Let’s Just Let This Play Out
As a lover of political theater, I’ve read with interest the recent spate of voter-fraud-related articles on OT.
The latest installment, Motivated Ambiguity and the 2020 Election, got me thinking about the nature of throwing spaghetti around to see what sticks, as author Will Truman so cleverly put it. In a general, if-I-ran-the-world kind of way I would tend to agree with Will that spaghetti throwing is a problem. The flinging of wild, unproven accusations — particularly where something as important as a presidential vote is concerned — is anathema for a functional country. If we all just sit around making up vaguely plausible conspiracy theories and shouting them at each other, how can any of our elected officials manage to do anything of substance?
But therein lies the rub. If we ALL just sit around making up conspiracy theories, not “it is ok for people I politically agree with to make wild unproven accusations but terrible when people I politically disagree with respond in kind”, surely (as Will did, but others have not) we can admit it is not just Trump throwing spaghetti here. It is not Donald Trump alone eroding legal, cultural, and governmental norms.
We ALL seem to have an endless appetite for devouring political spaghetti these days.
But in the race to the bottom, I’m none too sure that Donald Trump is anywhere close to the head of the pack.
Some claim this gross erosion of norms is justified because Trump is just SO uniquely awful that any means are necessary to get him. Sure, some of the spaghetti flinging isn’t good for our republic in the long term, BUT TRUMP! Yet over and over again, despite the best efforts of the majority of the media, not to mention a lot of politically powerful people to get him, the guy remains entirely ungot. (This has left the few of us not suffering from a raging case of TDS scratching our heads and saying “that guy must be the cleanest dude in all of history since for all their efforts they can’t find anything to hang him with,” but I digress.)
Spaghetti has been flung, all right, flung all over our national kitchen in an attempt to get the Ungettable Man, and it’s peculiar to me how people who ignored and/or justified all the spaghetti throwing of the past four years suddenly have a problem with a little bit of Trumpian pasta sticking to the ceiling. Muh norms, muh precious norms! Whut will become of our precious civility? Now get out of the way while I compile a list of people who questioned the integrity of this election!
American politics is not a Japanese painting in which we zoom in on one uniquely awful flowering cherry branch whilst relegating all the stuff we don’t want to see out of the frame. American politics are deeply rooted in a lot of history both past and recent, and focusing in on one person/event, insisting on interpreting relevance divorced from context, is like pretending that a flowering cherry branch in a Japanese painting doesn’t connect to a trunk, some roots, the forest around it, the pit it sprouted from, not to mention the entire evolution of cherry trees from the dawn of time.
Donald Trump is not a flowering branch on a cherry tree, existing in isolation from the rest of American history and politics. Donald Trump came from somewhere, he grew out of something, he exists for reasons, and his actions must be seen in the light of that greater context. Donald Trump questioning this election is NOT a result of a moment in time in which everyone was acting perfectly normally, entirely rationally, completely above boards, and with the highest ethical standards before he came along, and now he and he alone has stepped outside the boundaries of decency. Donald Trump questioning this election is borne out of a spaghetti hurricane and he is not alone in its eye.
We’ve had years of some pretty important people — including some who claim to be the impartial arbiters of truth! — throwing spaghetti at not only Trump, not only at his supporters, but at conservatives as a whole. We’ve had years of “the fair and unbiased press” making things up that in many cases were later proven to be completely or partially untrue. We’ve had decades of culturally powerful people levying unprovable ad hominem attacks against less culturally powerful people. We’ve had many otherwise very smart people buying into various hoaxes whenever it suited their purposes to, while outright ignoring scandals that harmed their political ingroup. This goes all the way to the top; in the debates Biden and Harris continued to spread allegations that even the left-leaning Snopes had debunked.
Nothing happens in a vacuum, and history least of all. Donald Trump most certainly did not happen in a vacuum, and the stuff he’s saying about the potential for election fraud isn’t coming out of nowhere either. This is why some Trump supporters believe it happened. At some point, when you’ve seen so much unfair criticism being levied against a person, it becomes easy to believe them whenever they say their critics are being unfair, even if it’s the one time the boy actually does see a wolf.
