2024 US Presidential Election

[SGR]

That's another long post, SGR ! I might respond to it in parts, if that's ok.

That's fine, take your time. 

^ Yep, as you mention at the outset, the topic of voter suppression is v complex, so I prefer to focus on calling out tactics that are obviously, blatantly, and unjustifiably unfair. I don't consider the issue of felons voting or not as falling into that category, and neither does wikipedia, as far as I can tell: I didn't see any mention of it in their article.

Felons voting or being barred from voting was mentioned multiple times in the Wiki article you posted, the quote I included was from that Wiki article. But I'm fine putting it aside as an issue that isn't blatantly and unjustifiably unfair.

^ The same applies to consolidation: also not mentioned by wiki, and not blatantly unfair repression, so I'm going to leave that topic alone too, if you don't mind, in hopes of keeping our discussion from sprawling too far from my initial point.

I don't know whether I'd classify it as 'blatantly unfair repression' or not, but I'd put it in the same box as Republicans who move voting centers to more sparsely populated (and Republican-centric) areas. The goal is the same, to reduce turnout of the opposition and boost turnout of your respective party. Your initial point was that Republicans were more responsible for cheating in elections, as evidenced by recent examples included in the Wiki article. These practices of Democrats refusing to consolidate off-cycle elections are a valid counterexample of that, specifically because the wiki article doesn't mention it.

^ If you haven't posted this before, then Nimbly certainly posted something similar ages ago. No way I'm going to watch 23 mins of video clips like that, but I watched enough to be able to make these points:-
i) grumbling about election results (clearly a long-term habit among US politicians) is different from flat-out refusing to accept them

How? The Democrats in that video weren't just 'grumbling' about the election results, they were flat-out refusing to accept them and denying them. 

bullying governors to "just find votes" 

This is a reference to Trump's phone call with Georgia Secretary of State (not governor) Brad Raffensperger. The optics of this don't look good for Trump, and it has become a central piece of one of his indictments, so we'll see how that plays out. We will probably both learn more.

But I'll offer this.

The Democrats view this incident as another example of Trump's malfeasance. They believe it to be proof-positive that Trump is a mafia boss wannabe: "Ya best 'find' those votes for me, capisce? If you don't, it sure would be unfortunate if something were to happen to you or ya family, ya hear?"

But, if we were to take Trump in good faith (I know, I know....bear with me), if he actually thought he did win the state - and he thought the only reason he could've lost could be due to untabulated votes or vote manipulation (and this seems to be unclear, there are reports claiming Trump knew he lost, and there are reports claiming the opposite), then 'find the votes' might be much more innocuous, along the lines of: "I know we won this state. There's votes for me that have not been counted, have been misplaced, etc". Given the unique nature of 2020, with it's outsized use of mail-in ballots, this isn't that far of a stretch to believe boxes could have been lost or misplaced - and stories we read, like the below, after the election show how a thin ~11,000 vote margin of victory could have teetered on human error and mishandling of votes:

How a computer issue kept 15,000 Henrico votes from getting counted on Election Day

Here's what happened with a supposed 9,000+ vote error in DeKalb County's audit

So 'find the votes' could be interpreted as:

"We didn't win the election, but I want you to help me cheat and tip the scales"

or

"We won the election, and the result we have in this state can't be real, there must be votes that haven't been counted, and you need to find them"

calling on people to "fight like hell"

This is a common refrain from the left to imply that Trump was encouraging or supported violence, when in reality it was just run of the mill political rhetoric. He was referring to filing lawsuits, presenting legal challenges and evidence, protesting, etc., but not violence. For more proof of the commonality of this kind of rhetoric, see the following:

As far as I can see you and Nimbly both are not distinguishing between the guy who says, "I think my bank cheated me" and the guy who breaks th law and robs the bank. You're not comparing like with like.

I think for this analogy to work, you'd have to say: "the guy who attempts to rob the bank", with the assumption that the bank did not cheat him. Gore filed plenty of paperwork requesting audits and recounts in the 2000 election, but unlike Trump, the paperwork filed didn't rely on a fringe legal theory. In neither Trump or Gore's case did the 'bank' ultimately get robbed. The security around the bank worked.

ii) too many of those clips are without context. Many of the comments may have been made in  response to questions about the popular vote. To me it's fair enough to say, "Without winning the popular vote, the President could be regarded as being illegitimate" I bet that is how some of those comments arose.

