We've spent a couple years now (right?) tacitly approving rioting as an acceptable response to feeling disenfranchised. Now we're surprised when the same medicine gets used by others. For either side, I'm not sure it's proper minimize their complaints. If the BLM crowd says they have a serious problem with police violence, the best reaction is, "what can we do to restore confidence?" Similarly, when 40% of the country says they have serious concerns about the integrity of voting in this country the proper response isn't "everything is okay", it's "what can we do to restore confidence?".
The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society. Listen to those feeling alienated and see what can be reasonably done to promote inclusiveness. It's hard to take advocates of inclusiveness seriously when they eagerly cancel, disenfranchise, and deplatform people that disagree with them even remotely (and yes, there are plenty of examples of rational criticism being deplatformed).
> The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society.
I can't agree with this more. Through this event and what happened last year I can see how incredibly bias the media is when portraying protests and riots. During BLM, there's barely any coverage on the looting and destruction caused by "protesters" on mainstream media. There was a very clear attempt to downplay the severity of these actions.
Weird how it's only looting when black people do it, whereas when white people occupy and steal from a government building they're just voicing their displeasure with government.
If you don't see the incredibly stark contrast in how the authorities handled and prepared for the Capitol insurrection (yes, the insurrection plans were public and known weeks in advance) compared to BLM protests, I don't understand how there can even be a debate about this because we are clearly operating in two different realities.
>Several fires have been set near the courthouse, which federal officials have said could spread to the building and harm the agents inside.
If you think this is on the same level as the mob of violent insurrectionists who invaded (and planned to take hostages) inside the highest legislature in the land simply because "their guy" didn't win the election, I don't think there is anything I can tell you that would convince you otherwise. The Portland protestors were both less violent and actually had legitimate grievances (decades of police brutality and state violence against people of color).
Yep, the BLM rioting and looting was not covered well by the leftwing media, in the same way that the right wing media covers only the sections/events they want to display to make their point and distort their truths. Both sides is guilty of such.
I think so, yes. The stand down orders given to police departments in major metro areas, for example. The discretionary lack of prosecution for many of those arrested. The allowance for protestors and counter-protestors fighting to become spectacle/sport. The national media coverage I watched and listened to was largely sympathetic to the idea that understanding was needed in the face of the burning and looting rather than reactionary exercise of control to enforce order.
“Recently, at the direction of Mayor [Bill] Peduto, the Pittsburgh Police presented to my office tangible evidence for the refiling of these failure-to-disperse charges in the form of body camera footage, as well as surveillance video and more comprehensive investigations,” Zappala said in a statement on Friday. “The demonstrative evidence shows that the individuals being charged were repetitively directed by the police and given ample opportunity to disperse, often over an extended period, and failed to heed these notices.”
Again, I disagree. There is no tacit acceptance. That is just false.
Just google the term by each major city or location where buildings were lit up. I’m certainly not claiming that prosecutions didn’t happen, but when a city declines to prosecute a great many arrests and national organizations are paying bail money for those arrested, along with police stand down orders, it sends a message.
In India, we have the concept of 'bandhs' or 'lockdowns' for a day or more to highlight certain issues.
it is known as a fact that only those that are supported by the local government are deemed as successful, regardless of the validity or support for that cause. The police are just the pawns.
We see the same for both BLM protests as well as the Capitol Hill protest.
I'm not convinced about a critical amount of 'fraud' in the election, but I think you're off your rocker if you think the US election system generally has sufficient controls in place not to be easily abused. This year saw even more loosening of the control structure because of knee-jerk reactions to perceived pandemic limitations (warranted or not, I don't care). I also don't care what your politics are or which team you root for, but from a systems perspective there are very obvious control deficiencies in how elections are carried out in this country.
Claims of fraud would be far, far, far easier to dismiss if a better control structure was in place. Maybe a national certification (a la NIST) that would be optional for states to adopt, but would at least would provide a framework for transparent state and local alignment (or misalignment) with best practice.
My initial comment was an abrupt dismissal based on the authors of the two listed items of evidence. Here are some articles worth reading that are thorough dismissals.