I try to remain very skeptical, but even I must admit a lot of stuff I would never have believed in my wildest dreams on November 7, 2016, has been proven true. The media is breathtakingly corrupt. The Deep State — a term I’d never heard in my life before that day — apparently exists, has power beyond the checks and balances of the Constitution, likely orchestrated at least one of the impeachment proceedings, and may possibly have the technical prowess to interfere in elections (not saying they did, saying they could>. The tech industry is all in for controlling free speech, targeting certain political views and not others. Multinational corporations are working arm in arm with self-described Marxist revolutionaries and neither party seems to find that at all strange.
All that would be bad enough on its own, but these people are apparently in leagues with the Democrats, who any Bernie supporter will tell you, aren’t exactly known for their fairness in the election department. All this has made me question a lot of things I heretofore took as gospel, and unfortunately whether Jen Rubin likes it or not, the integrity of elections is one of those things.
Charges that the vote has been stolen or manipulated are not new and do not emanate exclusively from Republicans (far from it.) Hillary Clinton first accused Trump of “not accepting the election results” in 2016 with no evidence that was even a possible option on the table at the time. Then when SHE lost instead, she refused to publicly concede, continues to allow herself to be referred to as the rightful president still to this day, and recently told Biden not to concede under any circumstances. Her supporters certainly didn’t accept the results of the 2016 election, spinning fantastical tales about faithless electors and invoking the 25th amendment. It’s time for some game theory!!! Straightforward from here!!!
But it goes back farther still. John Kerry didn’t concede on election night in 2004, and a lot of people think he should have waited longer because of voting irregularities — including a partisan, pro-Bush company providing vote-counting machines (sound familiar?). Al Gore, of course, conceded and then took it back — for good reason.
Sometimes, like in the Washington State gubernatorial election of 2004, Gregoire vs. Rossi, the results actually do end up going the other way upon further inspection, and the person who seems to be losing actually ends up winning in the end. It is not an insane notion that a very close election might have contained some illegal votes that must be discounted, legal votes that need to be reinstated, or that the result could be overturned after a recount.
Seriously, not conceding the election when it’s not decided, is among the least worrying erosion of norms I’ve seen lately. Waiting to know who the duly elected president is by counting legal votes rather than relying on media projections (in a time in which polling has been found to be basically useless) just makes sense to me given the pool full of rancid spaghetti in which we’re swimming these days. It really doesn’t bother me that ANYONE regardless of party would hesitate to concede an election if they’re not sure they even lost. I would much rather wait a few days or even weeks rather than rush to the wrong conclusion.
But because it’s Donald Trump, I’m supposed to forget all this?? I’m supposed to forget that the Democrats have a storied history of questioning elections? You want me to get enraged that a Republican has now attempted to use legal remedies to ensure a fair election too? (Some say Romney should have done exactly this in 2012 because there was some evidence of voter fraud — but he didn’t. And in exchange for that magnanimous gesture, what did he get? Absolutely nothing, of course.) Because it’s Donald Trump, “uniquely awful”, you want me to join in the mass outcry that this is in some way unprecedented behavior when I remember how people acted in 2016, in 2004 and 2000 — basically every time a Democrat lost a close election the past 20 years?
Personally, I very much would have preferred the “win at all costs” genie to stay in the bottle. That’s what I’ve been droning on and on about so boringly this last year, is that it is a pretty bad idea to let that genie out of the bottle for the exact reasons Will mentions — because we can’t have a system if everyone is always accusing the other guy of cheating all the time and if the branches of government are like, you know, suing one another. But it was the Democrats who let that genie out. Then they took that bottle and stuffed a Molotov cocktail into it, threw it into the face of both the law and the multicultural spirit of America itself, and then tried to convince me that Molotov cocktail was actually free speech.
At the point I’m at now, grossly disillusioned with a set of people I had heretofore held in extremely high regard (the liberal movement and the media, in case you haven’t been paying attention), when Trump tells me something like “there’s voter fraud”, well, some of the “crazy” stuff he’s said, when I investigated it, actually proved to be true. Over the past five years others — including some who purported to be the arbiters of truth — have blatantly lied to me about things Trump did and said. And I don’t seem able to forget that the Democrats themselves sought legal remedies for elections that didn’t come out the way they wanted them to.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. But fool me thrice? Fugetaboutit. A Presidential candidate crying fraud in an election they appear to have lost is nothing new. Turning whine into sour grapes is nothing new. This time it’s just the dude you don’t like doing it instead of the dude you do. I would have to be blinded by spaghetti not to see that.