I don't think the popular vote was the crux of all of these questions (and some weren't even about a presidential election), but even for the ones that it was, you think it's fair to say that a president is 'illegitimate' if they didn't win the popular vote? Even though our system of electing a president is dependant on the electoral college and not the popular vote? It's not like Hillary Clinton (for example) campaigned in 2016 not understanding that it's the electoral college that wins her the presidency, instead of the popular vote. Maybe if Hillary had bothered to campaign in Wisconsin (instead of taking it for granted), as Trump did, she might have won both the popular vote and the electoral college. If you want to make the case that the vote for president should be a popular vote, and the electoral college should be done away with, that's fine, but it's definitely a different discussion. As for the recent past and right now, both parties know what's needed to become president - and it's not the popular vote.

^ Isn't commonly accepted that proving a negative is all but impossible ?? How can I prove that my neighbour isn't an extraterrestrial? I prefer to use Occam's razor, as I understand it: explain the observable facts with the simplest working hypothesis, cut away the unnecessary. In this case, as upheld by various courts, there was no steal: Trump lost.

Trump lost, by all evidence and metrics we have, I agree. Joe Biden won the presidency.

But I feel we're talking in circles here - and maybe it's my fault, maybe I'm not making my case strongly enough. You are correct, proving a negative is nearly impossible. If I tell you I saw bigfoot yesterday on my way to work, how would you be able to prove I didn't? You couldn't prove I didn't.

But bigfoot and alien sightings are a lot different than our election systems. Our election systems are something we physicially engage with, that can be tracked, recorded, secured, audited, etc. Unlike bigfoot and alien sightings, it's something we have physical evidence of. I'll go back again to you conceding that the system is a mess and has obvious problems. I'm not saying that the system needs to be 100% secure or bulletproof, just that it needs to be much better than it is now and there are clear and obvious ways to do that, as we've already outlined. Doing so would be very beneficial in ensuring confidence in our elections and discrediting election deniers in the future - instead of saying: "Well, the guy from NPR said it was safe and secure", we could show them the audit trail of the votes or the blockchain ledger that recorded how every vote was cast.

As I've said before, the courts didn't investigate or audit the election in any real way. They, largely (if memory serves, the Republicans won two cases that didn't make a damn bit of difference in the outcome), rejected Republican filings based on standing (i.e. they weren't an 'injured party' in the case, so they couldn't bring the case, and it was summarily rejected).

I'm a software engineer, so maybe an analogy could better convey my perspective on this. Pretend I'm the court, my boss is the general public, and a junior developer working under me is the Republican Party.

Boss: "So I heard tell we might have some problems or errors with our codebase?"
Me: "Nope, we definitely don't"
Boss: "Oh really? The new junior developer was saying that he thought he identified several problems and possible failure vectors in the codebase"
Me: "Oh, yes, that. Well, I took it upon myself to briefly glance at those areas of the code, and he isn't responsible for any of them. They're completely outside his wheelhouse. If, in the completely unlikely chance there was a failure in those areas of code, it wouldn't be his responsibility nor would it affect him at all. In other words, there are no vulnerabilities or failure vectors in our codebase."
Boss: "Wow! Thank you! The execs are going to be very happy to hear this! I think you're due for a raise!"
Me: "Thanks! That's Occam's Razor for ya!"

Did Trump encourage his supporters to storm the Capitol" ? That's a semantic discussion to be had about phrases like "fight like hell". TBH I'm not inclined to engage in that debate and will concede that the Brookings article went too far, but in a discussion about trying to subvert election results, surely the Colorado ruling that Trump engaged in insurrection is the bottom line take away.

That's fine, as you say it is a semantics debate ultimately, and my only point was to tip off a possible area of bias.

I feel it's a little bit of 'moving the goalposts' to say that the bottom line takeaway is that Trump engaged in insurrection, when this particular discussion had nothing to do with that. If you'd like to chat about that we can, of course. I can start: I don't think some district court judge in Colorado is the end-all, be-all in determining whether or not Trump engaged in insurrection. If Trump engaged in insurrection, why wasn't he indicted for insurrection? And to add, being indicted for election interference is not the same thing as being indicted for insurrection.

