Election security fears doused with reality: Top officials say Nov 3 'was the most secure in American history.' The end After months of fretting about the possibility that the 2020 US election might be derailed by tampering or foreign interference, nothing notable happened. Despite ongoing unsubstantiated claims of fraud from the outgoing Trump administration, senior election officials charged with securing the 2020 vote on Thursday said they …
and quite possibly the fact that so many used the mail in option, made it so secure too
and Trump told his supporters NOT to use that route
I am still a bit baffled by how the whole thing works over there, but this election had a MASSIVE number of voters, so I would assume that any 'irregularities' would be noted if they were of a substantial nature, so again, well done you America
now you just need to convince PotUS45 his time has come :o(
POTUS45's claims of fraud are entirely besides the point for him. If he couldn't dog-whistle "Fraud!", he'd figure out sometime else, like "Paid for votes!", the old standby (for him) of "Illegals!", or maybe even as far as "[X} is actually a Chinese implant spy!". He's proton-authoritarian and the methods that he, and his enablers, use to forward their biases and agendas will change on a whim to suit whatever they are trying to get away with. The sad part is how many so-called "freedom loving Americans" are quickly, and willingly, falling into the cheap tricks common to a third-rate dictator, all the while holding their Bible and their flag.
It's simple, really: If Trump doesn't concede by January 20th then arrest him and find him guilty of treason. The trail should last, oh, 10 minutes max?
Every state does things differently with counties within states sometimes doing things differently. It isn't really a national general election. It is 51 smaller elections (50 states + DC).
Some states count postal votes before election day. Some mix postals in with votes cast on the day and count them together. Some count them after. Some states allow votes to be received for days after the poll. Several allow up to three days, Nevada allows up to ten days. Maybe the postal service is really shitty there or something.
Pennsylvania wanted to count them before election day, but were prevented by a Republican lawsuit. This is the reason Trump established a big lead there with on the day votes, that then disappeared when postals were counted.
This is why the election is NEVER officially called on election day despite everything Trump and his cohort would have you believe. TV networks will project winners and have proven to be historically accurate so candidates generally accept their call. The results are only official once each state certifies them after counting all the votes. Even the date for certification varies between states, but is days to weeks after election day.
The person who made the comment on behalf of the DHS wasn't authorized to speak and was incorrect.
There are numerous complaints that indicate fraud did occur along with statistical evidence of anomalies which can't be explained without doing a full hand count and audit.
Apply Occam's Razor. If the election system is ripe for fraud, then fraud will exist.
It's pretty hard to be trapped in a right wing media bubble in the US. There's too much left wing news sources. Now, being trapped in a left wing news bubble? Pretty easy.
Tell me,
Have you ever heard anything good about Trump or bad about Biden? If no, left wing bubble.
Have you ever heard anything bad about Trump or good about Biden? If no, right wing bubble.
Or I could be a guy who see's the anomalies in the statistical evidence which indicates fraud did take place.
Explain the fraud. Do an Audit.
Then at the end of the day, we'll know what's up.
Doesn't change the facts.
You create a system which everyone knows is ripe for fraud. Both parties warn about it. But now... you claim no fraud?
Not likely.
This post has been deleted by its author
The "numerous irregularities" are only in the minds of Trump's diehard followers. The laughter of 51% of the voting public drowns out the insane cackles of goofs like this guy, a grifter if I ever saw one: https://thehill.com/homenews/525164-clip-of-pastor-laughing-that-media-said-joe-bidens-president-goes-viral
Fraud or not? I can only go on my experience, so here is what happened on election day to me.
I was the 3rd in line and the system was down for an hour before a workaround could be found. Our county voting system consist of 2 parts, one that uses an ipad to verify the persons voting info and loggs they voted and then prints out a barcode that is handed to the bored poll worker that scans it into the old electronic voting booth device. The Ipad application was not working. It appeared to be a DB issue. After about 45 min someone must have figured it out because it started working, but would not print out the barcode. As the always helpful tech, I recommended that they reboot the ipad. An odd thing came up as soon as they had the home screen up, "Update completed, your device is set to auto update" or some such thing. Yep, another apple update borked an app. Conspiracy? I don't think so. They do this to everyone.
Recently Apple did an update to my AppleTv and now I have to manually turn on the tv with it's remote and it takes as much a 10seconds for the homekit to turn on a light. When I updated my phone, they removed the Find My Phone app and replaced it with Find Me. Removing the option to login into my wifes account to help her find her phone. I could use the web but it requires the code that is sent to the lost phone.
Is there fraud? Yes I have no doubt as I have seen it. Is there problems with the tech used in the hands of people that can't send an email? Yes, and it is more than likely where the voting anomalies we are seeing are coming from.
To solve the problem, they just made up a code and entered it in the old system. Last time I voted, the old system switched my vote from one party to the first party on the ballot. I check it up to tech that is rarely used and deal with it.
You mean irregularities like:
1) 450,000 ballots which didn't contain a vote for any of the other races?
2) More ballots than registered voters?
3) Benfords Law violations?
4) A sudden late influx of votes solely for one candidate?
5) A Voter Turnout which, if true, would require 900,000 same day voter registrations in one city alone?
Oh, and this also just happened to only occur in the states projected to be close....and all went in the direction of Biden.
Voting Fraud in the US is a fact. The question is, how much did it affect the outcome?
None of your irregularities are remotely true. Number 2 for instance is based on old voter registration numbers, the vote tallies are fine compared to the current totals. Number 4, well since Republicans don't believe in COVID they had no reason to vote early to avoid crowds; everyone knew early and mail-in votes would lean heavily Democratic, including Dickhead45 who tried to prevent both from happening. Numbers 1 and 5 are simply products of the imaginations of lawyers working for Dumbshit45. So far all of his lawsuits are being swatted down by increasingly angry Judges who seem intent on demanding actual facts.
@FrozenShamrock - mail in ballots are generally issued to old folks that normally can't make it to the polls. Since that generation is known to vote conservative; wouldn't Trump be stabbing himself in the back by trying to prevent mail in ballots.?
Trump stabs himself in the back all the time, it seems so never mind answering that! He may also have an insane distrust of the USPS which he figures is in lock step with Democrats that like to promote more government and more government jobs. In that instance, maybe he isn't so crazy. But such interference in Post Master business has such high Federal levels of violation with long prison terms, it wouldn't be worth it for a postal worker to comply with such a scenario, so it is still pretty doubtful; even if a motive seems plain.
You are onto something there. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIiaFMOfbwY
Someone create a category for him to win so he can walk out grandiosely while boasting of his unprecedented achievements. He should get a first place medal as greatest president by popular acclaim, champion of the 70 million votes, and greatest President Communicator on Twitter in the history of the United States. Even Lincoln can't beat that! Then compliment him out of the door.
[ Moderator's note -- this comment has been deleted for election misinformation. There is no evidence of votes were changed systematically. See this AP fact check for more information.
Also, please report any comments containing misinformation, thanks ]
The only "evidence" I can find for this claim comes originally from OAN, then amplified by Mr Trump. So I can choose to believe them or a non partisan report from the EIGCC and the EISCC. Hmm, that's a tricky one.
Even in the microscopically small event that OAN are not full of shit (which would be a first), there is a paper trail so it can be checked.
You forgot the <joke> tags, right?
Or maybe there is some proof, but so far none has been published, and that would really be uncharacteristic for trump and his team. Maybe you have some proof? Care to contact the local law enforcement? The AG? Or show it to the press, they should be all over it.
No?
Please go back a few years and read the arguments for Trump's win (in this forum), and the discussions, and then reflect on what you are writing. Some of us do have a non selective memory.
What's that? Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane!
It's reality smacking you in the face!
