this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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[–] Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Here's the problem:

  • After spending 4 years saying that our elections are secure, how do you start a serious investigation into this without sounding like whining hypocrites at best?
  • Even if you prove to be 100% in the right, do you honestly think that you're going to get people to believe it?
  • Even if you prove to be 100% in the right, doesn't that also just prove that our elections really aren't secure and can be manipulated pathetically easily?
  • The number of people needed to pull a stunt like this off would be in the thousands. Yet, not a single person has come forward and talked? Not a single election worker saying "Hey, I opened up a box of ballots to count, and all of them were just votes for Trump and nobody else." Not a single worker tasked with tracking the shipment of these ballots reporting any anomalies? Remember. Every state went redder. You don't think that in blue states like California or even purple states like Wisconsin, that if there were any anomalies they wouldn't be screaming about it on social media before they were done unpacking the damn box?
  • Wouldn't this have just lead to several anomalies in the voting count in at least some cities? Bulk cramming votes by the tens or even hundreds of thousands would surely lead to the number of votes cast in some states or counties being higher than the number of registered voters.
  • How do you prove that it wasn't just a bunch of low-information Trump voters showing up just to support him, not caring about the other downballot races?

Personally, I'd rather stick with the narrative that our elections are safe and secure, and the US voters simply voted against their own interests. The best we could hope for beyond that is the GOP saying that the election was stolen in 2020, the Democrats saying it was stolen in 2024, and nobody believing our elections are secure at all heading into 2026 and 2028.

And even if you want to put all of that aside. A stunt like this would make Mission Impossible seem like Sesame Street by comparison. Think of the work it would take on a national level to pull this off with absolutely nobody talking and without a trace. Now look at the people Trump has leading the charge. What in the name of Jesus's favorite camel makes you think that any of those fuckwits have the mental capacity to pull that off?

These claims have little to no basis in reality and should be immediately disregarded just like Trump's claims of 2020. The fact of the matter is that we lost.

EDIT: People are saying these were digital counts that were manipulated. The argument still stands, though. For that argument to be valid, that would mean that our elections are so insecure that Trump and the brainworm crew were able to hack into voting systems nationwide, en masse, and without anybody noticing. Thousands of people would still have to be involved. There would be a digital trace showing something happened, even if we couldn’t figure out exactly what or by whom. Someone would have made a human error that would stick out like a sore thumb. Digitally or physically, you are not pulling that kind of stunt at that level without anybody noticing, particularly not those lead paint eaters.

[–] Ruorc@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Regarding your points:

  1. That would be a difficult discussion, yes, but the difference between now and then is that there are red flags that should, at the least, warrant a recount. Unlike 2020, we're not saying it's rigged, but rather that a recount is needed to validate and verify.

  2. The same way you would try to prove anything else like this, you put facts out in front of people, bring in experts, and attempt to bring the truth to light. If there was something nefarious uncovered then we present it, otherwise it shows that things are working correctly.

  3. Yes and no. It means that tabulation machines are manipulatable and that we need improved security there. Hand counting ballots is still secure as the red flag here is a digitally inflated count, which is what a physical recount would prove or disprove.

  4. You didn't read the letter, or at least didn't understand it. They're not talking about fradulent physical ballots. There's no reason for anybody to be looking at them for multiple reasons. Secondly, the letter states that swing states are the ones specifically that need to be looked at.

5/6. We know that a good portion of the population that is eligible to vote doesn't. We also have historical data that gives us the averages for when voters only vote for the president and nothing else. That range is 2-5%. Seeing that number jump above 10% is eye catching and can be indication that something is wrong. So again, it's not a claim that things are rigged, but a warning that the numbers indicate that they need to be looked at closer and be recounted to ensure they are correct.

Claiming out elections are secure and ignoring something like this just allows the GOP to continue to use it. If they get away with it this time and are the ones in power, how is anyone supposed to prevent them from doing it again? The whole reason were having to deal with the idea of rigged elections is because the GOP and Trump decided fuck up that system our trust and replace it with fear and lies.

On the last point, these claims do have a basis in reality looking at the data. The math shows a departure from historic norms, which calls it question how accurate the counts are. Asking for a recount is not a problem, but saying and doing nothing when it looks like something is wrong is a problem.

[–] Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree, then. I think we're both on the same side and ultimately want the same things. And I'm not saying your points are invalid. But at the same time, I don't see any real evidence to support it, I have absolutely no reason to believe that Trump's team of all people would have the brain capacity necessary to pull it off, and I think chasing down conspiracy theories with little tangible evidence is going to do far more harm than good.

Again, the best that we would be able to hope for is to say "Our elections are so insecure that Trump and his band of human crayon eaters was able to hack into systems nationwide without a god damned person noticing. Oh, and Kamala Harris actually won the election. Believe us!" Because you will not get any further than that with your average American voter.

The undeniable facts are this: Kamala Harris got 10+ million less voters than Joe Biden. Which means that 10+ million Biden voters stayed home. The GOP had absolutely nothing to do with that. If those 10 million democrats came out to vote, we'd have won the election in a landslide even if Trump was able to pull off that little stunt.

We lost because 10 million Democrats stayed home. What the GOP did or did not do has absolutely no impact on that fact. No investigation will change that fact.

[–] phar@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why would you think it was Trumps team and not Russia?

[–] Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Does it really matter? The end result would still be the same. "Our elections were so insecure that ________ were able to go into networks across the nation, alter or invalidate the votes of over 10 million people, and escape undetected." Doesn't matter who you put in that blank. The message would be the same. "Our election systems our compromised, Trump certainly isn't going to fix it in 4 years, so it won't matter who you vote for in 2028 since _________ is probably just going to decide the result again anyway."

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We lost because 10 million Democrats stayed home.

Show me the evidence that they stayed home, rather than their votes having been suppressed or not counted.

[–] Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Sure.

Choose one:

  1. United states elections are secure; hacking voting systems to invalidate or alter over 10 million votes would be an impossibility, and any attempts to do so would be caught and thwarted by a team of networking experts using at least the bare minimum of networking security at multiple levels.

  2. United states elections are so insecure that ____________* can hack into voting systems nationwide undetected, alter or invalidate the votes of tens of millions of people across all 50 states and hundreds of districts, exit with impunity and escape detection for two weeks and counting.

  • can be anything you want. Trump's team. Trunp supporters. Russian hackers. North Korean hackers. Aliens. Doesn't matter. The point would be that it's apparently so easy to change the vote counts that your vote doesn't even matter; the election is going to be decided by whatever hacker was most successful anyway.

Pick one. The two cannot coexist simultaneously. For fraud to exist at that scale, you're saying that our election integrity is about as secure as my grandmother's wireless hotspot. A problem of that scale can't be fixed in four years, rendering it irrelevant to even bother trying in 2028. Trump would make sure of that.