you on that point.

>> The people who complained of a 'stolen' election in 2016 were pushing for reforms > So were many of the people objecting to the 2020 election

That may be true, but I haven't yet heard a good-faith argument for reforms (or in fact any argument for reforms) from people objecting to the 2020 election, nor any sense of what those reforms would be aside from things that could also be described as voter suppression and demands to reverse the outcome of the presidential, but not the down-ballot, elections. Maybe my sources are bad.

> I sincerely don't understand why "won" is in quotation marks – I think you meant to say "the popular vote isn't something that can be won since we have the electoral college" – and if that's the case, let me clarify that what I mean is that she received a significantly higher number of votes than Trump did.

Yes. It's like "winning" the first 100m of a 400m race. If the runners were in a 100m race, they would run differently.

> I don't understand the point you're making here.

The point is that there was a significant third-party vote in 2016, so it's not like Clinton had a particularly large vote share overall. The same vote share "lost" the popular vote in 2004, where third parties were less significant.

> Russian hacking was discussed prominently during the presidential debates in 2016, so I have to disagree with you on that point.

Of email servers. Not election systems.

> That may be true, but I haven't yet heard a good-faith argument for reforms (or in fact any argument for reforms) from people objecting to the 2020 election, nor any sense of what those reforms would be aside from things that could also be described as voter suppression

The fact that Democrats can describe something as "voter suppression" doesn't mean anything. Many things Democrats object to, such as Voter ID laws or signature matching, are prevalent in European countries. In Switzerland, mail-in voting has strict signature matching requirements. In Pennsylvania, it was the subject of a civil rights lawsuit. Mail in voting is, in general, discouraged in most of Europe. France had it, then abandoned it in the 1970s, due to voter fraud.

Other countries don't run elections like we do: with a flurry of last-minute lawsuits trying to chip away at any sort of rules or deadlines. That's not a healthy way to run an election system.

> [...] a flurry of last-minute lawsuits trying to chip away at any sort of rules or deadlines. That's not a healthy way to run an election system.

Well, if on nothing else, we agree on that.

Yes, but behaving like grownups no longer activates enough Republican voters to win presidential elections with a clear majority. 1996 to 2020, only in 2004 did the Republican candidate get a majority of the votes.

Over that time period, Republican primary voters have evicted moderate Republicans in the House, and have started to successfully evict them from the Senate. The state GOP twitter accounts for Arizona, Oregon, and Hawaii have continued to peddle conspiracy theories, post-January 6. Arizona GOP have censured three Republicans for insufficient fealty to Trump: the widow of Sen. John McCain, former Sen. Jeff Flake, and the current governor. Senators Toomey, Portman, and Burr, all Republicans, are not running for re-election. It's not due to partisanship between Republicans and Democrats, but within the Republican party. They are all moderate Trump supporters, but that's not good enough now. Senators report a significant pressure campaign, very angry Republican constituents insisting upon a Trump acquittal no matter what, even including death threats. The pressure campaign is probably working, as evidenced by jurors claiming

Trump himself attacked Republicans, who wouldn't help him overturn the election, far worse than Democrats who were never part of the fold in the first place. The impeachment trial and conviction vote will demonstrate the degree to which the Republican party is really the Trump party, perhaps most especially the party of Trumpian primary voters.

> 1996 to 2020, only in 2004 did the Republican candidate get a majority of the votes.

Nobody cares about the popular vote. The electoral college incentivizes Republicans to campaign in states that don’t necessarily yield a ton of popular votes, and disincentizes them from campaigning in states like California that have a lot of votes. The President popular vote simply doesn’t reflect what the results would be if people were actually trying to win the popular vote.

Republicans routinely win the House popular vote, where these incentives to go after smaller states don’t exist, and there is an incentive to campaign in the red counties of blue states. Republicans won the House popular vote 8 times since 1992. Democrats won the House popular vote 6 times.

In particular, Republicans won the House popular vote in both 2000 and 2016. Do you think Bush and Trump couldn’t have matched the popular vote share of congressional Republicans if they had an incentive to campaign in every red House district in California?