Now, if you buy the conspiracy theory that the above news agencies are all on the take and not a single one of them has a whistleblower that would blow the case wide open for a few bucks, then you can argue all these prove nothing. On the other hand, it's really easy to argue that people that publicly support Trump and criticize his opponents have motivation to put out readily debunked documents hoping that enough people will accept them without doing due diligence to determine if they are legitimate.
We've banned this account for abusing HN with flamewar and political battle. Those things are not what this site is for. Creating accounts to do that will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
If your sources for "proof" are from anyone that is pro-Trump and repeatedly tears into Trumps opposition, you might want to start with the assumption that motivated reasoning is in play. You can be well-educated, and still have a bias and be inclined to argue for your side to win.
> you might want to start with the assumption that motivated reasoning is in play. You can be well-educated, and still have a bias and be inclined to argue for your side to win.
yes, this is the human condition and applies equally to both sides of this debate.
I’m aware of the politics of the authors. Both articles you posted amount to ad homs. Neither even attempt to engage with the evidence presented in the reports.
Well, I have, and it's not nonsense IME. Our state currently has a candidate under felony investigation for election fraud. We have multiple counties whose decisions are made by razor-thin margins. I mean, to repeat someone else (I don't even remember who) politics is one of the few truly zero-sum games out there, with much to lose. To think that humans (particularly politicians) are above pushing the envelope to the point of breakage in such circumstances strains credibility. Your easy dismissal may strike some as being a bit naïve. If you're assuming all the bad ones get caught, I have a drug war to sell you.
It's important that claims are investigated, but claims have been investigated, courts have made rulings, all the way to the Supreme Court.
The system will never be perfect but nobody is. Holding it to a 100% standard and saying it isn't a good system if it fails in a few points is not acting in good faith.
I have yet to see any real evidence of election fraud. The Trump lawyers have been shutdown by bipartisan courts across the country. Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, lifelong republicans, agreed.
I agree that the process has been engaged and the verdict delivered. However the concerns about election integrity greatly predate this election, and in my lifetime the controls have been getting weaker not stronger. I don’t think the broader issue is going away anytime soon.
About the controls getting weaker? Review the evolution of controls over time. This year alone my own state eliminated the requirement for absentee ballot witnesses, extended the dates after Election Day for which ballots may be received, loosened the postmark requirements for such ballots. Is this a case where you have evaluated the suitability and effectiveness of the control structure for election integrity and believe that the tendency of loosening preventative and detective controls is immaterial or are you not familiar with the changes? For these are two different conversations: a) I believe the lack of controls to ensure integrity of the process is immaterial to the outcome; b) I believe controls are necessary but don’t see them loosening.
For conversation a, we would disagree in principle - regardless of whether we’re talking about the integrity of the corporate books, the management of systems access, or the integrity of the voting process, to the degree the control structure weakens it is introducing increasing amounts of risk not only in the reliability of the reporting but into the faith held by the stakeholders.
Now you ask, how much risk is appropriate and sustainable, to which I (quick on the repartee) would say storming the federal capital is a benchmark of failure, a growing (not ebbing) concern over election integrity over decades is a bad trend getting worse not better.
Even via the most cynical outlook about one side imagining problems that aren’t there, what happens in sports when one team believes fouls against them aren’t being called? Or in a company when rumors are commonplace that the books are being cooked? It doesn’t make things better, is my point - things get worse. And that’s where turning a blind eye to the very real concerns of others only continues the destabilization.
Absentee ballot witnesses? Really? That's your argument?
> extended the dates after Election Day for which ballots may be received,
Yea maybe it was because there was a global pandemic and the president deliberately weakened the postal service to help himself. I don't see how legal ballots sent in being counted is a weakening of integrity.
None of this is evidence. These are things that happened - but you have not provided any evidence that this weakened the integrity of the election.
Addressing the trust problem is what needs attention now, and in that conversation your litigation of the “fraud” evidence question becomes less useful.
Imagine it like a problem in GAAP or in NIST 800. It’s not about whether _you_ can or cannot see fraud, it’s about whether the community at large (let’s just use Pareto’s 80%) has faith that there are sufficient controls to make fraud unlikely.