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-ap-fact-check-joe-biden-donald-trump-technology-13c104367924b8192b4fcecf334f7806
https://in.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-antrim-county-mi-pelosi-hus/fact-check-incorrect-reporting-of-antrim-county-election-results-due-to-human-error-nancy-pelosis-husband-does-not-own-dominion-voting-systems-idUSKBN27S2FI
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dominion-voting-systems-trump-accusation/
Yes, and of course lots of dead people voted in the election ...
It works like this:
145,000,000 people voted in the election.
Death rate in the US is 867.8 per 100,000
So, we can expect around 3447 people to die the day after casting their vote.
A lot of people, maybe around half the population, voted by mail before election day.
A few thousand of them will die in the period between their visit to the post box and election day.
Whether their vote can still be counted depends on the rules in that state, but either way, it is not fraud.
Also, none of the states are so close that it would affect the final results in any way, even if all the almost-dead voters chose the same candidate.
Plus I really doubt any states say that a vote legally cast by someone who is dead by election day is somehow invalid and should be removed. I've certainly never heard of an official process for "unvoting" people who voted early and then died.
I'm sure Trump would have had a few more votes on Election Day if he hadn't killed them at his superspreader rallies prior to that day.
"I'm sure Trump would have had a few more votes on Election Day if he hadn't killed them at his superspreader rallies prior to that day."
This! It's worth reminding people that quite some number of those dead voters were killed by Trumps inaction over COVID-19 and actions in creating large gathering of people..
Here is the proof you requested. 234 pages of affidavits from 50+ people regarding voter fraud at the TCF center in Detroit. We had hoped the election would not be close either way so we can end this political nightmare but sadly that is not the case.
https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/7483/3.%20EXHIBIT%201%20(affidavits)%20(compressed).pdf
You know this is virtually all fantasy and nonsense, right? That every judge so far has thrown this all out, and that there is no hard evidence of actual fraud, and that this is just time wasting?
Out of interest, which judges have thrown this out? There's a lot of litigation underway from both sides, and the affadavits are probably political theatre with a wad of paper to wave.. But there have been some judicial rulings already, eg-
https://www.law360.com/articles/1328275/pa-judge-rejects-ballots-cured-after-original-deadline
Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt granted the petition by President Donald Trump's reelection campaign challenging Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar's Nov. 1 guidance telling counties that voters could take until Nov. 12 to submit proof of identity if their mail-in ballots were questioned.
The judge said Boockvar lacked statutory authority to change the original Nov. 9 deadline in Pennsylvania's election code.
And although Boockvar previously ran for Congress on a Democrat ticket before being appointed Secretary by Governor Tom Wolf (D), she's in the news again today-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/election-us-2020-54932067
Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar decided not to order a recount, an update today said, "as no statewide candidate was defeated by one-half of one percent or less of the votes cast".
So Biden's currently ahead by .9% based on the BBC's figures, so a successful challenge on the wider late voting might invalidate enough votes to trigger an automatic recount. Or PA's supreme court might order a recount.
"Out of interest". Sure. It's been all over the news.
There's been about a dozen lawsuits at last count, all but one or two are doomed or dismissed, with the so-called successful legal challenges, such as in Pennsylvania, having no effect on the outcome.
They have so far failed to show any election fraud.
Edit: Pennsylvania court rejects five Trump campaign, GOP legal challenges to ballots
C.
We'll keep up the good work and they will still feed at the trough of QAnus.
Ah, conspiracies.. They're everywhere. Russian interference, QAnon..
But back to the story. So-
https://text.npr.org/933112418
Thus far, the campaign has scored a few wins in court but none that will have an effect on the result of the state. A state court, and separately the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that local officials must segregate some ballots in case deadlines that were extended by the secretary of state are found to be unconstitutional.
It's unclear how many ballots that will be at this point, but experts are extremely skeptical it will be anywhere close to enough to overturn Biden's current 45,000-vote lead in the state.
AFAIK that one is due in PA courts on Tuesday. But who are these 'experts'? And why, given ballots were ordered to be segregated aren't the number of segregated ballots known? That's not exactly rocket science. News sites had running totals of votes counted, and remaining, and there are presumably boxes set aside containing the ballots that may or may not be invalidated. One subset was already ruled 'unconstitutional' by the state court per PA's constitution, but I guess they may be in limbo if that ruling is challenged in PA (or US) higher courts.
But it's a simple example of the way stuff's been (badly) reported. Experts may become less sceptical if there were say, 90,000 votes in legal limbo. Again that should be quantifiable given ballots should already have been security checked before sending to count, or segregation. And then 'experts' can engage in various forms of mathturbation and try to predict how those votes would be split. After all, challenges should affect Trump votes as well as Biden.
Separately, a state judge ruled that election observers could stand slightly closer to election officials than they were previously allowed to, but a request to stop vote counting over the issue was dismissed.
Which is also a bit questionable. I've done this role in the UK, and you have to be close enough to see ballots to properly observe them. Tellers were also told not to block their counting. For a free & fair election, democracy needs to be seen to be done. But here, because the count wasn't stopped, there's been a period where election procedures (ie laws) weren't followed, as the judge ruled. Again there's the prospect of a simple remedy, ie just do a partial recount of the ballots counted without observers, compare results and publish.. Along with a statement saying 'Enough with the legal dick waving, m'kay?'
Or not. I looked at one of the PA court docs and as it's against pretty much all PA's counties + state, there's a shedload of legal firms representing all those counties. Won't someone think of the billable hours?
Some of the same issues were raised in Georgia, ie late votes and observers, but that state has done a recount, or was due to have completed it yesterday. Kinda tough deadline & not seen the results reported yet. But Georgia seems to have repeated the observer paradox and decided that there'll be 1 observer per 10 counting stations. So again purely in a procedural sense making it impossible for observers (of all parties/outside observers) to actually do their job.
And then in a wider conspiratorial sense, it's just a recount. Ballots won't be rechecked to see if they were valid, ie late, dead people, visting aliens, Russians etc etc. So addressing all the allegations of potential frauds there.. And back to NPR-
Still, the Trump campaign says it has more evidence to come regarding the elections process in Detroit. Two voters filed suit against the City of Detroit and its elections commission, alleging a number of crimes on the part of election officials. The suit includes an affidavit from an elections employee who makes a number of claims that have been disputed by city officials.
It's America. Individuals have a right to sue. Courts have a right to dismiss suits. Which seems to be happening with some of the affidavit stuff, ie claims that some dude's friend saw a guy in a dark suit & smoking a cigarette stuffing ballots into boxes.. isn't the kind of evidence that'll go very far.. And so a bunch of these have already been dismissed. But those were voter's suits, not necessarily the 'Trump campaign'.
But such is progress. There's still a lot of litigation flying around from both Republicans and Democrats, and I guess that won't be over until certification deadlines. Or Congress votes on President & VP per 12th Amendment contingent elections..
The "segregated ballots" in PA are mail in ballots that were postmarked on or before election day, but arrived up to three days after election day. That's what the law in PA says, but Trump tried to challenge it (despite that being the case in many other states, including his new "home state" of Florida) so a judge ordered they be kept separate so if a challenge was made they could be excluded from the certified total.
According to election officials only around 10,000 ballots arrived late - democrats in PA and elsewhere were encouraging people voting via mail to send in their ballot at least a week before the election (or use a drop off location) to account for Trump's voter suppression tactics of trying to slow down USPS and the potential exclusion of late arriving ballots. So hardly anyone was affected, nowhere near enough to change the result.
Currently the status of that case is that Trump lost his attempt to block the counting of those ballots in a federal appeals court, and have an appeal pending with the Supreme Court. It will not change the outcome, Trump lost in Pennsylvania fair and square. He's just a whiny little child with such a fragile ego he can't handle rejection, so like a guy who calls a girl a lesbian if she turns him down for a date, he has made up this voter fraud fantasy to assuage his hurt feelings.
and the judge called the Trumpistan lawyer out for that.