Few would argue against the fact that some weird ass shit went down in a couple of these states. I agree voter fraud is not super likely due to the logistics of it, but y’all made your beds with the “let’s question the legitimacy of elections” gambit, Dems. Turnabout is fair play. All things considered, looking past the cherry branch at the whole tree and the forest beyond, I’m inclined to at least entertain the possibility that hijinks have ensued. I gave the benefit of the doubt to Gore, Kerry, and Gregoire with far less reason to believe people were out to get them than Trump has.
It may be, and in fact likely IS the case that Donald Trump is wrong and there isn’t sneaky pool being played, but hey, surely with such a serious accusation, we need to have a full investigation to assure the American people that nothing is going on. After all, if it may have happened to John Kerry and Al Gore, maybe even to Mitt Romney, it certainly could have happened to Donald Trump, a guy who is despised by massive numbers of people, some of whom are in positions of incredible power.
We need an investigation just like we needed to investigate the Russia accusations and the Ukraine accusations, and just like we need to investigate whatever Hunter Biden was doing with Burisma and whether or not Joe Biden got a prosecutor who was investigating it, fired (but we probably won’t.) Serious charges should be investigated, it’s just how the legal system works, when it’s working, if it’s working. If serious charges are not being investigated because the person making the charges is unpopular in certain circles, then I have to wonder what the repercussions are for our system moving forward.
People telling me to ignore hinky things their political allies are doing and forget the hinky things their political allies actually did, while charging full steam ahead, consequences be damned, against their political enemies, does very little to assure me that there really is nothing to see here. If there’s nothing to see, then you shouldn’t care if I see it, amirite?
Thus I’m willing to let this play out, even if it ends up with me taking a handful of steaming linguine to the face.
Because faith in the system is a delicate thing, like a Faberge egg. Once it’s broken, it’s not so easy to repair. Broken faith takes a long time and a lot of tedious work to restore.
Democrats, you broke it, you bought it.
I spent some time criticizing Abrams in my post, but I’m not sure any race but the presidency is really comparable to the presidency here. I guess it’s just as bad when a candidate for senator or governor refuses to concede, but we can afford to let them be sour if that’s what they want to do. They usually end up paying a price for it in future electability. (McDaniel lost again, Rossi lost again, Abrams knows better than to run again…)
I think 2004 is the most instructive example because in my view the two situations are in similarity and stark contrast. (As opposed to 2000, where the results were so close that it isn’t quite comparable… the outcome was genuinely ambiguous as with the Rossi-Gregoire race that was decided by less than 200 votes out of 3 million cast).
Kerry didn’t concede the night on, which I was and am fine with. I still don’t completely care that Trump still hasn’t conceded. The lack of intelligent briefings and cooperation in what remains a likely (at least) transfer of power is more problematic. The fact that he will not concede at all (and stay conceded) is a problem. Anyway, at least a couple days out I was saying that Trump was actually right not to concede. I think a day or two past when networks started calling it (and they were really slow and cautious about doing so) he should have, but if that were the only issue that would be a relatively small one.
Some people argued for some time after 2004 that the election was stolen by hijacked machines. Including some moderately big names like RFK Jr and Keith Olbermann. But they aren’t John Kerry. Kerry did, at some point, make some comments that were on the ambiguous side, but it was more stray voltage than lightning strike. Worthy of criticism, but not damaging in the same sense. I’m less concerned about some comment Trump makes seven years from now. They also had a Theory of the Crime, so to speak. They made claims that could be evaluated about Diebold machine. A few hangers-on aside, for the most part it was resolved when these claims were investigated and came up short. Trump has some specific theories, but is clearly trying to carpetbomb the consciousness with the sheer number of them that it’s hard to keep shooting them down. But none have stuck for a reason. (None are expected to, really.)
