Have you talked to anyone who is familiar with Qanon (e.g. investigative reporter, member, etc.)? They believe they are exposing wicked people in high places behind human trafficking rings. I don't think anyone would admit to being a 'servile Trump worshipper', neither a 'servile <insert political figure> worshipper'. Whether they are on to something is another issue. I am not part of Qanon, but I know characterizations such as yours are just wrong.
You really believe Trump is a traitor? Can you name 1 or more specific pieces of evidence? I do not think Trump is a traitor, in fact I think he has been a great president by his merits (in 2016 I was neutral). I love how he talks about specific issues and solutions rather than vague platitudes. He is a breath of fresh air, and that is why he was voted for (though I did not see this in 2016). If he is a traitor, I would love to be enlightened of this and obviously I would not support him. I think most people (such as yourself) don't spend time looking into the claims by his political opponents that he is a traitor. Also, if you support Trump you risk being fired.
Usually I do that, but in this case the title was almost meaningless ('How the Media Could Get the Election Story Wrong'). I wanted to highlight the bit I found interesting.
My other post was flagged for sensationalism, so I slightly modified the title. This title actually does describe what is actually in the article (at the end).
As unfortunately expected, I cannot find this on 'mainstream' news. In fact, I found this HN post on the third page of Google without seeing it covered by any other major news outlets.
You have to make the distinction between violent rioters (namely antifa) and genuine protestors. this is the 2nd high-profile time this attempted hijacking has happened. there is even a meme: look up "bike lock guy" (Internet Historian's video on YouTube is pretty funny). anyways the federal agents are not pulling out random genuine protestors (how would that make sense?). they are pulling out the violent ones.
You misunderstand. Do not conflate protestors with violent rioters, who are taking advantage of the protests (as many protestors on the ground can attest). The state government has refused to do anything about violent rioters, even releasing those arrested for felony crimes. Federal agents are picking up where the state government has refused to take action.
I had to resubmit this because an almost identical submission was flagged for having a 'misleading' title, when the quote is LITERALLY FROM THE MAN who quit.
That's quite a jump from 'broken link' => 'must be propaganda'.
Rebuttals should be analyzed just like the target of the rebuttal. Just as you say the original article should not be taken as gospel, the rebuttal should not be taken as gospel either. The author's accounting of the 28M votes breaks down into 2 categories:
1. 12M voluntarily not cast from the 3 states that auto-send to every registered voter. The author arrives at this calculation by taking an average vote percentage of those states, and applying it to the mail ballots. You can't just apply general vote rate to the mail ballots, then further assume the EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 12M remaining vote was due to people just not bothering to vote. Baked into the author's calculation is that none of the mail ballots in those 3 states could have been involved in fraud...
2. 16M (building on the previous flawed calculation) the author just assumes were people who manually requested the mail ballot, but just decided not to send it in. Why? because there were a total 120M mail ballots sent and 16M / 120M amounts to 13% not voting, which is way lower than general population 50% not voting. This is an assertion with no evidence, and we would expect the percentage of people who do not vote when they MANUALLY request a mail ballot to be much lower anyways. Even a fraction of 16M should raise eyebrows.
So as I understand it, the author's calculations are very hand-wavy and unjustified. But you say this is a 'clear' rebuttal. Can you share how you interpreted the article?
I don’t think it ‘proves’ your point, because:
1. Absentee ballots are similar if not easier to detect, e.g. you might expect mail-in voter fraud if you see absentee voter fraud or vice-versa. For example, in Pennsylvania right now, the only difference in requirement for getting an absentee vs mail-in ballot is that you need a reason for the absentee, which gives one avenue of verification. Mail-in ballots don’t need any reason.
2. there are a number of categories that could have been done on mail-in votes, because it’s harder to detect with mail-in votes. It may just be a matter of how the convictions were categorized.
I think your distinction is valid and correct, but somewhat pedantic.
You said the only reason to oppose mail in voting is to rig the vote. That’s a pretty strong implication. But I would say an open mind would ask the other direction: why is anyone opposed to increasing voter integrity? You can’t simply ignore that. Voter integrity appeals to me as a normal-ass American with 1 vote.
You may have noticed I haven’t been political, and stay on principle. We as a society should be able to talk openly about principle without corrosive contempt for those with differing viewpoints.
I do care, but maybe our current views differ. Can you be specific about what you think the lies are? I believe mail in fraud is a real concern, and here is a list of convictions for mail in voter fraud (and other forms): https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...
You are the first person to engage me with intellectual honesty, so thank you.
I don’t care who commits the fraud. I want my vote to count as it should. So that’s a why I believe we should be vigilant about mail in voter fraud.
Your Native American example is an example of a corner case that should be addressed properly. Indeed it is unfair if there were no other ways for Native Americans to vote (surely they could vote in person? If not, I’d classify that as a violation of rights). But this doesn’t extend generally, not does it nullify general mail vote fraud concerns.
And I would add more evidence under the claim ‘majority of fraud committed by Republicans’ in order to be more convincing.
Rules around mail in votes vary by state (some disallow entirely for legitimate reasons). My imagination can not determine what you mean by ‘hardly a handful of convictions‘, but here is a list of quite a few specific convictions for fraudulent absentee voting (along with other forms of voter fraud): https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...
That is some evidence that mail-in votes can be abused. And you should consider how hard it is to detect such abuse. I’d love to see some evidence on why the benefits of mail-in voting outweighs the risks.
Also some evidence on your claims that mail-in voting favors one particular party would be enlightening.
It’s not interference in the scenario you’ve described, because there’s no way to tell such a person would have voted against him. And you can’t ignore the main point, which is voter integrity, which I as a normal American agree with.
Those are the ones that just got caught. (And first page says it is a sampling not a comprehensive list...) It shouldn’t happen at all. And it will get worse with less stringent forms of mail-in voting, wouldn’t you agree?
Hmm. It is a rather arbitrary condition that we should be able to prove that voter fraud swung an election before we should be worried about it. There are a lot of recent convictions, which should not happen at all. And I don’t see how a ‘small‘ amount of evidence can prove the point against the evidence.
It should be worrying that this is happening at all. Our vote is one of our most precious forms of expression. This list of convictions is just the ones the author knew of, the ones that just got caught.
Oh and I would love see any evidence on the disenfranchisement you mentioned to update my worldview with. Don’t worry, if you give me a little bit of evidence, I won’t take it as proof that you are ‘wrong’.
I suppose the pandemic is a valid point for wanting to vote by mail, but concerns for voting integrity are still there. I think there should be an easy-to-implement contactless yet in-person way to vote (maybe similar to how you get a coronavirus test), which would avoid the rather drastic action of allowing universal mail-in voting. Know that there are many states who ban / regulate it for good reason.