As for the voting glitch. It was human error and was quickly corrected as the audit of the election has shown. I actually applaud the GOP leaning Election Officials for standing up to Trump and doing their duty to the state that they represent.
Never mind Trumpites, 'The Donald' will be back in 2024 and running again. Well, that is always assuming that you can run for POTUS from inside Attica. The DA for SDNY will be going after dear donny for tax evasion starting on 21st Jan. He can't get a pardon for a state crime.
Time to go Donald. Off to Florida for a few games of Golf while your country is in the middle of a Pandemic but there again, you have claimed that you are immune havn't you? (sic)
Hopefully he'll have a hard time running his rallies from jail after all the court cases for tax fraud, campaign finance violations and so forth are allowed to move forward. Even if he's able to pardon himself (or induce Pence to pardon him after resigning the day before Biden takes over) the state of New York has enough on him and his kids to to put them away after appeals are exhausted well before 2024 primaries begin.
"The DA for SDNY will be going after dear donny for tax evasion starting on 21st Jan. He can't get a pardon for a state crime."
If they're smart, they'll file charges on the 19th, and request the court confiscate Trumplethinskin's passport on the grounds that, with his assets like properties owned overseas, he constitutes a flight risk.
(I presume that the various U.S. intelligence agencies would quietly inform the court that they support the request - since the amount of information that he might have accidentally learned despite his reported inattention at his security briefings plus the amount of money he reportedly owes to unnamed lenders could be a volatile combination.)
You can't reason with the TDS patients in this comment section, no point in trying to engage with their media-created alternative reality.
Indeed. See for example-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2020-54926299
Former President Barack Obama has said senior US Republicans are undermining democracy by going along with President Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.
In an interview with CBS News, due to air on Sunday, Mr Obama said President-elect Joe Biden had "clearly won" this year's race for the White House.
And Obama is of course correct. Election fraud clearly undermines Democracy. Obama says Biden won, therefore he won.
The result was called by US media last weekend, but some counting continues.
And the BBC says Biden won, therefore he won. No need to count all those votes. Biden won, ok? But see also-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlam_%26_Ors_v_Rahman_%26_Anor
Lutfur Rahman was declared winner of the 2014 Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election some time before 2am on 24 May 2014 with a total of 37,395 first and second preference votes over John Biggs 34,143 votes.
Unlike Biden, Rahman won after all the votes were counted and his election was officially declared. Except for that court case, where evidence was presented and Rahman was un-won.
But that's the problem with modern democracy. There are rules and procedures governing elections in both the UK and US. Vote, count votes, deal with any irregularities, declare/certify votes and declare winner. The US system hasn't yet replaced it's Electoral College with an Editorial College to finally vote in Presidents. And ex-Presidents don't get to automatically declare their successor.
But such is politics. The Electoral College hasn't voted, Biden hasn't won. That's US democracy.. Or should be. Of course if Trump concedes, then that bit can be skipped(?) and eviction proceedings started. AFAIK once conceded, you can't un-concede. Although I guess it could be awkward if investigations invalidate state/county results, or recounts show irregularities and the outcome changes.
But like Rahman, Biden's won, okay? Back to the BBC-
The president's team has yet to provide any evidence to support their claims.
See? No evidence, therefore Rahman won. I mean Biden's won. This is how Democratcy should work. Don't wait for recounts or court cases, skip the collection and presentation of evidence to appropriate courts and declare the victor. This is a far quicker and efficient form of Democratcy. Never mind the evidence, just decide guilt or innocence based on feelings. Of course in the Rahman case, there was a BBC Panorama investigation questioning Rahman's activities.. But the police didn't think it worthy of investigation. The court case found differently however, after evidence was presented..
But such is politics. In this case, Biden's almost certainly won the popular vote, being ahead by around 50m votes. It would have to be a very serious & organised fraud to generate that many invalid votes. But of course it's different in the US, where the Electoral College votes matter. Like PA's 20 votes, where Biden's only ahead by 50,000... Maybe-
https://www.law360.com/articles/1328275/pa-judge-rejects-ballots-cured-after-original-deadline
Law360 (November 12, 2020, 6:09 PM EST) -- A Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court judge ruled Thursday that the state's top election official lacked the authority to extend the deadline for voters to fix issues with verifying their identities and ordered ballots that were cured after the original Nov. 9 deadline to not be counted.
It's unclear how many ballots that affects, or how that will affect the media's projection for those all important 20 EC votes. I doubt it'll be 50,000 improperly cured. But that's only 1 challenge in PA, and there's a wider challenge to the validity of 'late' votes, and this ruling may affect the outcome of that case in the PA Supreme Court challenge. But that could affect potentially 90,000 'late' votes, if the state court rules that Boockvar did not have the authority to change the deadline. And-
The Democratic National Committee joined the suit, arguing that the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee lacked standing because they had failed to show that Boockvar's guidance had injured or will injure them.
Which is.. strange given if the court rules, as it has, that late 'cured' votes were invalid, then obviously that changes the count, the result, and the allocation of those 20 EC votes.
But again such is politics. Or the media. Evidence? There's no evidence. The BBC has declared this fake news. Except-
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/10/donald-trump-election-lawsuits-expose-evidence-vot/
Reporting a bunch of sworn affidavits claiming irregularities in various marginal states. That stuff is generally considered evidence, even if it may not go anywhere, or change the outcome of this election. But it may show that claims of shenanigans were true, not 'fake news'.. In which case, where does that leave the MSM, who've spent much of the last week denying these allegations? Interestingly when looking for a semi-reliable source for the PA ruling, google didn't show the MSM reporting that case..
So, X-files again, or should democracy run it's course, run out any legal challenges and wait for results to be officially certified, or leave it to the MSM to decide election outcomes?
But but.Trump said he won....but you say people calling elections early is just wrong...so Trump must be wrong.... my brain can't cope...
Yup. Nobody has won, yet. Except probably lawyers. My points are really about the sections of the MSM's indecent haste to call the election and deny any potential shenanigans, without any real evidence either way. But we live in an era of 'fake news', or just trust/mistrust in the MSM.
I'm also a little curious about the procedural aspects. So there's the claim about election security. That could be disproven, if there's evidence of fraud or vote tampering. There are claims that observers saw ballot papers being run through machines multiple times, with a leading conspiracy that that translated to the paper being counted multiple times. That's potentially an IT thing.
I don't know exactly how the machines work, but presumably some form of scanning/OCR. I don't know how the ballots are printed, ie any bar codes etc to uniquely identify a ballot.. Which would seem sensible. So I think (hope) it's unlikely that you could just keep feeding the same ballot multiple times & cranking out duplicate votes without that being detected. But it's very likely that scanning might fail & take multiple attempts before it's correctly logged. And I know from my own experience as a scrutineer/observer in the UK that unclear/spoiled ballots are set aside for closer inspection. That seems part of the 'curing' process being used in the US.
I also think the whole Covid thing has made this election a whole lot more complicated, ie social distancing making the job of observers a whole lot harder, unless they brought opera glasses. Plus some reported pettiness, like observers being kept too far away & outside a locked building. Then challenging that decision and being allowed to stand 6' away from the counts. But then the counts being moved 6' further away from the observers for a 12' 'safe space'.
But it keeps popcorn sellers in business I guess.
The ballots are usually "fill in the bubble" like standardized tests, and are run through scanners. Every state is different so I can only speak for mine, but here a sticker with a barcode is affixed to every ballot and the scanners read those as well. That helps secure the ballot against people trying to "ballot stuff" by adding fakes, or against accidentally scanning the same ballot more than once. I imagine there are also some other measures they've taken that aren't made public.