The same applies to similar attempts to suggest that machines threw the election in 2016. And once again, people ran the numbers and found that it didn’t really hold up. Hillary Clinton’s behavior since the election on the whole has been quite poor and quite worthy of condemnation, but even then substantively different from what Trump is doing now in multiple ways. Not least of which because she isn’t the president and can’t interfere with the transition. But she didn’t go to court with spurious claims, try to upend the election outcome, and avoided claims of hacked vote tallies. I used to think this was a low bar, but Trump has managed to make that look better.
Despite my belief that the lawsuits are show, I do agree with you that we should let it play out legally. Let the lawsuits do their thing and then fizzle out. Politically, though? This election was close but the outcome is clear. As was the case in 2016. Gore fought every legal battle that he could and then conceded and disappeared (for a while) to let things move forward. Kerry evaluated what legal claims he did have and when he determined that there were none valid, conceded and got back to work in the senate.
Will Trump? If I thought he would this would be a different conversation. (He might technically concede at some point, but as with a lot of things I do not expect it to stick.)Report
Please don’t downplay the degree of conspiracy thinking that happened after 2004. You’re right that it blew over within a couple months, but at the time there was no Twitter, no Facebook, and no media copying its stories from those services’ Trending page; the Internet of 2004 was still primarily college students posting on message boards.
This is not to suggest that Kerry had the same response as Trump, or that Trump’s response is in any way appropriate, but the discussion environment of 2004 is so utterly different from 2020 that saying “well we didn’t talk about it so much back then” is nearly meaningless.Report
To me it was both bigger and smaller than you say. As you say it died down but it was way more than message boards. dKos and Netroots Nation were both very big deals at the time and had big megaphones. They were pushing a lot of it (I should have, at minimum, mentioned them along with RFK Jr and Olbermann) and it could have become a much bigger problem.
In that sense, it was really quite big.
But that Kerry and the Democratic leadership didn’t participate is huge and played a much bigger role in its lack of oxygen than the internet media landscape, in my view.
And in that sense, it was smaller than this one is poised to be.
If this one does die down as that one did, I will be breathing a pretty big sigh of relief.Report
Agree agree.
– What the candidate does matters a lot. In this case we have a candidate pretty untethered to reality, or unprincipled. He is encouraging some really crappy behavior.
– This candidate is a President, and Presidents refusing to concede is much more dangerous than non-Presidents refusing to do so. Maybe we should amend constitution to limit Presidents to one term …
– There are always crazies. It mattes when one of them is in the White House.
– I think voting machines should be open-sourced and in the public domain. The risk is real, even if nothing has been proved yet. This risk is why paper ballots matter.
– The hand-count of paper ballots and comparison with the machine counts matter. If they substantially differ, we have a problem.
– Put up or shut up; so far Trump’s lawsuits are 1 win and 23 losses.Report
One of our memories is fallible. I’m fairly certain that DKos considered “The 2004 election was rigged/State X was stolen” to be a ban-worthy offense.
People pushed it, yes. And they got banned for it.Report
I remember there being a number of purges at DKos between the years of 2000 and 200…7? 8?
There was the 9/11 aftermath. There were periodic Israel/Palestine discussions that resulted in nukes. There was the MSOC thing. There was a period where 2004 skepticism was okay before it wasn’t okay. (I don’t remember there being a bunch of bans afterwards, but it wouldn’t shock me. They did that sort of thing often.)Report
Thanks for writing this Kristin.
There is almost an artform that the left practices. I call it the ‘unmentioned’. Thanks for pulling the rug back and pointing out that mound of dirt swept under it.Report
1) Joe Biden’s Electoral College spread looks like it will duplicate Donald Trump’s. If it wasn’t close for Trump (and I have lost count of the number of conservatives who claim it wasn’t) then its not close for Biden.
2) Joe Biden has also garnered more popular votes the Hillary Clinton did, and looks to have broken all the vote total records. Heck even Mr. Trump got more votes this time. Which means that more of the electorate can be motivated to vote. It also means Mr. Biden’s win isn’t close.
3) The accusations against Hunter Biden are not and never were a legal matter, in much the same way that Mr. Trump’s firm belief the election would be and then was “stolen” from him is not a legal matter. Neither “investigation” is even good solid political theatre – The Senate failed to find anything illegal in Hunter Biden’s conduct and Mr. Trump keeps loosing in court because (in both cases) there is no admissible evidence. That such poorly written theater is allowed to further sully our nation’s politics is a disgrace.