Great photo of where you live ! Thanks. You are very lucky, and I will quiz you later about how it feels to be surrounded by such wonderful scenery.   

I look forward to it! It's a beautiful place to live! 

[DJChameleon]

This is a common refrain from the left to imply that Trump was encouraging or supported violence, when in reality it was just run of the mill political rhetoric. He was referring to filing lawsuits, presenting legal challenges and evidence, protesting, etc., but not violence. For more proof of the commonality of this kind of rhetoric, see the following:

There is no way in hell you actually believe that. He knows that his simple minded cult like followers would take fight like hell to be violence and not anything else that you are attempting to claim. If he meant any of those things then he would say it. He incited them to take action.

[SGR]

There is no way in hell you actually believe that. He knows that his simple minded cult like followers would take fight like hell to be violence and not anything else that you are attempting to claim. If he meant any of those things then he would say it. He incited them to take action.

The reason I posted that video was to demonstrate how common that kind of political rhetoric is, even among Democrats. If we look at the transcript of his January 6th speech, we can see him repeatedly using 'fight' in obviously non-violent contexts:

There's so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it's, it's incredible.

And you have to get your people to fight. And if they don't fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don't fight. You primary them. We're going to. We're going to let you know who they are. I can already tell you, frankly.

The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they'd argue with me. I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight. Pop pop. You'd believe me, you'd believe them. Somebody comes out. You know, they had their point of view, I had my point of view, but you'd have an argument.

And in the same speech, he did talk about the other things I claimed:

Over the past several weeks, we've amassed overwhelming evidence about a fake election. This is the presidential election. Last night was a little bit better because of the fact that we had a lot of eyes watching one specific state, but they cheated like hell anyway.

Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.

And not a single swing state has conducted a comprehensive audit to remove the illegal ballots. This should absolutely occur in every single contested state before the election is certified.

They've rejected five separate appeals for an independent and comprehensive audit of signatures in Fulton County. Even without an audit, the number of fraudulent ballots that we've identified across the state is staggering.

In contrast to violence, he talked about how the protest at the Capitol would be peaceful and patriotic:

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

If we look at the timeline of January 6th, we also see that the perimeter of the Capitol was already being breached when Trump was still giving his speech:

At 12:53 p.m., nineteen minutes before Trump ended his speech, rioters overran the perimeter of the Capitol building, and at 2:06 p.m. they entered the building through the Columbus Doors.

So no, I don't find Trump saying "fight like hell" to be compelling evidence that he was calling for violence. I think a much more compelling case can be made that Trump did too little, and took too long to do what he did in attempts to quell the mob/riot once it was clear and obvious that the situation was getting out of control:

Trump's tweet requesting the crowd to "stay peaceful" is sent roughly half an hour later, at 2:38 p.m. However, at 2:44 p.m., a Capitol Police officer inside the Speaker's Lobby adjacent to the House chambers shot and fatally wounded rioter Ashli Babbitt as she climbed through a broken window of a barricaded door. Minutes later, Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam activated all available assets of the State of Virginia including the Virginia National Guard to aid the U.S. Capitol, although the Department of Defense still had not authorized it. By 3:15 p.m., assets from Virginia began rolling into D.C.

An hour later, at 4:17 p.m, a video of Trump was uploaded to Twitter in which he instructed "you have to go home now". Fifteen minutes later, Secretary Miller authorized the D.C. National Guard to actually deploy.

I think with the number of Trump supporters that showed up and the heated emotions of that moment in time, what happened was practically inevitable with the lack of security/police that the Capitol had at the time. I think Trump certainly deserves criticism and responsibility for the security breakdown at the Capitol on January 6th, but I think others deserve to be criticized as well. A video released recently even shows Nancy Pelosi taking some responsibility for the lack of security.

Pelosi, after the attack, called for then Chief of Capitol Police Steven Sund to resign, which he did. In retrospect, it seems like he simply had to fall on his sword and be a sacraficial lamb, as Sund said the following after the attacks:

The former chief of U.S. Capitol Police says security officials at the House and Senate rebuffed his early requests to call in the National Guard ahead of a demonstration in support of President Trump that turned into a deadly attack on Congress.

Sund says he requested assistance six times ahead of and during the attack on the Capitol. Each of those requests was denied or delayed, he says.