Those "other measures" come into play when you read stuff like how right wing media is trying to claim that dead people on the voter rolls in Pennsylvania was some sort of huge problem and points to fraud that they can't prove (but since you can't disprove it, we're supposed to believe it is being used heavily and only by Biden supporters, to bring out the dead vote) In fact they arrested a guy (who turned out to be a registered republican and supposedly a Trump supporter) who sent in a ballot request for his mother who died in 2015. So obviously they have a pretty good handle on checking that, even if they aren't cleaning up the list itself.
Concessions are irrelevant legally. If you concede, you can unconcede if you like. It is purely convention based on media organisations projecting results. The projections are based on maths. The simple fact is that they invariably prove to be accurate once the official count is in. Due to this candidates without mental defects accept them as provisionally correct. A state will officially call the result when they certify it. This has to be done by a specific date stipulated by that states election rules.
Very odd that the presidential election is apparently fraudulent, but the senate race is completely hunky dory.
Very odd that the presidential election is apparently fraudulent, but the senate race is completely hunky dory.
Give it time. I'm assuming Republican wins there just means voters split their vote between President and Senator, and we still may have to wait till January till everything's done & dusted. Or the run-offs in January upset Pelosi, who's already called for loyal Democrats to move to Georgia so they can vote there. Then there's going to be the 2022 elections, and if the gavel changes hands, a prospect of a lame duck President.
But 2020's turned out crazy enough already.
Where has Pelosi told democrats to move to Georgia? You keep repeating right wing lies without any sources. I guess you just assume the sources that say what you want to hear are true, and the sources that say what you don't want to hear are fake news?
Even if Pelosi, Obama, and Jesus all told me to move to Georgia, I wouldn't. Somebody else take the bullet of moving to grits, gunz and gawd-land.
Sure let's believe what Trump's political appointees say, they are totally non partisan! If he has evidence, he's keeping it secret from Trump's legal team who has been shot down in every single lawsuit that's been decided so far, except the one in Pennsylvania where observers who were being kept 10 feet away were allowed to stand 6 feet away.
Moron. The bogus website you linked to compared their virtuous reporting to the evil non-American Al Jazeera. Well, the same story was also carried by all legitimate news sites since the story that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency found the 2020 election to be the most secure in history is a fact. Just because the story was carried by non-Americans doesn't invalidate the basic facts.
"'Our deep registry of historical memory reveals that American voters have never found any sort of erudite candidate appealing. The first election I recall between Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson imprinted this exchange: “Governor Stevenson, you have the vote of all the thinking people,” to which he replied, “That’s not enough, madam. I need a majority”'.
- Joseph Natoli, “Bottom-Feeders with Low Information” https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/09/bottom-feeders-with-low-information/
Whilst I would describe my politics as centre left, I am not a zealot. I don’t vote religiously for a single party - I pick the party which, in my view, has the right policies for the current circumstances. I think that parties should cover a spectrum of opinions - even those which I fundamentally disagree with (like Brexit). There should be rules though, and the number 1 rule should be that a party should be held to account for its actions, and it should not be allowed for it undermine the fabric of the country in which it operates (I.e. act in a treasonous manner)
I’d even go so far as to say that if a political party wants to act in a dictatorial, misogynist, racist, money-grubbing, anti-social manner (as Trumps Republicans do) then this should be allowed - but they have to be honest about their intentions, and make it a manifesto promise that they’ll act like a bunch of dicks if elected.
By making unsubstantiated claims about the validity of the vote, by promoting conspiracy theories such as those espoused by organisations like QAnon, the modern Republican Party is acting in a treasonous manner. It is undermining the very things that make the United States the United States. It is unfit for purpose and, honestly, should be wound up and replaced with a new party which can be trusted to act in an honest and moral manner (whether or not you agree with their policies).
At the moment I feel far from certain that the result of this election will be upheld - the world faces the very real danger that Donald Trump will have a second term, and if he does then the US will have ceased to be even a pretend democracy and will have become an autocractic dictatorship, like Russia, like China, like North Korea.
Anyone who thinks that this is a good idea, who continues to support the Republicans, even in the face of all the evidence against them, should be thoroughly, thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
continues to support the Republicans, even in the face of all the evidence against them, should be thoroughly, thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Shame was the first thing they abandoned. Really they couldn't give a flying fuck what anybody thinks or how much damage they cause, as long as they get their cut that's all that matters.
Matt Parker has debunked one of the allegations about voter fraud:
Neat. There are lies, damn lies and people using the wrong statistical tests*.
There was another claim that I can't find right now which did a time series analysis on votes as they came in & were counted. It claimed there were some 'anomalies' showing later votes favored Biden. It assumed that mail-in votes should be pseudo-randomly mixed in the postal system, therefore late clumps of Biden votes showed shenanigans.. But then it's claimed that Democrat voters may have prefered mail-in, Republicans voting in-person. So if that's true, then you could expect those clumps, but then it could also be skewed by procedural stuff, ie if in-person votes were counted first in some places, but not in others, or varying delivery times for postal ballots.
Where Benford's Law could be interesting is in testing other claims of 'fraud', namely the late/cured votes in PA. One claim was that people presenting ballots without ID were told to call the DMV, get an appointment, then use the appointment confirmation ID as their voter ID. Then padding that with trailing zeros because there's a length mismatch between confirmation and drivers licence ID length. So testing for ballots with those trailing zeros could show magnitude of anomalies.. Or that could be a bit pointless, ie if the confirmation ID is ruled invalid as voter ID, then you'd still need to do a manual recount to identify votes with invalid IDs and discard them. I guess Benford's Law might be handy for sizing that challenge though.
* An unrelated example of statistical abuse here-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/latest-alarmist-hurricane-study-easily-debunked/
The cherry picked 50-year time span of course begins at the start of the cold phase. Why did not the researchers go back to the previous warm period between 1930 and 1960?
So essentially a conclusion that depends on pre-screening data. So the claim is trivially true, ie if you only look at a period where the physical processes give you the expected results, well, you get the expected results. If you extend the timespan, the results however disagree with the broad conclusion. This example goes further by relying on some tortured data, ie Ryan Maue's comment that Hurricane Bonnie is used as an exemplar of an inland hurricane, when it clearly wasn't. Removing the salted hurricanes quickly debunks the paper's conclusion.
Benford's law can throw up some nice anomalies - after all things like 'number of voters in a district are not random, they are predetermined in (gerrymandered but anyway...) legislation. Equally things like ID numbers of any sort are rarely random and sequential - there's almost always information embedded, padding. So imagine a driver licence uses a numeric code for names (the sort of thing someone looking at an 80 hole punch card might do after too much caffeine).
But oh, the irony of climate change deniers debunking a climate change paper by accusing the authors of cherry picking starting dates for their data, And more to the point their argument seems to be 'if we don't count all these recent hurricanes that were really bad, there aren't so many hurricanes' - spot on for the Trump - 'if you don't count people who voted against me I won' narrative.
But oh, the irony of climate change deniers debunking a climate change paper by accusing the authors of cherry picking starting dates for their data,
There is no denial, just science. On the US east coast, hurricanes are largely driven by the AMO, which is a cyclical process. If you cherry pick from low to high, you get the expected results. If you extend the time series to include more cycles, you don't see anything statistically significant, and thus can't correlate with the theory that human activities influence frequency or intensity of hurricanes.
You'll also find a strong correlation that 97% of climate sceptics prefer evidence to appeals to authority. So in the election sense, claims have been made that need to be proven, or disproven.. And the evidence isn't there, yet..
The mass media all over the western world are all covering the news on Biden's side and they don't even bother to report the possible evidence that the election may have been rigged.
In chinese there is a saying, "when wind blows out of an empty cave, there may actually be reason behind it" (sorry for my limited english capability) and media have deliberately skipping those possible evidence.
Yes, they won't present to the viewers even those _possibilities_.
If you have nothing to cover up, why do the media skip everything that may lead to an open discussion of what may have happened with all those statistical-model-defying numbers and the opinion of / facts reported by the locals which have witness first hand what those voting centers have done?
