this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

First, don't panic. Harris and her staff, and Democrats around the country, they have planned for many shady actions on Trump's part. Details are scarce because they don't want Trump staff to have a heads up.

And then everything depends on the details.

But remember, anything that looks like a coup d'etat could easily get the military or spy agencies involved. And if they move, it doesn't matter what SCOTUS says. As a result, it's very hard to predict what would happen in various extra dramatic situations. There is no precedent; precedent wouldn't mean anything anyway.

[–] 31337@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Source? First I've heard of anything like this. I'd imagine a lot of things would have to be settled in court given the US's strange laws giving states so much leeway in how they conduct federal elections.

[–] nutsack@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

depends how close it is and which state acts like shit

[–] UncleGrandPa@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If trump wins

He will simply have his detrackters.. Eliminated

[–] Makhno@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Bruh you can't even spell detractors. Cease the political hottakes lol

[–] masquenox@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago (6 children)

They won't.

It's like MLK said - the white liberal will always prefer "a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."

That's the whole reason they didn't bat an eyelid when Neo-Nazis and KKK-boys were marching under open police protection back in 2016 but collectively lost their shit when antifa showed up to physically confront them.

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[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Remember Bush v Gore?

Just like that.

[–] tomcatt360@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 days ago

Nope, I was 3

[–] eksb@programming.dev 155 points 3 days ago (10 children)

Same as happened in 2000, we'll get 8 years of the guy who lost.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 130 points 3 days ago (2 children)

We already had four years so technically we would only get another four.

Until SCOTUS says the constitution isn't constitutional and gives him a literal crown.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 83 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's the scary part. They'll gladly approve his term limit extension.

[–] kitnaht@lemmy.world 40 points 3 days ago (8 children)

That's how Putin did it; probably the guy guiding all of this.

They have term limits over there in Russia as well, but they have interpreted it as "only allowed X years in a row"...so Putin installs a crony for 1 session every X years, and then magically wins the votes by a landslide every other time.

That's what they'll end up doing. They'll 'interpret' it as consecutive terms, and we'll get 8 years of Trump, then 4 of Vance, then 8 of Trump, etc.

[–] chetradley@lemm.ee 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Your scenario implies Trump lives to 98, and unless the preservatives in big macs are the key to longevity, I doubt he makes it that long.

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[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 30 points 3 days ago

He's been saying that if he wins, nobody will ever need to vote again.

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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 66 points 3 days ago (13 children)

The scary thing about elections is that, by design, nobody can ever "prove" they won.

Votes are designed to be anonymous. They have to be. If they're not, they're very vulnerable to manipulation. If someone can prove how they voted, then they can either be bribed to vote a certain way, or threatened to vote a certain way. If you can check that your vote was counted successfully for the candidate you chose, then someone else can check that you voted for the candidate they chose.

That means that, by design, the only security that elections can have is in the process. In a small election, like 1000ish votes or fewer, someone could supervise the whole thing. They could cast their vote, then stand there and watch. They could watch as other people voted, making sure that nobody voted twice, or dropped more than one sheet into the box. They could watch as the box was emptied. Then, they could watch as each vote was tallied. Barring some sleight-of-hand, in a small election like that, you could theoretically supervise the entire process, and convince yourself that the vote was fair.

But, that is impossible to scale. Even for 1000 votes, not every voter could supervise the entire process, and for more than 1000 votes, or votes involving more than one voting location, it's just not possible for one person to watch the entire thing. So, at some point you need to trust other people. If you're talking say 10,000 votes, maybe you have 10 people you trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, and each one of you could supervise one process. But, the bigger the election, the more impossible it is to have actual people you know and trust supervising everything.

In a huge country-wide election, there's simply no alternative to trust. You have to trust poll workers you've never met, and/or election monitors you've never met. And, since you're not likely to hear directly from poll workers or election monitors, you have to instead trust the news source you're using that reports on the election. In a big, complex election, a statistician may be able to spot fraud based on all the information available. But, if you're not that statistician, you have to trust them, and even if you are that statistician, you have to trust that your model is correct and that the data you're feeding it is correct.