[Lisnaholic]

I don't know whether I'd classify it as 'blatantly unfair repression' or not, but I'd put it in the same box as Republicans who move voting centers to more sparsely populated (and Republican-centric) areas. The goal is the same, to reduce turnout of the opposition and boost turnout of your respective party. Your initial point was that Republicans were more responsible for cheating in elections, as evidenced by recent examples included in the Wiki article. These practices of Democrats refusing to consolidate off-cycle elections are a valid counterexample of that, specifically because the wiki article doesn't mention it.

I wouldn't put these things in the same box at all!
"Republicans who move voting centers to more sparsely populated (and Republican-centric) areas." This is used to target specific voters and poor people relying on public transport. In fact, in Georgia I remember reading about a polling station that was relocated by Republicans, from an accessible location to something like 3 miles from the nearest bus route.
"...to reduce turnout of the opposition and boost turnout of your respective party." I'm not convinced that there's enough statistical evidence to show that Not Consolidating elections has this effect. That it mildly reduces voter numbers, I'd accept, but (i) the effect may be across the board and (ii) there may be legit admin reasons to have elections more frequently, instead of all bunched up together.

How? The Democrats in that video weren't just 'grumbling' about the election results, they were flat-out refusing to accept them and denying them.

^ So where was the Dem version of "Stop the Steal", the Dem alternative to candidates like Kari Lake, running on campaigns that President Trump  isn't really the President ?

This is a reference to Trump's phone call with Georgia Secretary of State (not governor) Brad Raffensperger. <Thanks for that correction!  The optics of this don't look good for Trump, and it has become a central piece of one of his indictments, so we'll see how that plays out. We will probably both learn more. <

But I'll offer this.

The Democrats view this incident as another example of Trump's malfeasance. They believe it to be proof-positive that Trump is a mafia boss wannabe: "Ya best 'find' those votes for me, capisce? If you don't, it sure would be unfortunate if something were to happen to you or ya family, ya hear?"

But, if we were to take Trump in good faith (I know, I know....bear with me), if he actually thought he did win the state - and he thought the only reason he could've lost could be due to untabulated votes or vote manipulation (and this seems to be unclear, there are reports claiming Trump knew he lost, and there are reports claiming the opposite), then 'find the votes' might be much more innocuous, along the lines of: "I know we won this state. There's votes for me that have not been counted, have been misplaced, etc". Given the unique nature of 2020, with it's outsized use of mail-in ballots, this isn't that far of a stretch to believe boxes could have been lost or misplaced - and stories we read, like the below, after the election show how a thin ~11,000 vote margin of victory could have teetered on human error and mishandling of votes:

How a computer issue kept 15,000 Henrico votes from getting counted on Election Day

Here's what happened with a supposed 9,000+ vote error in DeKalb County's audit

So 'find the votes' could be interpreted as:

"We didn't win the election, but I want you to help me cheat and tip the scales"

or

"We won the election, and the result we have in this state can't be real, there must be votes that haven't been counted, and you need to find them"

^ Firstly, I see no reason at all to take Trump in good faith, ever: he cheats on the golf course, cheats on his taxes, cheats on his wife, and lies more often than he tells the truth.
As I think we have both agreed, there were various inconsistencies with vote counting, etc, but nothing that has changed overall outcomes in any State. What your "innocent motive" apology for his conduct overlooks is this: he was the President of the US at the time, and because of the weight and power of that office, it was completely inappropriate for him to call Raffensperger and ask him to find more votes. For Trump to be calling him in the first place was a serious breach of protocol: Raffy knew that, which is why he taped the call.

This is a common refrain from the left to imply that Trump was encouraging or supported violence, when in reality it was just run of the mill political rhetoric. He was referring to filing lawsuits, presenting legal challenges and evidence, protesting, etc., but not violence. For more proof of the commonality of this kind of rhetoric, see the following:

^ Firstly, I would contest the assertion in bold. Are you now reading Trump's mind in your search for an "innocent motive" ?!