It's just so much like the traditional communist take on voting.
Stalin once said, "I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this - who will count the votes, and how".
I am not personally against Biden or Trump - they both have policies appealing to different types of american. I am not an american and i think, ultimately, the americans are those who will feel deepest of the impact of their new president, and it is their choice. It is the open unfairness, or in some state, criminal unfairness, of the way votes are accepted and counted, and the mass media widespread attempt to mute the voices who questions the fairness of the election which makes this election so disputed.
No the evidence is ballots counted, observers reporting, States declaring. What your puerile fantasy of 'no one has evidence' is like a fan screaming at the TV after their team lost, because some pundit reckoned that the second goal should have been disallowed because the ref missed an offside. When your team lost 9-0.
"All that and you could have provided a link to the evidence".
Yeah. Because if you were running the Democratic Party and you had just spent billions subverting the most important election in the most important country in the world by flagrantly criminal means, all the evidence that you had done so would be openly available on the Internet.
The day the Yorkshire Ripper was arrested, could you have linked to all the evidence that would eventually convict him?
If so, you should obviously have been in charge of the investigation.
Oh there's no evidence - that proves the conspirators must have been extra extra sneaky. When the Yorkshire Ripper was arrested there was a mass of evidence that a crime had been committed. Not a few loonies on twitter saying 'my mate's friend told me he met a guy down the pub who says he saw...'
Well, no, they didn't have the internet, and the UK and US court systems are vastly different, it was handled by the police, who did (eventually) find him. I find your comparison quite absurd.
But all "evidence" here is not being done by the police, FBI or anyone, it's a bunch of trumpists saying, "I heard so and so". And my, don't the jokesters have a lot of that
However, we do have a top elected us official encourage voters to commit voter fraud on video.
"The day the Yorkshire Ripper was arrested, could you have linked to all the evidence that would eventually convict him?"
That's pretty insulting to his victims and the survivors. There was loads of evidence. We the public may not have known *who* did it, but the evidence that the crimes happened was there for all to see in the list of dead victims.
Translate that to the US election, not only is there no evidence of who supposedly "rigged" it, there's no evidence of rigging either.
I don't believe the Ripper left a lot of electronic droppings during his sprees. Since there is a paper trail for every ballot and each party has a representative present during voting and counting and every state plus the Feds have been watching the election there should be something if the biggest election fraud in history had occurred. The problem with a conspiracy as big as Nucklehead45 needs to claim he was cheated is that too many people would have be involved. It would never be kept secret. Unless, they killed all the witnesses like Obama did with Seal Team 6 after the fake Bin Laden raid??!!
I was trying to think of a cogent reply - but all I can come up with is 'Crap!'. There's massive coverage of the election in the media. Both parties had observers at the counts. And your 'locals which have witness first hand'? Overwhelmingly - not locals, not witnesses and not first hand. So far the only proven election fraud involved a Trump supporter.
Trump lost because he is an obnoxious misogynist racist reality tv host who couldn't deliver any of his election promises. His obnoxiousness mobilised Democrats, and it also mobilized decent Republicans to vote Biden, even if they still voted Republican in Senate races.
Trump is basically a toddler arguing against bedtime by screaming it's not fair. He has nothing else, and no one expected anything more of him than he is doing. The sad thing is the extent to which his party have been prepared to indulge his tantrum, rather than manning up, rolling up their sleeves and planning how to fight back in 2024 with a better candidate and better policies.
"Trump is basically a toddler arguing against bedtime by screaming it's not fair".
It's interesting (and useful) to see how even a collection of fairly intelligent, well-educated people like the commenters here can become a howling mob demanding the blood of a designated scapegoat.
Spoilt rich kid lost. Get over it snowflake
Yep. Meet the new spoiled rich kid, much the same as the old spoiled rich kid. Such is politics. But ISTR it took a lot of snowflakes a long time to get over Hilary losing..
I have a lot more respect for a snowflake holding a 'peace' sign than for a prat in khaki pretending to be all tough and crying when he loses.And Hilary conceded within 24 hour, despite winning the popular vote comfortably.
.. than for a prat in khaki pretending to be all tough and crying when he loses
From the last election, I think there's ample evidence that the prats wore black. And attempted to burn down the Reichstag.. I mean Walgreens. US democracy just ain't what it used to be, and 'anti-facists' demanding an end to democracy is a tad ironic..
Why should Biden concede when he won? Trump is the one who should concede as he lost fair and square. But the whiny weak little man with a fragile ego can't accept that enough people didn't love him.
What really galls him is that republicans running for senate got more votes than he did in almost all cases (there were a few exceptions who he spoke out against, like Martha McSally) which means that enough republicans decided he was a shitstain and voted for republicans down ballot but not for him. The Lincoln Project should take a victory lap!
"Yep. Meet the new spoiled rich kid, much the same as the old spoiled rich kid."
Not rich as a kid. Biden, at best, was middle class growing up. Not that I care, it depends on how he performs, but at least I bothered to look at who he is and where he came from.
"Not rich as a kid. Biden, at best, was middle class growing up. Not that I care, it depends on how he performs, but at least I bothered to look at who he is and where he came from."
A plagiarist politician who's been inside the beltway for over 40 years? One who supported rather racist legislation, and organizations as a young politician? A touchy-feely guy you wouldn't let your daughter get too close to? A guy who is very unlikely to serve out his full term? A Harris administration will indeed be interesting.
Trump is an ass, and wears in on his sleeve. Biden is a TOOL. The only reason he got the nomination is so the DP could present a "middle of the road" look to the people. Kamala Harris was not being rhetorical when she spoke of a Harris administration. Expect a far left agenda rammed down our throats. Shut your mouth or they will ridicule you, call you racist, and try and embarrass and shame you and your family as loudly and as publicly as possible to shut you up. Just like the people in this forum. Trump has been called 'Racist' no less than 10 times over the few responses I have read. Really? I guess if you should it out enough people believe. It's sad really.
Nobody 'got over' Hillary losing. The media and the Dems in congress spent 3 years trying to impeach and subvert the President. If Orange walked outside and said it was a nice day, and I had the audacity to agree, then I must be some low-life racist pervert. This type of shouting down and outward ridicule of people who don't fall in line with your way of thinking is straight out of the Communist/Socialist playbooks.
So please keep it up. Everything will be fine, it's obvious all these people constantly ridiculing the right have the entire worlds best interests at heart. Make sure whatever you say is in line with the anointed, that way you will be tolerated, and not thrown in jail for saying something they don't like. We will get the government we deserve. . . Hopefully saner heads will prevail, and the 2nd amendment to the US constitution will not see it's intended inclusion manifest. I fear Atlas may shrug in an unexpected way.
Yep. Meet the new spoiled rich kid, much the same as the old spoiled rich kid
You do not know the first thing about Vice-President Elect Biden's background, do you? I hope you are a prat in some other part of the world than the USA, we have enough low-information shouters here. I won't provide any bio info links, you won't read them anyway.
The sad thing is the extent to which his [Republican] party have been prepared to indulge his tantrum, rather than manning up, rolling up their sleeves and planning how to fight back in 2024 with a better candidate and better policies.
Now just you hol' on there, AC. That would make the party actually attractive to the populace, and would possibly make it able to win an election without cheating (you know, like gerrymandering, voter suppression, disinformation campaigns...all the sort of tactics a minority party uses to "win" elections, and to which this party has honed to a fine edge.)
The Republican party did win elections without cheating, Repubs took over many house seats and held senate seats the Democrats were sure were theirs.
Its funny how so many Republican downvote people won, yet somehow voted for Biden... in spite of Trump's Republican 80% approval rating... very odd...