Folks love to speculate about alternative election systems where we used a direct popular vote. But if we’re imagining a counter-factual scenario with a different election system, why that one? Direct election of the executive is unusual. Nearly every developed country chooses the executive based on who gets the majority in the legislature. Under that system, we would have had even more Republican executives (16 years) and less Democratic executives (12 years) since 1992.

> In particular, Republicans won the House popular vote in both 2000 and 2016. Do you think Bush and Trump couldn’t have matched the popular vote share of congressional Republicans

Those aren't independent variables, though. Those elections are on the same ballot. In fact the republican house vote in 2016 was about 3M votes less than Clinton got. So... no, Trump wouldn't have been able to win the popular vote in that election merely by getting all the votes republicans got in the house. Because he already got them. Lots of voters voted for Trump in those competetive house districts who didn't cast a vote for a representative at all.

I know that argument sounds good, but it doesn't work numerically.

> To be fair, voters thought the 2016 election was fraudulent too. Russia, Cambridge Analytica, #NotMyPresident.

There’s a key difference: nobody credible said that the election itself was fraudulent. There were a few hucksters, of course (e.g. Jill Stein cashing in for the Green Party), but Clinton immediately conceded and the focus of all of the subsequent discussions were about things like propaganda campaigns and use of social media influence campaigns. There were no credible allegations of vote fraud and nothing like a multi-month campaign trying to trump up state support for overturning the election results.

Clinton was saying the 2016 election wasn't legitimate as recently as October 2020 AND she suggested Biden should never concede no matter what (which suggested that 2020 would be illegitimate).

And saying well election fraud and voter registration cheating isn't the same thing as voter fraud is a distinction without a difference.

The GOP took it further than the Clinton did in 2016. But the democrats pushed russia conspiracy theories for 3 years in order to de-legitimize Trump. Their hands are not clean.

Try to find a primary source citation for that claim and you’ll learn both why the situations aren’t comparable and the people who told you they were are hoping you don’t check sources.

She’s talked about real things - voter suppression, propaganda campaigns, some funded by foreign governments – but she’s never made the kind of lies we saw about fake votes or said that millions of legitimate votes should be thrown out because she didn’t like the results.

Now, you are trying to conflate talk of voter suppression with fraud but that’s not correct for two reasons: the first is simply that widespread fraud is imaginary in the modern era, but the second is the difference between following a legal process and subverting it. Trying to conflate the two so it’s easier to pretend your party didn’t do something unusual is just dishonest.

> She’s talked about real things - voter suppression, propaganda campaigns, some funded by foreign governments – but she’s never made the kind of lies we saw about fake votes or said that millions of legitimate votes should be thrown out because she didn’t like the results.

The lies are different in the specifics but they’re lies calling into question the legitimacy of the results. Fact checkers have given Clinton multiple “pants on fire” ratings for these claims: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/sep/19/hillary-cl...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/mar/06/hillary-cl...

Based on the studies we have seen, complaining about Voter ID laws, like Clinton did about Wisconsin, is akin to complaining about mail in voting security: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/21/18230009/v...

> The results: Voter ID laws do not seem to decrease turnout, even when the data is broken down by race. This held when the data was analyzed in different ways, like evaluating only the effect of stricter laws that require an ID with a photo.

Voter ID laws are also broadly popular, among whites and non-whites: https://news.gallup.com/poll/194741/four-five-americans-supp...

(81% of whites and 77% of non-whites support both early voting and voter ID. Funnily enough, “voter suppressed” states like Georgia and Texas have both. Georgia also had automatic voter registration, which non-whites strongly support, thanks to Brian Kemp.)

The argument that an election is illegitimate because a tiny fraction of facebook ads were funded by Russia instead of wealthy US donors is just as absurd as claims that these elections were illiterate because voter ID rules were suspended for Corona.

Democrats think its voter suppression to ban letting party functionaries go register and collect ballots with out any ID or signature matching. Republicans think its fraud to let party functionaries go register and collect ballots with out any ID or signature matching. You've just decided the former is fact and the later is wrong.