Society is built on trust, and voting is no different. Unfortunately, in the US, trust is breaking down, and without trust, it's just a matter of which narrative seems the most "truthy" to you.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In France we get an anonymous code and we can plug it into a website and it tells us if our ballot was counted or not, and if it wasn’t counted why. (markings on ballott, multiple candidates selected for one spot, etc.)

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Right, but no way to verify who you voted for.

And, you have to trust that the website is telling you the truth. You have no way of verifying that it always gives the same answer to everybody. I guess someone could test that there's some connection to their real ballot by intentionally screwing up their ballot. But, that doesn't mean that there's any way to prove that when it's counted that the actual tally for the person / people you voted for are going up not down.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

You know how people outside the USA vote? They go there, show their ID, get a tick on the list of voters, and do the voting.

[–] FreakinSteve@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (5 children)
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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, and again, it's all based on trust.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How is trust involved in that process?

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can you prove that your vote was counted and that the number of votes for your candidate went up by one as a result? If you can't prove it, then it's based on trust.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

That's on the level of "everything could be made up to fool me" or matrix kind of stuff. You can simply be a poll worker yourself.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 hours ago

Hardly. Historically there has been a lot of cheating in elections. Look at Chicago up to the 1970s. Election fraud was common there.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/1973/05/08/how-the-chicago-tribune-exposed-city-vote-fraud-in-1972-and-won-a-pulitzer-prize/

Nobody can prove that there's less cheating in Chicago elections today than in the 1970s, but people trust that it's more honest.

[–] cowpattycrusader@thelemmy.club 17 points 2 days ago

This makes me think we are on the same path as many countries who routinely have significant civil conflict every election cycle.

Not a great look for a country. Not a great group to join. Yet here we are.

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[–] kitnaht@lemmy.world 89 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (13 children)

I believe the goal and intent is to get enough results into question that they kick it into Mike Johnson's hands - and that mfer has almost no history at all. No bank account, nothing. He'll do the thing, it'll be contested, it'll go to supreme court, where -- surprise surprise, they'll rule in favor of Donald J Trump and he will be elected our new Dictator. At which point he'll be sworn in, because - Dems have never had any backbone - and then he'll proceed to gut every institution which questions him, and turn this nation into an autocracy.

What people don't realize yet, is that the election doesn't matter unless Kamala wins by such a large margin that they can't pull this off. They require the veil of uncertainty for this all to work. But since we're on razor-thin margins, it's going to happen anyways.

We're already boned, and nobody realizes it yet. The playbook is out in the open and the media has stopped calling this out. They're complicit in it, because they think the leopards won't eat their face too. So they're cozying up early.

[–] kitnaht@lemmy.world 24 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Bonus: I believe they'll be doing something wild with Vance as well - probably temporarily making him president, while he pardons Trump for any past crimes, and then giving the presidency back to Trump.

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[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 48 points 3 days ago (2 children)

If we're saying "Trump won" what do we mean? The election is certified and he gets to be sworn in? If that's the case then there is absolutely nothing that can be done. We'll have PBS and 60 minutes stories about what happened and we'll just have to suffer the reality that they got what they wanted.

If he claims to have won on Tuesday, but the results aren't in completely then there is room to argue. It would just be bluster, it wouldn't be officially recognized as a victory. When he does that it will be to ensure he can cry foul if the final results don't go his way. He 100000000% will be doing this.

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[–] Nytixus@kbin.melroy.org 24 points 3 days ago

It will exactly be a repeat, for sure. It'll be like the new inaugural routine, where a portion of the population will rise up for their murderous conman and try to overthrow a government. So long as he's alive.

It's still funnily ironic how this is the party, the GOP, that told Democrats in 2016 to just "accept it". But when it was their turn to, no, they start an insurrection.

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