Not all "_possibilities_" need to be considered by the sane. I keep seeing this ridiculous appeal to some weird definition of "open mindedness." But being open-minded just means not being closed-minded. It doesn't mean that one should consider every single thing, however unlikely, as being potentially true.
That would be insane, let alone self-contradictory (because you'd have to be open-minded to the possibility that you were insane).
Maybe you should look up how the American elections are organized before you consider vague _possibilities_.
Votes are collected and counted in a process that is designed to be verifiable for representatives from all involved parties. There are many eyes following each step of the election process to protect against any Stalin'esque counting of the votes. So if there was significant voter fraud, then you could expect that people saw it and, gauging from the election results, about half of those people would have an interest to protest against cheating from the other side.
What we see instead is a desperate search for any story that could possibly be interpreted as evidence for fraud. We can clearly see who is doing the desperate searching and we can easily understand why. So it should be easy for you to understand why there is 'wind blowing from the cave', e.g., why there are so many internet posts alleging fraud. And it has nothing to do with fraud and all to do with a president who doesn't want to leave his white house.
Concerning "all those statistical-model-defying numbers", look at the posted video link from commentard A Non e-mouse. Concerning the "opinion of / facts reported by the locals which have witness first hand what those voting centers have done", read the investigations of hardworking journalists on those stories; some of them are even linked in this forum. The media does not "attempt to mute the voices". Proper journalists verify a story before they publish it, which takes time and does tend to whittle down the stories made up from whole cloth by your local nutcase.
You need a literate populace for a functioning democracy and, unfortunately, many people don't seem to have the literacy to ponder the factualness of wild rumors they encounter on the 'nets. And if I say 'people', I really mean you.
The fact that the count in Philly was live streamed seems to have bypassed Trump's lawyers. Shame really.
Oh well, I guess that Rudy '4 Seasons Landscaping' is thinking about some other Philly. Perhaps the one in this country? Or even processed Cheese?
Never mind people. Even the Chinese Gov has recognised that Biden won the election.
Trump will soon leave for Florida and a round of Golf. Post 20th Jan, Melania is tipped to file for divorce and 'therealdonald' will be thrown off twitter.
Suddenly, the world will seem a better place even with Covid-19 running wild across the world.
"What we see instead is a desperate search for any story that could possibly be interpreted as evidence for fraud."
So desperate that Republicans are offering "up to" $10,000 reward for evidence of fraud leading to a conviction. You'd think the 1000's of Republican observers would be jumping to hand over any evidence like that without having to be incentivised with mere money :-)
Aww. Are your wittle feewings hurt now that your thin-skinned snowflake in chief has lost? You need to provide solid evidence before you claim that this is some kind of left wing media driven stitch up.
The GOP and its supporters really need to grow a pair (boobs, balls, it’s all the same to me), stop being such a bunch of butt sore loser wimps, take a long hard look at themselves, and decide to act in a morally upstanding manner in the future.
But they won’t. They don’t need morals. They’ve got religion instead.
There is no body in charge of making sure "the election" was safe. The officials in charge are state and county officials, not national officials. The state and county officials always say things were fine, right up until things aren't. One party claimed the 2000 election was rigged, then made the same claim again in 2016. It must be OK to question the vote and call for recounts where it's close, eh?
"The mass media all over the western world are all covering the news on Biden's side and they don't even bother to report the possible evidence that the election may have been rigged."
The media, in particular the BBC, mention these claims in every story covering the US election. They also include the caveat that no evidence has been presented yet.
Though to the extent there are campaign debts those help. He wants to use them for personal expenses like flying his plane around, which is the real reason he's planning to announce he will be a candidate in 2024. If he announces that the day he leaves office, then anytime he goes anywhere he'll claim it was campaign related and make the suckers in red hats pay for everything.
He needs someone else to pick up the bill considering that he's personally guaranteed over $400 million in loans, and his properties are going to really suffer once he leaves office. The Trump brand is permanently damaged - the majority of people inside the US and the VAST majority of people outside the US will never spend a dime in anything bearing his name. All the people who joined Mar-A-Lago in 2016/2017 to get close to him will drop their membership once he no longer has any power to help them. I love the Turnberry course in Scotland, but I will never play there again so long as he owns it. There are plenty of great golf courses in Scotland, I will not miss it if I never play that one again. That's the only course he owns that's worth playing anyway.
His businesses were already losing money, but soon they will be losing torrents of money and with all the investigations into his finances and into Deutsche Bank's money laundering no one will loan him any money. He will soon have a negative net worth, but running a never-ending "campaign" will give him the cash he needs to live in the way he's been accustomed. Until, you know, all the investigations into him catch up to him and he gets taxpayer funded living quarters with concrete walls and a metal door.
His businesses were already losing money, but soon they will be losing torrents of money and with all the investigations into his finances and into Deutsche Bank's money laundering no one will loan him any money. He will soon have a negative net worth,..
Not a problem, losses are handy for tax purposes. But Private Eye had been running stories about the Trump Empire (and DB) for years. The bigger challenge I doubt relates to being an ex-President, just the general way real-estate and leisure/hospitality companies have been hammered by Covid restrictions. So a lot of hotels going bust, shops closing, malls closing, office blocks going bust etc etc. Plus NY's had the additional challenge from law & disorder, highly unbalanced books and proposals to balance those via new taxes. Reversing the decline of some of the US's biggest cities is going to be quite a challenge.
Back in the 80s a small but consistent number of people believed in ghosts and UFOs
Not so many now.
Back in the 00s a good number of people believed that Iraq had WMD
Not so many now
In the 20s a small but consistent number of people believe that Trump woulda won but for fraud
1. Give it 10 years
2. I really hope the negative consequences of beilief do not keep rising.
Look at the results - Biden is five million votes ahead but the democrats have lost Congress seats and are still in second place in the Senate - the traditional "fraud" is gerrymandering the voting districts to ensure that the results boost the party that sets the district boundaries - this is normally perfectly legal, both political parties have worked at this for years.
And California, with a population of nearly 40 million elects two US senators, while Wyoming with a population of half a million also elects two US senators - certainly that's not "fraud" but is it democracy? A single vote in Wyoming is worth almost 10 times a vote in California.
Also suppression of minority voters.
Also suppressing liberal votes as follows: requiring overseas civilian voters to mail back their ballots, whereas military can fax or email them. I had to help some expats vote this year and discovered that issue. Military are seen as more conservative, therefore the voting process is made easier for them in Iowa and other conservative States, rather than for civilians who are perceived to be more liberal. Although most States made an exception this year and permitted return of the ballots by fax or email, they did nothing to publicize that change, continuing to have the old rules up on their websites. I had to email several individual counties' election officials to get the correct information.
I still struggle to believe that in the 2018 Georgia governor race, the republican candidate Brian Kemp was the secretary of state and in charge of running the election! He cancelled a large number of existing registrations and held up new ones. He just managed to eke out a victory (50.2%).
How a candidate is allowed to retain that position during an election blows the mind.
The Democrat candidate Stacey Abrams seems to have got her revenge though. She was driven to get the Democrat vote registered and turned out and has managed to flip Georgia from red to blue this time.
Yeah Georgia republicans might have been better off if she had won, because she's done them a lot more damage by helping Biden win the state and we'll see if she can help democrats take the senate in the special election. She will likely run again in 2022 and beat Kemp next time around thanks to her efforts to register more democrats and bring them out to vote.
Georgia and Texas have been slowly turning blue, one is there now the other may need a couple more election cycles. On the other hand it seems Iowa has gone from a swing state to a red state, and despite huge efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania Biden barely won those states so I'm not sure whether democrats should count on them much for 2024.
I still struggle to believe that in the 2018 Georgia governor race, the republican candidate Brian Kemp was the secretary of state and in charge of running the election!
Ob Firesign Theater (taken from memory, so there may be some...er...'gaps'):
Porgie: I'd like to take one, too. I mean, how can you be both my defense attorney and the prosecutor all at the same time?