Here’s an easy example: your company doesn’t require dual signatures on wire transfers over $250k. One person can make a decision on moving material amounts of cash out the door. You say, we’ve not seen any evidence of large scale wire fraud so we don’t need stronger controls to prevent it. To your auditors and investment community this is a ticking time bomb for several reasons, the least of which may be questionable confidence in your specific ability to detect instances of fraud thus far.
This type of problem is encountered frequently in the regulatory world and I’m not sure why the voting process is so special that we can’t apply similar solution sets. That is, look to sensible, auditable control structures that can be demonstrated to be effective.
The control structure around voting is getting looser, not tighter, and this has been a trend predating the prior four presidential election cycles at least. Looking at the anecdata, many operations are a clown show where if not being abused are clearly ripe for abuse.
I’m not sure how to put it more simply: the debate about the degree and type of fraud that _you_ are aware of is immaterial. The question before the country is how to react when some 40% of the country is losing confidence in the system. Not just in a joking way but shifting to where the fringes are just done with it and parts of the non-fringe are increasingly finding sympathy for them.
My OP was about how the US needs to be prioritizing a fix for the confidence problem. Solutions such as more censorship are a poison pill.
Your comment reflects your self interest in the outcome of the last election, rather than the national interest for the next election. You can tell people to go pound sand, but I don’t think that solution has longevity. This is the first time in my lifetime I can remember the Capitol being stormed, and I’m aware that the confidence issue has been percolating for many years. Ballot harvesting, loose validation checks, willfully bad voter roles, etc., have been making the problem worse not better, again from a confidence level. This year in California the Republicans got in on the ballot harvesting.
Again, what happens in sports when one team thinks the fouls aren’t being called? Does it matter whether you, on the other team, hold a different opinion about the state of refereeing? The whole thing turns into a clown show.
I don’t think an endorsement of continuing down this same path is a good prescription for this country. In terms of the Four Boxes of Liberty, I worry that two of them are increasingly perceived as being locked out for one of our large political factions. Not good.
The confidence problem is unfixable with these people. They will never have confidence in the system unless their side wins - as such they are a threat to it and society should do everything it can to peacefully ostracize this.
If the goal was to truly add trust they would not have stormed the capitol at the behest of Trump and his allies. This immediately proves the goal is not trust - it is power.
Now you must prove to me why I should trust these challenges - as they are filled with lies and conspiracy theories. The trust problem is with the insurrectionists. You have not dealt with this or have proven the system has no integrity. You are using ambiguity, like a flat-earther. It won't work here, sorry.
You're not being honest about the situation. None of the official cases were given the chance to be aired, all were dismissed on procedural grounds. The Supreme Court did not "make rulings", they refused to hear the case.
Sadly, that decision may have led to this state of affairs. When people think they have no voice, violence comes soon after.
The Supreme Court rightly ruled that the traitor's case from Texas did not have legal standing.
I'm a Pennsylvanian. Texas should have no right to tell our legislature and government how to run its elections. The Supreme Court rightfully agreed:
> "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections," the court wrote in an unsigned ruling Friday evening.
But again, you aren't arguing in good faith. I can't wait til Jan 20.
Context is important - I was responding to someone asking for local experience(“go work at a polling place”). But examples seem all too easy to find. A better response is to consider what concessions in the control structure can be made to restore confidence.
You may have faith that everything is okay, but that does little to satisfy those with experience of fraud or hearing stories of fraud. One can see a local example and easily (and not irrationally) imagine that the systems work similarly in the neighboring city, county, or state.
Whether your intention or not, it’s easy for your attitude to come across as accepting of deficiency - and an endorsement that may run out when the tables turn (and in American politics, they always do). The unending cycle of dismissal by each side to the other’s sincerely held concerns is getting us nowhere but a bad place.
I think you are not seeing the problem set for what it is. Your attitude seems to be: “there is no issue with the integrity of the number summmary.” Let’s say the problem at this point has nothing to do with who won - the problem at this point is that a great many of your countrymen are convinced they cannot trust the system. Your hope is they get over it. I can only tell you that from observing politics for a long time that the concerns over election integrity are getting worse in this country with each iteration, not better. In the face of this we are relaxing the control structure, not strengthening it. The result of continuing down this path should be easy to perceive.