I think I've already said that "fight like hell" is capable of two interpretations: metaphorical if you are talking to a roomful of lawyers, literal if you are talking to soldiers ready for battle. At that Jan 6 speech, Trump knew already that his audience were angry, and he had also tried to stop metal-detector scanning for weapons ("I don't effing care that they have weapons.Take the effing mags [magnetometers] away. Let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here"). Today, Trump is calling the Jan 6 rioters "warriors" - proof enough for me that he saw his audience then as an armed and potentially violent group whom he then directed to the Capital. It's disagreeable for me to agree with Mitch McConnell, but I'll overcome my aversion just this once:
 
"There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day," McConnell said
"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president," he said, "and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth."

 

I think for this analogy to work, you'd have to say: "the guy who attempts to rob the bank", with the assumption that the bank did not cheat him. Gore filed plenty of paperwork requesting audits and recounts in the 2000 election, but unlike Trump, the paperwork filed didn't rely on a fringe legal theory. In neither Trump or Gore's case did the 'bank' ultimately get robbed. The security around the bank worked.

^ Yep, thanks for that refinement of my analogy.

I don't think the popular vote was the crux of all of these questions (and some weren't even about a presidential election), but even for the ones that it was, you think it's fair to say that a president is 'illegitimate' if they didn't win the popular vote? Even though our system of electing a president is dependant on the electoral college and not the popular vote? It's not like Hillary Clinton (for example) campaigned in 2016 not understanding that it's the electoral college that wins her the presidency, instead of the popular vote. Maybe if Hillary had bothered to campaign in Wisconsin (instead of taking it for granted), as Trump did, she might have won both the popular vote and the electoral college. If you want to make the case that the vote for president should be a popular vote, and the electoral college should be done away with, that's fine, but it's definitely a different discussion. As for the recent past and right now, both parties know what's needed to become president - and it's not the popular vote.

^ I take your point that it's unwise to say the Pres is illegitimate because he didn't win the popular vote, but again, a bit of sloppy rhetoric from some (not all) Dems is not on the same level as the whole Stop The Steal movement promoted by Trump and the GOP. 

Trump lost, by all evidence and metrics we have, I agree. Joe Biden won the presidency.

^ Hey ! We agree on something !

As I've said before, the courts didn't investigate or audit the election in any real way. They, largely (if memory serves, the Republicans won two cases that didn't make a damn bit of difference in the outcome), rejected Republican filings based on standing (i.e. they weren't an 'injured party' in the case, so they couldn't bring the case, and it was summarily rejected).

^ Plus 5 cases that played out in court and found zero evidence of fraud, plus various claims of fraud that were judge to be defamation, not the truth.   

I'm a software engineer, so maybe an analogy could better convey my perspective on this. Pretend I'm the court, my boss is the general public, and a junior developer working under me is the Republican Party.

^ Sorry, SGR but an analogy based on the arcane world of software engineering goes right over my head

I feel it's a little bit of 'moving the goalposts' to say that the bottom line takeaway is that Trump engaged in insurrection, when this particular discussion had nothing to do with that. If you'd like to chat about that we can, of course. I can start: I don't think some district court judge in Colorado is the end-all, be-all in determining whether or not Trump engaged in insurrection. If Trump engaged in insurrection, why wasn't he indicted for insurrection? And to add, being indicted for election interference is not the same thing as being indicted for insurrection.

^ I take your point that it's almost a separate issue, but although it's just one Colorado district court judge, it still stands, uncontested as part of the judicial record. As for your question in bold:-
He's already been impeached for insurrection:-

First impeachment of Donald Trump, the 2019 impeachment on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.
Second impeachment of Donald Trump, the 2021 impeachment on a charge of incitement of insurrection.

... and with four seperate indictments lined up against him, my guess is that the DOJ felt that they had enough to be going on with for now.

Lastly, I put your photo of New Hampshire over in the secret forum, SGR: I hope that's ok.

[Marie Monday]

Comparing similar political rhetoric at any not al moment to Trumps 'fight like hell' at that specific tense time makes no sense, because the foreseeable consequences are very different. If a democrat said something like that at a time where you can expect people to get violent as a result, I would condemn it just the same. And then we're not even considering the fact that trump had been spreading the voter fraud conspiracy around and actively trying to disrupt the elections, which led up to this.