The insane conspiracy theories peddled by Trump associates like Guiliani, Woods, and Powell are far beyond what mainstream democrats said (but not really that different from what fringe democrats said about ROVIAN DIEBOLD MACHINES STEALING OHIO in 2004). While Kerry didn't push these theories, 31 house members and Barbera Boxer in the Senate voted to reject the Ohio votes based on the same sort of conspiracy theories.

And again in 2016, while not lead by Clinton, there was a concerted effort to flip electoral votes--the so called hamilton electors. At least one actually did change their vote.

I'll agree the GOP took it to a new level. But some democrats had previously taken it to new levels in prior elections.

I agree with that. But that was true in the previous elections too, though to a lesser degree. Something like 40% of Democrats thought the 2004 election was stolen due to voter fraud in Ohio. There were hearings in Congress. RFK, Jr. peddled the Ohio fraud story. 67% of Democrats believed that Putin “altered vote totals to help Trump win” in 2016.

I’m not comparing the impact of two situations! What Republicans did was shameful. Grandstanding and symbolically calling into question the legitimacy of the administration based on a big lie is worse than doing it based on a small lie. (Though, I think folks underestimate how many people with authority genuinely believe the election fraud lie, and also believed the Russia changed the votes lie. The vast majority of Americans don’t believe the official story about the Kennedy assassination! People are extremely prone to conspiracy theories.)

Trump is still claiming he had way more votes and that the election was stolen from him. In the past, the losing candidates had already conceded and congratulated the winner months before. There is a huge difference between making a symbolic vote, and voting as part of a planned coup, even if the coup failed.

Hillary had been claiming Trump's presidency was 'illegitimate' all 4 years. Just one link (there are hundreds of others), for example:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...

No amount of out-of-context interviews are going to change the fact that she called him up and conceded on election night.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09/clinton-calls-trump-to-conce...

She might complain to anyone willing to listen that he didn't win fairly, but she never made the claim that he didn't win, and has stated on several occasions that he did win.

Florida in 2000 was a far more reasonable objection: the election was much closer and the lawsuits were intended to stop a recount which, we now know, Gore would likely have won had it continued. That’s a far cry from trying really hard not to accept that the completed recounts showed the same sizable win.

What? No. 2000 is the opposite: https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-elect...

> The results: The two major conclusions here are that Gore likely would have won a hand recount of the statewide overvotes and undervotes – which he never requested – while Bush likely would have won the hand recount of undervotes ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, although by a smaller margin than the certified 537 vote difference.

Counting over votes would have been utterly ridiculous. It would have election officials try to divine who someone intended to vote for where they punched holes for more than one candidate.

Gore’s whole recount strategy was Bayesian bullshit. Back then, 1-2% of all votes on these punchcard machines were uncountable. Hand recounts will turn up a bunch more votes, creating a poll of votes that can skew them to your advantage through selective recounts that take advantage of different base rates (favoring Bush or Gore) in different precincts. Gore’s original gambit was to request a recount only in counties that had heavily favored him to begin with. Obviously that would result in newly countable votes skewing in his favor at the base rate of the county. But even he never asked for a recount of over votes.

The whole 2000 recount was a shocking parade of innumeracy. The Florida precincts were doing things like including partial recounts in the results. We know from the 2020 election why this would be nutty. Imagine Georgia starting a statewide hand recount, stopping halfway through because they ran out of time, and updating the results with partial data that excluded a bunch of absentee votes, or Fulton county.

I was referring to the full recount[1], and with the larger point being that in 2020 the election didn’t come down to a single state and full hand recounts were actually done. Complaining about a much narrower margin when the single state deciding the election never did a full recount seems far more defensible to me than what we saw this time where the recounts were very similar and the margins in multiple states were at least a full order of magnitude greater, with a backdrop of lying constantly about problems. Hanging chads, over/under-votes, etc. are legitimate concerns – and we can see how many states learned and made them far less common - in a way that fairy tales about mystery ballot drops or dead people voting are not.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20011217183836/http://www.norc.u...

> Hanging chads, over/under-votes, etc.

