And that's exactly the problem. Republicans are indeed benefiting from the backwards or technically legal but scummy tactics you outlined.
Democrats are not trying to fight fire with fire, they're just trying to make it easy to vote for anyone who is entitled to vote. It just happens that there are more of those people than there are people supporting Republicans. Quite a bit more.
You just can't imagine someone wouldn't stoop that low when you would.
> The rules were changed prior to the election, in a way that clearly favours the democratic party. That should raise suspicion.
Meaning voting was made easier for millions, hence they voted. Meaning Republican suppression of Democratic voters was less effective, hence more voters.
There is one of the two parties fighting for election security and it's not the republicans. Mitch McConnell has a few election security bills on his desk that were never brought to a vote.
> but this is a huge red flag that something might be going on
On the contrary. This is an indicator of the Republican claims being based on no evidence. The fact that these lies happen to be incredibly damaging to the perception of US democracy is a good enough reason for a private company to decide not to host it.
It's not part of an even larger coverup, as you seem to believe. Do you know how many people would need to be involved on a coverup of this scale? How is that even remotely close to being the right explanation.
As a Canadian, the republican "side" of politics in the US has made it so that debating with them is no longer necessary.
When the moment arrived that facts were no longer on their side, they chose to alter the perception of reality of their voters instead of changing their behavior. They band together and adopt a narrative which they then spread through the networks which are aligned with them and in other public tools like youtube and twitter.
This is so incredibly successful that the only thing guiding their behavior is a change in polling with their base, rather than any philosophy based on values, convictions or general sense of morality.
Hell yes their outright lies should be banned from places like Youtube. They have no basis in reality and contrary to other types of false information, their information has the single goal of maintaining or increasing their power and delegitimizing democracy in the US.
Now from the point of view of the brainwashed conservatives, people like me are the brainwashed ones. There's pretty much nothing we can say to them to convince them otherwise. We can try and prevent the bad actors from saying the things which lead them down the path to dismissing reality.
I think the side which is getting all their lawsuits dismissed (and with prejudice) is probably the one with the baseless claims.
I also think that the side on which the biggest (public) provable liar/narcissist of all time is on has a chance of having the most baseless claims.
Occam's Razor also applies. What is more likely: a massive conspiracy to rig the election, only in specific swing states, only for the presidency and nothing else on the ballot, requiring massive coordination and having no proof. Or... The president is a huge liar and the people in the GOP are afraid to go against him lest he turn his cult against them too.
> Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening
I'm genuinely unsure how you're genuinely unsure, except if you attribute the same weight to Fox News / OANN and other propaganda networks as you do sources of information with actual credibility.
Democrats are not trying to fight fire with fire, they're just trying to make it easy to vote for anyone who is entitled to vote. It just happens that there are more of those people than there are people supporting Republicans. Quite a bit more.
You just can't imagine someone wouldn't stoop that low when you would.