4) As it turns out there was much illegal activity surrounding Mr. Trump’s first presidential campaign. 17 people were indicted and most either pled guilty or were convicted. In addition, the U.S. Intelligence community (not exactly a hotbed of liberalism), The Mueller Report and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee ALL found that Russia interfered in our 2016 election in an attempt to get Mr. Trump elected. There is not an equivalent set of facts for Mr. Biden. That should tell you something.
5) A theory that fits your priors (even mine) isn’t fact. Just because you FEEL something deeply doesn’t make it true.Report
“and I have lost count of the number of conservatives who claim it wasn’t”
???Report
I’ll disagree with the last sentence of this post, but most of it I have no problem with.
Concession is mostly a matter of politesse. At age 74, Donald Trump is not suddenly going to start having manners. Who cares? The voters have spoken.Report
Concession is, as you say, pointless.
Hindering the transition is more serious. So is trying to persuade large numbest of people that the election was stolen.Report
Transition, as were finding out, is mostly a matter of courtesy. None of it is spelled out in statute. So, thanks Donald, for finding yet another hole in American governance.
Given the level of sycophancy in the Trump movement, and what we know of his personality, the election stealing thing should come as no surprise. The guy’s been bailed out in bankruptcy court several times, and by perhaps shady loans several more times. This really is his first true loss, and, predictably, he’s not taking it well.
What we’re really seeing is the fruits of decades of undermining the public’s faith in its own government, beginning with the efforts of St. Ronnie. It’s just being made manifest in the worst possible way at the worst possible time.Report
Not sure its pointless. What matters is what the President who doesn’t concede is willing to do about it and what others are willing to do too. Coups are real things that happen.
Telling Republican voters that their vote didn’t count may backfire though. They might just stay home.Report
Hey, speaking of the Deep State, it looks like there hasn’t been any draw down in Syria at all! LOL! TAKE THAT DRUMPF!
Report
That is actually concerning. I don’t like endless wars (especially ones NOT declared by Congress) and I disagree vehemently that the US needs to be the world’s policeman in every case. But as a fed who takes his job and his oath seriously I don’t like subverting the Administration this way either. It shows a lack of professional integrity. You can always manage up in authentic honest ways. And you can speak truth to power – even this narcissistic bully.Report
This is a combination of ‘the way the world works’ and another example of how Trump was just a historically bad President who didn’t know how to manage the office of the President.
I’m not a fan of the term ‘Deep State’ because it implies a sort of coordinated anti-state when the reality is that we have hundreds of mini-states that pursue objectives that have internal coherence to their mission and objectives.
It would be closer to the truth to say the US is almost ungovernable in the way we imagine governance working… but the sociology of Mass Democratic Institutions is not really an unknown phenomenon. It goes back to the least sexy thing I keep harping on with regards Politics… there’s no top-down change without a bottom-up army.Report
Agreed completely. Which is why running for President with the civil service as your enemy is never going to succeed no mater what your politics or policies are. And telling us we are committing waste, fraud and abuse because we are doing our best to juggle thousands of legal mandates is a non-starter.Report
I think Biden could solve that problem with ease. “If you are a soldier fighting in Syria, you’re not American!”Report
People are gonna completely ignore the part of this post that says “y’all spent four years telling us that conspiracy theories about Presidential elections are a healthy response to outcomes we don’t like and also there was Clear Incontrovertible Evidence of it, now you’re telling us that only nutballs think that way and investigating anything will only waste everybody’s time”. Instead they’re gonna focus on the part that says “and maybe there is something”.
Because the latter is the part that doesn’t make them look bad.Report
Or, we are going to say investigations by really professional people have yielded results that we can examine. You may not FEEL that the investigations got the end you wanted, but to pretend they don’t exist or didn’t reach conclusions is folly.Report
Most people didn’t actually read the Mueller Report. Or the bible. They just pick and choose passages to tell the story they want to tell.Report
These things are different:
1. Shady things happened during the campaign/.
2. The vote count is fraudulent.
Insisting that nonsensical claims of 2 are justified by factual claims of 1 (or even questionable claims of 1) makes no sense, especially after every suit alleging 2 has failed almost immediately.