George Leroy Tirebiter: Why, that's easy, son. This way, I can make sure you're prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!
Porgie: That's my Dad!!
America is not a "democracy" It is a "Republic". Rhode Island also gets two Senate seats. 1214 sq miles. Wyoming is just under 98,000 square miles. Maybe if we did it geographically rather than by population?
Our founding fathers created a system whereby New York City, Chicago, and LA do not get to elect the President. If you don't like the system move to Europe or maybe North Korea, or Columbia. As one of the most prosperous nations on the planet, we must be doing something right. It seems the more Socialist we get the less prosperous we become. With any luck we can be a third world dictatorship in no time.
DHS employees on their way out the door for insufficient loyalty to 45.
Fired by some snot-nosed 30-year-old fascist in the WH. This is vicious.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dhs-officials-fired-white-house/2020/11/12/98fdf224-2554-11eb-8599-406466ad1b8e_story.html
"The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," said the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council Executive Committees in a joint statement, along with the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and other organizations.
Isn't that the same CISA whose head (Christopher Krebs) was "asked to resign" (read: fired) by tRump because he found no evidence of fraud, thereby (once again) refuting the Orange-utan's false narrative of widespread election fraud?
That the Bullshitter-In-Chief fired Krebs effectively solidifies Krebs's claims of a fair election.
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...with every legal vote counted and the elections certified, we might find that just enough Republicans voted for Biden to push him over the top. I personally know of at least one that voted for him. I wonder how many more did? It must be hard not being able to talk about doing it if your friends and family are all Trump supporters.
That's probably a good thing too. With the strongly divided partisan politics in the US, having a different party to the President in control of one of the house, especially by a very small majority, is enough to hold up or block the more egregious new laws an policies while the more useful and moderate laws and policies are likely to still pass due to any independents or opposition support. (After all, in most democracies, the main party's tend to have many similar policies, disagreeing on pretty minor details in practice)
we might find that just enough Republicans voted for Biden to push him over the top
I think that is without question. The small margins in deciding states (and the higher margins for republican senators in those same states) make that pretty obvious.
I think it is also without question that democrats voting for Trump was the only reason he won in 2016, again due to small margins and how the democrat senators running in those states did better than Hillary.
There is always some element of crossover, but I think it was more pronounced in 2016 due to all the negative stuff about Hillary, and more pronounced in 2020 due to all the negative stuff about who Trump is as a person and how poorly he handled coronavirus.
The article links to: http://www.nass.org/node/2118
which says "“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result."
I find it hilarious that it says "most secure in American history" in the first sentence, and the second says "Right now" "election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process".
As a technician, I would have done the confirming PRIOR to making the first statement. But that's just me.
Why should they wait until they double check? They say "it is the most secure" now, but add that while they have no evidence of fraud they are reviewing things.
Why should they let Trump's lies about fraud stand, when they know about no such fraud? Had Trump said "I find it hard to believe I could have lost a fair election, but I'm going to wait for all the investigations to complete and find proof before I make any claims of fraud" then maybe they could have gone your way.
What do you mean "no fraud"? There is plenty, and it is being rooted out and well documented. Will it be enough to effect the election, I doubt it. But calling a system "secure" before proving it is, does not pass this techs sniff test.
Might as well say "Windows 10 is the most secure OS ever - there is no need for running an AV scan...."
now it's sounds pretty stupid like that doesn't it?
There are two possibilities. Which do you consider the most likely.
1. There is a grand conspiracy involving thousands of poll workers and election officials across multiple states, including republican ones. It also needs to have all the independent poll observers in on it, as well as the two independent, non partisan organisations from this article. Finally, all the judges who have tossed the frivolous lawsuits.are part of it, including the ones appointed by Donald trump.
2. Joe Biden won the election fairly.
I haven't heard of any "grand conspiracy" not of thousands and not of 20 people. However There are plenty of individual idiots who think they are helping by cheating (either political gang).
Rooting out all the idiots desiccating the election system is the right thing to do no matter who is in the election. And it always will be.
The MSM was reporting finds of ballots completed and blank in trash cans, roadside ditches and abandoned in many other places.
One of the first things President Trump asked of the States after the 2016 election was to undertake an audit of their voter roles. They refused. It's so much easier to maintain a narrative that there is no fraud if you don't look for any. If there were lots found, many politicians and VIPs would lose face. They aren't going to voluntarily put themselves in that position.
If somebody were to hack an electronic voting machine, they'd be stupid if they didn't also make it print a hardcopy with the same incorrect tallies. Test all you like. With an installed RTC (real time clock), the machine will be honest anytime outside of election day.
Judges were telling states with mail in ballots that signature mismatches were to be ignored and ballots couldn't be voided for that reason.
The MSM was also finding that people older than the recognized oldest people in the country were still voting. Possible not enough to make a critical difference, but that's the sort of thing that should be easiest to catch. What else is slipping by the monitors?
I'm unconvinced that the last election was "clean". Confidence is the most important thing in an election. The way it was slapped together at the last minute and the issues that came up make this one rather dirty.
...Why bother looking at all? You could just make up your own lies without having to listen to other people's.
If it is the truth you are after and if you know a single damn thing about database management then you know about place holder values. They can be used for things like DoB in election systems. How many "dead" voters are alive and well (for example) because a county clerk in BFE, Arkansas has too much to do and can't call Joe Bob Robbins 5 times a day to get him to come down and correct the omission in their data? And what dates do they use so they *know* this isn't the right DoB? The most common ones in the US are 01/01/1900, 01/01/1901, and 01/01/1850. In that order. This happens a lot more than you know, because you are still talking about dead people voting.
Do your own damned homework! Cure your own ignorance! I cannot do it for you because you will not accept what people like me tell you because you already know everything. If you know everything already then you can't learn anything. That has to be the saddest state any human can be in.
The only report I heard was the 7 ballots in the trash in Pennsylvania weeks before the election, which was supposedly because they hadn't been sent properly (i.e. they didn't have the security envelope or whatever) and the person wasn't properly trained that those had to be set aside not just thrown away.
Trump made up the story about "ballots in the creek", no one has been able to find any actual proof I've seen that this happened - it isn't even reported WHERE it happened (because if they did that, then local officials would be able to say "that never happened")
It would also be pretty easy for Trumpies to request absentee ballots (or make copies of the official one good enough to pass) and deposit them in places so they can be "found" and claimed as evidence of fraud. Since Trump has been pushing this fraud angle for months, I certainly wouldn't put it past them.
As for whether the election was "clean", no election is ever 100% clean. There's always a few individual cases of fraud found here and there. The thing is, such fraud goes both ways and does not advantage only one candidate. It would take wide scale fraud in multiple states to have swung this election, and no one can come up with any proof of fraud in even one state. But keep believing your orange jesus "won" because he makes baseless claims of fraud that the right wing echo chamber repeats....
The thing is, such fraud goes both ways and does not advantage only one candidate. It would take wide scale fraud in multiple states to have swung this election, and no one can come up with any proof of fraud in even one state.
Give it time.. There almost certainly was fraud, but as you say, the problem is proving it, and quantifying it. Currently views are split, ie one side saying "Didn't happen!" the other side "Happened Bigly!". In the UK, we have had widescale frauds, ie in Tower Hamlets & Bradford linked to postal/absentee ballots.
Challenge for democracy is how to improve systems to minimise the risk of frauds. This election has been complicated by Covid, both in the sheer quantity, and people moving around to avoid Covid. Or maybe California's policies helping Texas turn blue. Some stuff seems pretty neat, ie places that have systems to allow voters to check if their vote's been counted.. But that's also lead to alleged irregularities, ie people claiming those systems have showed them voting by postal ballots they never requested, or received.