[DJChameleon]

The reason I posted that video was to demonstrate how common that kind of political rhetoric is, even among Democrats. If we look at the transcript of his January 6th speech, we can see him repeatedly using 'fight' in obviously non-violent contexts:

And in the same speech, he did talk about the other things I claimed:

In contrast to violence, he talked about how the protest at the Capitol would be peaceful and patriotic:

If we look at the timeline of January 6th, we also see that the perimeter of the Capitol was already being breached when Trump was still giving his speech:

So no, I don't find Trump saying "fight like hell" to be compelling evidence that he was calling for violence. I think a much more compelling case can be made that Trump did too little, and took too long to do what he did in attempts to quell the mob/riot once it was clear and obvious that the situation was getting out of control:
 
I think with the number of Trump supporters that showed up and the heated emotions of that moment in time, what happened was practically inevitable with the lack of security/police that the Capitol had at the time. I think Trump certainly deserves criticism and responsibility for the security breakdown at the Capitol on January 6th, but I think others deserve to be criticized as well. A video released recently even shows Nancy Pelosi taking some responsibility for the lack of security.

Pelosi, after the attack, called for then Chief of Capitol Police Steven Sund to resign, which he did. In retrospect, it seems like he simply had to fall on his sword and be a sacraficial lamb, as Sund said the following after the attacks:

This is all semantics. Sure there isn't any specific calls for violence but...

One thing you are overlooking is the audience that he's speaking to. Everything that he says in the speech in incendiary when you are talking to a group that is already riled up.

[Psy-Fi]

From hugs to guillotines, Trump's fundraising emails are a roller coaster

[SGR]

This is all semantics. Sure there isn't any specific calls for violence but...

One thing you are overlooking is the audience that he's speaking to. Everything that he says in the speech in incendiary when you are talking to a group that is already riled up.

Yes, I think this is fair to say. And I think we're moving closer to causality here.

Particularly the bold - which would imply that you could remove Trump's 'fight like hell' stuff from his speech and we probably would have seen the same result play out. This is just a guess, but I'd be willing to wager that almost the same thing would've played out even if Trump hadn't given a speech there on that day at all (assuming everything else remained the same) because of, as you and others have pointed out, the group that was called to gather there was already riled up, pissed off and thought that the election was stolen from Trump (who himself bears a major amount of responsibility for why they thought this) - and because of the complete inadequacy of the Capitol police security. If you put a large number of intensely pissed off people (who are all pissed off about the same thing) in a tight area with completely inadequate police presence, the result is practically inevitable - theft, violence, property destruction, chaos, and mayhem.

But this brings it back to a point of mine that I've made in recent post(s), and a point that has in large part spurred the back-and-forth between @Lisnaholic and I - and that is the integrity, security, and reliability of the election system itself and our inability to effectively resolve questions about it. I posted maybe 20 different links about this a few pages back (post #234), but I'll include one specifically below, that Lisna has said made him sympathetic to calls for election reform - this article was written and published before the 2020 presidential election even happened, and it essentially predicted spot-on what the fallout would be:

One big flaw in how Americans run elections

The truth is that two decades after the Florida 2000 election debacle created a rift in the country, and four years after Russian interference in the 2016 election profoundly deepened that divide, the U.S. lacks satisfactory, uniform mechanisms for resolving questions about elections and verifying results.

In the absence of mechanisms that support election integrity, the U.S. has largely had to rely on "public trust ... and acceptance of the results," Carroll said. This has mostly worked out, until now.

But this presidential election may be the one where that deficit finally catches up with us. With Trump proclaiming again that the election is "rigged" and raising concerns that he may not accept the outcome if he doesn't win, any unexplained or uninvestigated anomalies could leave millions of Americans distrusting the outcome, thereby deepening the divides that already exist and potentially inspiring violence.

Jon Stewart said something recently that I thought was rather poignant - and I think he frames it in a way that I find rather persuasive. I'll include a couple quotes below:

Trump's exploits have revealed the flaws and shady deals culture of US politics and business, Stewart said.

He said: 'In some ways, he is doing us a service in that he is like...you know how they employ a white hat hacker who will go into a system and find its vulnerabilities.'

Stewart argued that even if there are good, dedicated government workers, Trump has demonstrated 'vulnerabilities' in the system.

He then called for the system to be 'reverse engineered' given the issues Trump has demonstrated.

He said: 'Now he's not doing it for our benefit, he's doing it to exploit it. But what I'm saying is, what if we take the information that he's delivering us which is, here are the vulnerabilities in your system that I can exploit, can't we reverse engineer that?'