Trump’s victories have been
* Getting poll watchers closer to the vote counting (6 feet instead of 20)
* Getting some rules for late-arriving ballots changed
Neither had anything to do with fraud. Interestingly, both are victories for Trump against his greatest enemy, common sense. We shouldn’t be further exposing poll workers to COVID, and we shouldn’t be rewarding the sabotage of the USPS.Report
and rising to the bait it’s Mike Schilling, focusing on the part that says “and maybe there is something” because it’s the part that doesn’t make him look bad.Report
Personally, I think that Donald Trump wasn’t born in America. Can he show us his birth certificate?Report
I feelz this way, too.Report
Lemme google… NYC.
Yeah, I’ve been arguing that that’s not “real” America for a while myself.Report
The lawsuits are frivolous, lack merit, and are brought by a bunch of sycophants and toadies without who fear the wrath of Trump. The toadies in the admin refuse to let the Biden transit team do what it needs to do.
Biden received over 5 million more votes than Trump. Recounts only change a few hundred votes. Biden’s margins in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Trump is now spending his days tweeting resentments, lies, and grievances while ignoring his responsibilities.
I will never understand why so many people think he is this great hill to die on or should be indulged. But I guess resentment is a hell of a drug. Even if Trump’s behavior is comical, lazy, and half-assed. It should not be indulged. He is trying to wreck havoc and destroy confidence in the democratic process.
I don’t really care if Trump supporters need time to grieve. I think there was a t-shirt with the sentiment. Didn’t it say “Trump Pence: Fuck Your Feelings?”Report
But the feelings of white people are very important! (To be fair, I would also make this critique of white liberals and lefties, but I’m an equal opportunity critic of white people cultures)Report
So, a bigot?Report
“bunch of sycophants and toadies”
The interesting thing is that Porter Wright is withdrawing from representation in PA (breaking) and Jones Day is perhaps wavering.
Under ordinary circumstances, this would be the beginning of a precipitous end to the legal challenges…
But the targeting of Law Firms with the intent of denying representation to clients by threating social and economic sanctions undermines whether Porter Wright is abandoning the lawsuits for being frivolous and unsubstantiated – which would end the debate – or whether they are doing it out of self-interest – which fuels the debate.
Bottom line… Kristin has a point… the only norms that exist are the ones you bind yourself by.Report
Both the reporting on this withdrawal – and several lawyers I know who know folks there – all say its because the employees don’t want the firm’s reputation sullied by the suits in question. I don’t think that falls into the external social pressure you were hinting at.Report
That’s a head scratcher to me… if I needed a definition of external social pressure, I’d use your description to describe it.Report
The ghost of Reagan-era Chip floats in to ask, isn’t social pressure to conform to norms of behavior the very essence of conservatism?Report
What a strange notion. No. I can see why Regan-era Chip ghosted away.Report
It is an interesting form of conservatism which forbids consumers from refusing to patronize a business they find repugnant.Report
(Was that the debate?)Report
Seriously, dude, why is it your depictions of conservatives never sound like human beings? You should consider this for a New Year’s resolution: if people’s motives seem impossible to understand, you’ll consider that you’re misunderstanding them.Report
My understanding of conservatism comes from Buckley and Reagan, Thatcher and Moynihan, and all the social conservatives who for decades at National Review lectured us about the little platoons and the beneficial effects of social censure.
I mean, imagine that we were talking about Screw Magazine and public boycotts of stores that sell it, and it will be a lot more familiar.Report
Chip, I guess we must be older than some of these people who call themselves conservatives now. Does no one remember Buckley, Meyer, Kirk, Tyrell, Reagan, Thatcher, Kilpatrick, Buchanan, Goldwater, ………….?