These were limitations that existed in the equipment in the time. (The uncountable ballot rate in newer optical scanners is vastly lower.) It only became a “concern” because of Gore’s hand recount strategy. (And burning a ton of time pursing the selective recount, which the Florida Supreme Court put a stop to.)

The fact is that with a 1-2% error rate, you can’t reliably “measure” an election result that’s within a tenth of a percent. The whole attempt to recount spoiled ballots was gamesmanship on Gore’s part. (Permissible under Florida law, which was written by idiots, but gamesmanship nonetheless.)

Again, I’m not saying the hanging chads weren’t a statistical process which was widely recognized, only that they’re a more plausible argument when the entire election comes down to a hundred votes in one state. A recount shifting less than a couple hundred votes is quite possible and at no point did Gore or his party call for disenfranchising huge numbers of people because of it.

Yes, I agree. Given the closeness of the results, Gore only needed to try and manipulate the vote counts in one state.

It's disingenuous to say that Gore would have won if it continued. It was basically a tie to several decimal places -- every recount could swing the balance one way or the other.

I was referring to https://web.archive.org/web/20011217183836/http://www.norc.u.... The key point being that it was a much closer race, with more screwups, and he had a plausible chance of winning the single state needed to flip the result. In contrast, Trump lost multiple states by much larger margins, nothing like the hanging chads or other irregularities, and full recounts didn’t show any statistically significant discrepancies.

> Gore would likely have won had it continued

Isn’t this the exact line the trumpers put out? I hate to be a both sides guy but seriously both sides sound ridiculous when they say stuff like this.

The difference is that it never stopped, confirmed the first results, and had no credible evidence suggesting problems. There was nothing like the hanging chads, and certainly not on the scale needed to flip the results.

Yes. The difference here is that in 2020, the counting did continue, and Trump was so far behind that there was no mathematical trickery that one could do to fix it, especially because he would have needed to overturn elections in several states to get to the required electoral college count.

> we now know, Gore would likely have won had it continued.

This is not correct.

See https://web.archive.org/web/20011217183836/http://www.norc.u...

Now, there is a key difference here as I mentioned: tens to hundreds of votes is a tiny margin, much smaller than anything we saw in 2020 for the presidential race. That’s the larger point: 2000 was a much, much tighter race and there was far more legitimacy to questioning a result which had more confusion in the election process and a margin of victory smaller by an order of magnitude or more.

That's irrelevant here. We have the counterfactual study (i.e. what would have happened if the SC decided the other way) that concluded that Bush would have widened his lead. Stating that Gore likely would have won is factually incorrect.

Which Democrats voted against certifying the results of the 2000 and 2004 election? The only objection brought between 1877 and 2020 was in 2004 on Ohio. But given that Barbara Boxer is retired and Stephenie Tubbs is dead, the question is probably moot anyways.

Just browsing the rollcall of 2004, current members I recognize: Jim Clyburn, Raul Grijalva, Senator Ed Markey, Sheila Jackson-Lee. I'm sure there are more still around.

Source: https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll007.xml

It sounds like you are trying to point out how both sides in a two party system have similar characteristics. Unluckily for you, in the areas you are comparing both parties, I am able to find minute differences between the actions of the parties and claim that these differences are enough to negate your original comparison of said political parties.

All political discussions are the same.

So the reason for objecting doesn't matter, just that they objected?

It's incredibly disingenuous to compare the two.

In the first sentence you will learn the scope is limited to 2020

> certifying the results of the presidential election, following the deadly Capitol riot

> Google will not make contributions from its political action committee this cycle to any member of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the presidential election, following the deadly Capitol riot.

The full sentence in the article is ambiguous in this regard, as it depends on what clause the subordinate "following the deadly Capitol riot" is specifically referring to.

Does it mean this?

> Google will not make contributions from its political action committee this cycle to any member of Congress who, [following the deadly Capitol riot,] voted against certifying the results of the presidential election.

Or this?

> [Following the deadly Capitol riot,] Google will not make contributions from its political action committee this cycle to any member of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the presidential election.

If we're analysing the sentence at this semantic level, what's your understanding of the phrase "the presidential election"?