Stewart is not specifically talking about our election systems here, but you can certainly apply the same logic/observation to them (even if, admittedly, you have to laugh at the idea of comparing Trump to a white hat hacker  ).

As Stewart said, Trump is not some noble and benevolent figure doing this for our collective benefit, he's doing it for selfish reasons - to exploit it for his gain. I think one can, at the same time, criticize Trump for how he conducted himself during the 2020 elections, call it irresponsible, and even criminal, but also recognize that Trump took the big steaming turd in the room that we call our election system and shoved it in our collective faces, whether we like it or not.

The question is whether we as a country will learn from this and use it as an opportunity to vastly improve our election systems and thus the public trust in their results (which is what I want), or we'll suffer through this election cycle with the same system we have now, then suffer through 4 more years of either Trump or Biden, and then bury our heads back in the sand, make no substantive improvements to the election system, and watch as each losing party, every four years, accuses the other of cheating (which is what I sadly predict).

[SGR]

So who's ready for the first of at least two Presidential Debates in less than two weeks (June 27th)?

Top comment had me laughing:

"Can't believe this is relevant again 4 years later. This planet is a prison." 

And this one I think I like even better, despite the lack of Weird Al:

@Lisnaholic, I plan to respond to your post once I have a little bit more time. 

[SGR]

I wouldn't put these things in the same box at all!
"Republicans who move voting centers to more sparsely populated (and Republican-centric) areas." This is used to target specific voters and poor people relying on public transport. In fact, in Georgia I remember reading about a polling station that was relocated by Republicans, from an accessible location to something like 3 miles from the nearest bus route.
"...to reduce turnout of the opposition and boost turnout of your respective party." I'm not convinced that there's enough statistical evidence to show that Not Consolidating elections has this effect. That it mildly reduces voter numbers, I'd accept, but (i) the effect may be across the board and (ii) there may be legit admin reasons to have elections more frequently, instead of all bunched up together.

The demographic they target might be different, but the goal, as I stated, I believe to be the same. It's okay that you're not currently convinced that it has this effect, because you seemed to be rather confident in the idea that you knew which party 'cheated' more before. Which of course means there still might be a chance for me to persuade you to my camp of 'I don't know which party "cheats" more'.   Don't take it from me, take it from Boston College:

The pervasive use of "off-cycle" elections has been shown to matter immensely: the day an election is held has the single greatest impact on the turnout and composition of the electorate (Anzia 2013). Yet the decision to hold on- versus off-cycle elections ultimately rests with political authorities in state government. As Figure 1 indicates, a majority of states have chosen not to consolidate their election calendars, instead opting to mandate or allow off-cycle elections (Anzia 2013).

Another source: Voter Turnout: On-Years v. Off-Years:

Voter turnout disparity between on- and off-year elections is worrisome, in part, because county and municipal elections tend to have a bigger impact on our everyday lives than national ones. These are the types of elections that decide which streets get repaved, how many police officers are patrolling your community, and when your trash gets collected.

And one more: Off Cycle, Out of Mind: Why School Board Elections Should Be Held With Statewide Elections:

KEY FINDINGS
Most states hold some or all school board elections off cycle.
On-cycle elections have more than three times as many voters turn out on Election Day as off-cycle elections.
Off-cycle elections are decided by a small portion of the electorate and give special interest groups more power of America's education system.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Lawmakers should boost voter turnout by aligning school board election cycle with major statewide elections.

^ So where was the Dem version of "Stop the Steal", the Dem alternative to candidates like Kari Lake, running on campaigns that President Trump  isn't really the President ?

Oh, well that happened a long time ago, in 1861, except it wasn't President Trump, it was President Lincoln, and it resulted in a Civil War.

Sorry, Lisna, you set that one up for me too easily. 

To be fair, in recent history, Trump's Stop the Steal campaign doesn't really have a Democrat equivalent, at least in terms of the seriousness and tenacity in which it was pursued, and the cultural/political fallout which it wrought.

^ Firstly, I see no reason at all to take Trump in good faith, ever: he cheats on the golf course, cheats on his taxes, cheats on his wife, and lies more often than he tells the truth.

Wait just a minute here, in which court case was it proven he cheats on the golf course? 