Biggest challenge there seems to be how the US can ensure accurate voter registrations, and then provide security to ensure that only valid votes get counted.. Which would be a huge task. Plus there's the risk of technofetishism disenfranchising voters, ie creating some form of 2FA based on phones rather assumes every voter has a working phone.
Nearly half of the US willingly voting for Trump is one hell of a wetware hack. Even the once loved Scott Adams has gone from Pro-Trump (in a psycho don't-care-who-dies kind of way) to claiming that the US election was a coordinated nation-wide sham. There are few news outlets that haven't gone full-bias or total fantasy to once side or another. This would be much easier to clean up if it was a computer hack.
Yep, those states that used those crappy, buggy, non-record-keeping voting machines around 2000 or so (thanks Diebold!!) are all back to using regular paper ballots, and have been for years. Nutjob Trump (and his cronies) have been making false statements about election fraud, falsely claiming any state that was at all close that he lost was due to fraud -- but if he edged out by 0.1% no fraud whatsoever.
Steven Colbert summed it up (to make it clear how ridiculous it is) as (I'm paraphrasing here) an astoundingly complex fraud, coordinated between half a dozen or more states and dozens of voting districts, with head election officials from both main parties, commited while officials from both main parties watched the counts. And *of course* a party would commit just enough fraud to have nutjob Trump lose out in all these states, but not bother to hold onto the house and senate seats they lost. (Colbert then pointed out comically that if Biden could really coordinate that elaborate and cunning a fraud, it sure shows he's qualified for a complex job like being US president.)
"Nearly half of the US willingly voting for Trump is one hell of a wetware hack. Even the once loved Scott Adams has gone from Pro-Trump (in a psycho don't-care-who-dies kind of way) to claiming that the US election was a coordinated nation-wide sham"
Yep, it's like some kind of personality cult. I don't get it at all; nutjob Trump lies, and like 40%+ of the population eats it up, and I mean like ridiculous North Korea Kim Jun Un type claims. He's claimed multiple times he knows more than scientists who are experts in their fields, and these people believe that. He's falsely claimed the economy is in the best shape it's ever been, a bunch of these people voted for him because they believed it despite the huge number of people out of work, stores closed and going out of business etc.. (obviously, with this Coronavirus outbreak the economy would not be in top condition no matter who was in office, but it's beyond ridiculous to claim it's in the best shape ever.) He's falsely claimed that coronavirus is under control thanks to his actions, despite the statistic being worse than they've ever been, and people have believed it! (Of course his "actions" have been to tell people they don't have to wear masks; get coronavirus and spread it throughout the white house; block the CDC and slow down the Coronavirus task force to a dead halt; argue with experts that he knows more about medicine than they do; and take credit for "operation warp speed", with the implication that drug companies would not be working on vaccines if he hadn't come up with the idea.. ok fine if he wants, I'll give him a pass on that one.) He's been asked about things he's said, claimed "I didn't say that", shown tape of him saying just what he said he didn't say.... and the Trump followers will claim the tapes must be fake, because Trump said he didn't say it! (Even when it's a clip from some TV show like The Apprentice, they'll claim somehow alll the recordings from the original run of these shows are faked!) These people take zero, and I mean ZERO, effort to evaluate any claims he makes, and if anyone claims he might be even slightly exaggerating about something, they'll claim they are a "far left liberal" or some nonsense and will not even spend 30 seconds on google to evaluate claims. I don't care how much I love a politician, if someone is like "That might not be true", I have zero problem googling and seeing if that's the case or not.
It pains me to say it, but my dad's a retired research scientist, as far as I can tell he found Trump's being an ornery racist asshole appealing, and was able to completely overlook that Trump is anti-science, anti-rights, fascist, and just not very intelligent. He completely disengaged his brain the last 4 years... I mean, really, it's impossible to discuss anything with someone when it's like "NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding has been cut a few times the last 4 years" "No Trump has not cut NIH funding, NIH funding has never been reduced." "Well, here's two years he reduced it.. this year to divert funding for the border wall, and this year just because; and 8 other times since 2000 that it's previously been reduced, per Google." "No, that's not true." Can't argue with that "logic".
If you are too stoopid to figure out how to vote, you are too stoopid to vote. My sister lives in Alaska. She received SEVEN (7) ballots at her house. TWO people live there. This is not evidence of fraud. But it definitely could make fraud easier to commit. What I want is all this stuff to wind thru the courts, and get clean and consistent. Biden er Harris won, but I want this to play out, and get nailed down.
It is extremely rare for recounts to favor a republican candidate. i find this odd. Once Florida got somewhat cleaned up in it's processes we see a republican renaissance. I would expect to see the opposite in other places would suspect I will not, because republicans game the system and suppress liberal voters by intimidation and making it difficult to vote.
I don't want to hear 'Voter Suppression' from either side. If you want to vote, its just not that hard to do anywhere. "Last Minute" voting eligibility is a crock. Mailing out ballots to 'registered voters' that did not ask for them simply invites fraud. Harvesting ballots seems wrong, in particular if they were sent unsolicited.
Anybody who disagrees with me is a racist bigot, who molests juvenile children, and only speak lies.
No, your sister did not receive seven BALLOTS. She received seven absentee ballot request forms. I personally received six where I live (alone!) One from the local county, then another from the local county because republicans sued and said the county sending them with the name and address already filled in was illegal. Then one from the state. Also one from the state republican party, one from the local republican party, and one from the republican senator running for re-election.
There were only a few states where ballots get mailed out rather than request forms, and when they do they send only one for obvious reasons.
And, even if your sister received 7 ballots and not just ballot requests ( received 5 but voted early in person instead) she would have been arrested for voting 7 times if she (or anyone else) voted that many times. Actually, in most states they keep the last ballot to arrive from a voter and toss the rest. They keep track of who has voted and who has not. They are not going to accept and count multiple ballots from one person.
While this election may have been the most honest election in American history, the Democratic primaries were not. Bernie Sanders played to packed stadiums, on the issues. Biden barely campaigned. Biden won? Kamala Harris dropped out of the primaries after Tulsi Gabbard exposed Kamala's dismal record for all to see. Now Kamala will be 2nd in line for the Presidency? Something doesn't seem correct here.
To say nothing about the Republicans gerrymandering and closing of a large number of polling places in selected districts across the country, in both the primary and the general elections. BTY, where are the exit polling that other countries use to check the voting? Suddenly in 2000 and after, exit polling here was somehow deemed not very accurate.
Honest election? Not in this country?
Of course the "top election officials" say the balloting and counts went well. If it hasn't gone well, it's on them.
It's rather clear from the comments that many do not understand how strangely the mail-in ballots were handled: Specifically, a number of large so-called battleground states mailed ballots with either out-dated voting registers, without request, or both. A number of states bagged the requirement to match mail-in ballot signatures to the Register signature. Pennsylvania was among those. I have no idea who won with honest counts and checked signatures, but I'd like to know.
Hmmm - maybe the hint is in the word 'main-stream'?
Basically like ' "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Main stream media is the least trustworthy form of media apart from any other form of media.
To me, being a US citizen, this feels like being a kid stuck in your blind-drunk uncle's car as he tries to make it home from the bar in an ice storm. You know it will eventually be over, but you're not sure if you'll make it home safely, be wrapped around a telephone pole, someone will be in jail, or have a long, cold walk ahead of you. And no matter how it ends, it's a nerve wracking ride.
What puzzles me is that many of the people propagating these allegations of election fraud are the same ones who argue that governments, and leftist/socialist/communist governments in particular, are so incompetent that they're incapable of doing anything well and should be reduced to the bare minimum.
Yet the election fraud propagators credit these same bungling "socialists" with pulling off a massive election fraud so sophisticated, i.e., involving multiple states and counties, not to mention both Republicans and Democrats, that it's impossible to find any evidence acceptable in a court of law.
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