Relatedly, I recently picked up a print issue of the National Review. Except for the bylines and some topical references, it could have been the magazine I remember from the “70s and ’80s, though Rich “Starbursts” Lowry is no WFB.Report
I’d say that the essence of American conservatism is that there’s merit to the Anglo approach to the balance of individual rights and the common good. That balance includes a lot of things, including common law, religion, the vote, et cetera. In some cases, conservatives may believe that the balance requires laws to be passed or reformed, or individual actions to be the best recourse. The latter may include anything from religious charity to private policing to self-defense to protesting companies. None of those means are the essence of conservatism, though. Sometimes conservatives will protest companies and drive to those protests using cars with radiators, but radiators aren’t the essence of conservatism either.Report
Well, that certainly clears things up.Report
When we encounter issues like how best to regulate human affairs, isn’t the conservative impulse to invoke “subsidiarity”, of finding the least coercive and most local methods, and free association rather than a “top down” government imposition?
In this case, wouldn’t a consumer shunning of Trump’s legal firm fit that market based approach?
And wouldn’t a social censure of the law firm partners fit the conservative ideal of free association?Report
First of all, can we agree that social pressure to conform to norms of behavior isn’t “the very essence of conservatism”?
Secondly, you’re asking what’s the most conservative method of blocking someone from access to the rule of law. I don’t know how to answer that. The tabulation of election results is part of a functioning democratic society, and while the law should be fine-tuned whenever it’s found to be unfair, the idea of turning to the courts for rulings in these matters is entirely appropriate.Report
No one is blocking anyone’s access to the law, anymore than my neighbors are blocking me from buying pornography at the liquor store.
In both cases, social stigma is the least restrictive and least coercive method of enforcement of norms.Report
Seriously, dude, why is it your depictions of conservatives never sound like human beings?
It’s almost as bad as believing liberalism is a mental disorder!Report
This is an unfair, out-of-context version of what I said. Please delete it.Report
OK, no retraction. Then explain what I really said and its context. The comment was so important to you that you bring it up every six months or so, so I’m sure you remember it in detail.Report
I agree that Stillwater’s comment was VERY inappropriate.Report
Like after 9/11, when conservatives insisted that anyone who defended an accused terrorist was a traitor?Report
“Anti-anti-terrorists”Report
And how do you figure that employees of a firm asking the frim to do or not do something is EXTERNAL?Report
1. There is no guarantee to a lawyer in a civil lawsuit.
2. Lawyers are not supposed to bring frivolous or meritless lawsuits. I am generally believe that the definition of meritless should be narrow but so far the lawsuits seem meritless. We have multiple instances where lawyers for Trump have needed to walk back allegations of fraud when questioned by judge. All these lawsuits are being dismissed to the best of my knowledge pretty quickly.
3. From what I’ve read, there was always a lot of internal division at these firms on whether to represent Trump or not. I get the broad point of representing unpopular clients but doing so in a way that represents a thwarting or attempted thwarting of democracy is a bridge too far.Report
“The lawsuits are frivolous, lack merit, and are brought by a bunch of sycophants and toadies”
In response to both you and Philip.
To connect the dots more explicitly… if you undermine all Legal representation as sycophantic and toadish and threaten them with economic and cultural sanctions, then when they withdraw their support it doesn’t have the desired effect of illustrating that the suits are frivolous and without merit. Instead, it heightens the fact that some people/teams may not be ‘entitled’ to legal representation… rather than the system working through ordinary channels.
Don’t do that.Report
Lawyers, even good ones, will always be available for those willing to pay. (The knock on Trump as a client was that he wouldn’t listen and didn’t pay, which explained why many good firms did not want his business, and why many who took it regretted it.) And often unpopular clients who can’t pay much will get good lawyers. Which is good. Paul Porter, one of the founders of what was then Arnold, Fortas & Porter, was braced at a cocktail party by some D.C. poobah in the 1950’s who asked him: “Still representing commies and faggots?” Porter suavely replied: “Yes, we are. Would you like to stop by the office tomorrow and discuss your problem in more detail?”
But no lawyer is required to embarrass himself, or herself, by pushing dubious claims, whether on behalf of Donald Trump or Mother Theresa. And no law, ethical rule, or social norm immunizes lawyers who do so.Report
Excatly… “Still representing commies and faggots?” undermined by “sycophants and toadies”
Principled enough for the former, but concerned about the latter.
I’m quite vigorously agreeing with you.