As I think we have both agreed, there were various inconsistencies with vote counting, etc, but nothing that has changed overall outcomes in any State. What your "innocent motive" apology for his conduct overlooks is this: he was the President of the US at the time, and because of the weight and power of that office, it was completely inappropriate for him to call Raffensperger and ask him to find more votes. For Trump to be calling him in the first place was a serious breach of protocol: Raffy knew that, which is why he taped the call.

It's not so much an 'apology' for his conduct as it is simply an alternative explanation, which, as you explain, doesn't preclude that it was inappropriate or a breach of protocol. As I mentioned, there's an active criminal case about it.

^ Firstly, I would contest the assertion in bold. Are you now reading Trump's mind in your search for an "innocent motive" ?!

 

Yeah, I deserve that accusation, as that's exactly why I criticized your initial point, and I made the same mistake. No one can read Trump's mind (perhaps not even Trump himself).

What I should say is that I don't know what Trump thought in his mind as he said the words, but as my responses to @DJChameleon showcase, more often than not, his use of the term 'fight' was in non-violent contexts, and rather in the contexts that I listed, and due to that, in addition to how common the word is in political rhetoric, I personally did not view it as a him calling for violence - that's what I meant.

I think I've already said that "fight like hell" is capable of two interpretations: metaphorical if you are talking to a roomful of lawyers, literal if you are talking to soldiers ready for battle. At that Jan 6 speech, Trump knew already that his audience were angry, and he had also tried to stop metal-detector scanning for weapons ("I don't effing care that they have weapons.Take the effing mags [magnetometers] away. Let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here").

This quote/story was from Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony to the Jan 6 committee. She was also the one who told the story of Trump reaching for the steering wheel of the vehicle driven by Secret Service after the Jan 6th speech because he wanted to go to the Capitol. The driver himself has refuted this story, so I don't put much, if any credibility into anything Hutchinson says:

According to the new report, the driver, who is not named, was interviewed by the previous Jan. 6 committee in November 2022 and "testified that he specifically refuted the version of events as recounted by Hutchinson."

The driver said he "did not see him reach [redacted]. [President Trump] never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn't see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all," the report states.

Today, Trump is calling the Jan 6 rioters "warriors" - proof enough for me that he saw his audience then as an armed and potentially violent group whom he then directed to the Capital.

I don't know that we can take what he's calling them now, today, as evidence of what he thought of them then before everything happened. He's also since called them 'martyrs' and 'hostages', for example. He distanced himself from them in the immediate aftermath (after likely realizing he overplayed his hand), and is only now referring to them more glowingly because he thinks it's politically advantageous among his base (if he thought of them as his 'warriors' back then, wouldn't he have issued a blanket pardon for them before leaving office instead of leaving them out to dry?)

^ I take your point that it's almost a separate issue, but although it's just one Colorado district court judge, it still stands, uncontested as part of the judicial record. As for your question in bold:-
He's already been impeached for insurrection:-

... and with four seperate indictments lined up against him, my guess is that the DOJ felt that they had enough to be going on with for now.

A Republican POTUS being impeached (by a Dem majority house) and then acquitted (by a GOP majority senate) is a political process, not a legal one. This process doesn't carry a very high-bar in terms of standards of truth. I'd offer an alternative guess that the DOJ didn't charge him with insurrection because it would not be a simple or easy case to prove.

[Shhon]

[Psy-Fi]

RFK Jr. offers foreign policy views on Ukraine, Israel, vows to halve military spending

Kennedy suggested that the U.S. take a page out of China's book. He said the country has emerged as a world superpower by using its budget more effectively, investing in infrastructure and businesses in places like Africa and South America, rather than beefing up its military presence.

"They spent $8 trillion on bridges, roads, airports and schools and hospitals," Kennedy said. "Our forever wars made us enemies across the globe — left us bankrupt at home. China's investments, in contrast, made friends across the globe and brought it influence in every corner of the Earth."

Correct about China.

Good luck going against the U.S. military-industrial-government-mainstream media complex.

[Shhon]

[SGR]

The first debate is tomorrow night at 9pm! You should be able to watch it on CNN's Youtube channel if you didn't have cable - it's also available to stream on Hulu.

[Psy-Fi]

RFK Jr. to stream his own "real debate" during Trump-Biden debate