No, it's limited to Republicans.

Yes it seems to be limited to those who were in support of discounting the vote of the people.

Here in Missouri, millions of people think the election was rigged. If my representatives didn't present our concerns to Congress, they would be voted out.

It looks from my perspective like Google is trying to suppress the will of our people.

Apparently not since they are ignoring 200,2004 and 2016 elections.

well 2000 and 2016 had legitimate claims.

The reality of the claims + the number of people making it are key factors. you cant honestly pretend there is no difference. which one of those lead to an attempted to coup? exactly.

Please name the Democrats who objected to the certification of the Electoral College votes in 2000 and 2004.

2000: "a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus, joined by a few sympathizers", Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois (https://www.nytimes.com./2001/01/07/us/over-some-objections-... 2004: Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and California Sen. Barbara Boxer (https://edition.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/06/electoral.vot...)

Stephanie Tubbs Jones, to name one. I can't tell if you're being genuine, but this is not hard information to find:

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/952883116/objecting-to-electo...

> You're comparing that to 50+ lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, and Michigan?

No, I'm answering the question "Please name the Democrats who objected to the certification of the Electoral College votes in 2000 and 2004."

She died in 2008, so the question is moot anyways.

For 2000 at least one is Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL). I'm not going to search for the others, it is public record, because I don't think your question is genuine.

There were no objections entertained during 2000 election certification. Or at least, there was no sponsor in the senate, so no vote was taken.

The statement was "Please name the Democrats who objected to the certification of the Electoral College votes in 2000 and 2004." I named one. Your response is irrelevant.

But the story is titled “ Google won't donate to members of Congress who voted against election results” and the comment, assuming it was made in good faith and wasn’t just there to troll, implied equivalence between the two topics.

I think in that case your response should have been to the original comment, not mine. I was responding to a very specific instance of specious feigned ignorance.

If someone moves the goal post in a comment and the next comment moves the goal post back, who is in the wrong?

Here is the full vote results. For the House and Sentate respectively. In this case yea means they voted to object to the results of the 2004 election.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201217051145/https://clerk.hou...

https://web.archive.org/web/20201212192739/https://www.senat...

About 20 Democrats in 2000, no Senators and no vote was held: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-01-07-010107...

32 Democrats in 2004, including Barbara Boxer and 31 congresswomen: https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2004

However, the objections in 2000 and 2004 were both limited and specific, a far cry from the maelstrom of kettle logic that spawned more than 50 frivolous lawsuits, and which attracted ten Senators and a majority of GOP Representatives. Were the votes counted wrong, as Barnette v. Lawrence insisted, or were the voting procedures unconstitutional, as claimed in Bognet v. Boockvar, or did Dominion Systems somehow install compromised voting machines? The latter claim is currently the subject of a defamation suit targeting one Rudy Giuliani.

The argument that what happened in 2020 is anything like the few objections raised in 2000 and 2004 is dishonest and reeks of disinformation. Nobody stormed the Capitol in 2000. No politicians tried to put pressure on state officials like Brad Raffensperger to manipulate the counting process. Nobody tried to disrupt the counting process itself in 2000, whereas Republicans filed lawsuits to prevent all votes being counted in Pennsylvania. Most importantly, no Democratic politician ever insisted to their constituents that the election would be overturned, whereas Trump did.

Here's a video from 2017 (2016 election), with at-the-time Vice President Biden presiding, and objecting to each one because they didn't have a senator backing them as required.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvc4Ht3c2dk

Edit: Full Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uiAex46pVw

The 2020 election was the most decisive victory of the three and resulted in a failed insurrection so it’s not much of a comparison is it?

I’m going to guess no.

This move is nothing but PR. Google will claim the moral high ground here then turn around and violate its users privacy or sell AI technology to despotic regimes.

It’s easy to claim the moral high ground when it costs you nothing to do so.

2000 makes a lot of sense though, florida was fucky business. Democrats were symbolic and not inciting terrorists to overthrow democracy on absurdly false claims.

dont try feign similarity with over generalizations. Youre being dishonest and misleading.