What you describe is indeed the problem, but SHOULD it rightfully be the problem? Or should we really be concerned about the truth of who won, and leave it at that? The mistrust was fueled entirely by Trump. Prior to Nov 3, more Republicans than Democrats expressed confidence in the integrity of the system. So if you dont dispute the election result, then the problem would seem to lie entirely with Trump lies, and all who choose to believe them over evidence. You know Mccarthyism was a thing? Was it because there were systematic issues at the time making our Congress susceptible to a Communist majority, or was it because of a demogogue, lies lies lies, and willfully ignorant believers?
With regard to those questioning the general integrity of such a large, heterogeneous system as the US electoral process, I don’t think the relevant question is “Is there any reason to believe that some amount of voter fraud may have occurred.” Instead, we should be asking, “If voter fraud did occur, is there any reason to believe that it would disproportionately favor one party over the other?” It’s a big leap from “the system’s latent vulnerabilities likely resulted in at least some failure” to “the system’s vulnerabilities were systematically exploited to the benefit of one party.” I haven’t encountered any convincing evidence in support of the latter conclusion.
I think escalation is the problem here, similar to concerns about "the algorithm" (YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, etc). Some people who begin with reasonable questions in the vein of example #2 are radicalized into believing falsehoods because they are getting their answers from poison information sources.
> A senior vice president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce, Steve Baas, had a thought. “Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?” he wrote in an email on April 6 to conservative strategists. “I obviously think we should.”
> Scott Jensen, a Republican political tactician and former speaker of the State Assembly, responded within minutes. “Yes. Anything fishy should be highlighted,” he wrote. “Stories should be solicited by talk radio hosts.”
While I agree that all protests and riots are a response to feeling disenfranchised or angry about a situation, it’s important to think of the cause in each case.
For BLM protests, the cause is partly real police violence that lots of people have experienced. Lots of people have this firsthand, negative experience with the police, and are frustrated that they cannot feel safe in the hands of people meant to protect them.
For the voter fraud protests, the cause is a propaganda and disinformation campaign. For months and even years, Trump has been saying that things are stollen from him, that the election would be stolen from him, etc. He really incensed this narrative of voter fraud with a lot of lies. The cause is not people’s firsthand experience of voter fraud: republicans were not turned away from the polls nor were their votes discarded. It’s that they were told by Trump and other republicans that if they loose elections, then it must be fraud.
The response, then, is totally different. In the one case, addressing the cause means to reform the police. In the other case, addressing the cause means... what? I would say it is addressing the propaganda campaign. This is what news orgs and social media sites have tried to do.
No matter how secure this election was, or how many policies got implemented, the election fraud claim would persist because the cause is propaganda, not evidence. People (even republicans) who know way more elections than I do say that this election was one of the most secure ever. The few instances of fraud that occur — and always occur in events of this scale — are hardly proof of a sinister campaign.
While I’ll agree to make voting as secure as possible (I’d support voter ID if it didn’t take 5 hours at the DMV just to be eligible to vote), that’s not really the narrative voter fraud protests are about. That’s why we push back when people try to say that the election was fraudulent: these folks are really trying to say that they should have won. They are not (primarily) trying to say that we should fix the handful of fraud instances that happened even though it wouldn’t change the result.
If I said “you’re right to be angry here,” I would be heard as saying, “you actually should have won.” Therefore, I must be honest and say “you’re wrong to be angry about this. The evidence of fraud will not address your anger about this loss.”
And let me be clear: I support trump folks right to protest because of their anger over loosing. But I cannot agree that it ought to be addressed as they say it should be.
The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society. Listen to those feeling alienated and see what can be reasonably done to promote inclusiveness. It's hard to take advocates of inclusiveness seriously when they eagerly cancel, disenfranchise, and deplatform people that disagree with them even remotely (and yes, there are plenty of examples of rational criticism being deplatformed).