My point is that you’ve (the collective You in Kristin’s post) undermined the win… and set us up for another round of defections.Report
Let me get this straight. You’re “vigorously agreeing” that no lawyer is required to embarrass himself, or herself, by pushing dubious claims, whether on behalf of Donald Trump or Mother Theresa. And no law, ethical rule, or social norm immunizes lawyers who do so?Report
I’m vigorously agreeing that no lawyer is required to pursue frivolous lawsuits which is the thing that would be embarrassing. Ethical lawyers will pursue valid lawsuits for embarrassing clients.Report
and our point is these are not valid lawsuits, no matter who the client is.Report
And unethical lawyers will pursue invalid lawsuits to appease clients they want to keep.
They should be called out for it.Report
Example: Steven Biss, the lawyer representing Devin Nunes in his suits against people for being mean to him. He’s a disgraceReport
I didn’t. But thanks for the face slap.
I did point out that the firm’s own staff agitated for the withdrawl. And to be clear – no one on the left is saying Trump shouldn’t be represented. They are saying his case is meritless and designed to 1) graft his followers to line his coffers; 2) distract from his loss and 3) sow enough doubt about the election outcome that his followers (and their politicians) don’t have to play along with a Biden Administration in actually governing. That latter is actually the most pernicious reason to object to the lawsuits, but as noted it can’t stop them from being brought.
As numerous courts are showing however, lacking evidence and (in at least one case) standing ARE reasons to not bring them.Report
I specifically included “(the collective You in Kristin’s post)” for the avoidance of doubt. So any offence you are taking is yours alone.Report
It would seem you narrowed that collective we down a bit.Report
They are also saying that “they are making a list of people supporting Trump and are going to see vengeance. I believe it was called “the Lincoln project”. So that side has that going for it too.Report
“The Lincoln Project” are Republicans.Report
Don’t do that.
One of the weird things about the post-factual world we now live in is that serving the truth means refraining from expressing it.Report
I doubt they’re dropping due to fears of social opprobrium. From what I’ve read (which admittedly isn’t everything) there really isn’t merit to these. They all look like losses at motion to dismiss, and hey plenty of cases that are filed are. As I’m sure the other attorneys here will agree, ‘frivolous’ is a very high bar.
But if you keep showing up without evidence, without a claim under the law for which relief can be granted well…. you will eventually start pushing the line to sanctions and long term damage to professional credibility. That will haunt you and no attorney owes that to a client.Report
Witness the exchange – widely reported – between a judge in Pennsylvania and a lawyer for the Trump Campaign. Said judge asked flat out of Republican observers were in the room. Said lawyer said there were a “non-zero” number of people in the room. Said judge then rephrased and asked said lawyer if, as a lawyer at bar in that court, said lawyer was asserting there were no republican observers in the room. Said lawyer then responded (having apparently remembered that being at bar is something that matters) That observers were in the room.
That it takes a judge to force professional integrity in a hearing on the record is a major reason why this farce needs to end.Report
I would assume so… but there’s context here isn’t there? The context is the post about defecting from norms, there’s context about the fact that any support for Trump is being tracked, there’s context that the Lincoln Project specifically targeting PorterWright and JonesDay and context in this thread that PorterWright is no longer the paragon of “commie faggot” defenders, but toadies and sycophants.
I guess that’s what’s doubly interesting to me… I’m saying that PorterWright pulling out should be a really solid signal to build consensus around… if we hadn’t undermined our confidence that they are pulling out for principled reasons rather than being craven toadies cowed by outside pressure – that they rightfully ought to bow to.
I’m staying in context here, not making a Law School 101 point, no?Report
It’s a data point that’s for sure, and maybe I’m just being overly defensive of my profession.
On the larger issue I see the point. I mentioned ‘roughing the ref’ in the comments to Will’s post, and said fixing our situation ‘requires putting down certain weapons and resisting the urge to pick them back up again when circumstances change.’
Of course I think posts like this one become impossible to take seriously when they turn the corner into a justification for righteous use of the same burn-it-all-down, bad faith tactics they criticize. The same piece could have been written from the perspective of extremist intersectionality to justify defection. It isn’t a solution, it’s flameout.
I should probably leave it at that since last time I tried to gently comment in this fashion I was accused of violating the OT rules and (I think) sexism. Better to take my thoughts to one of the more solutions oriented posts.Report
Cosign.Report
It’s quite possible that they’ve realized that their client is someone who never pays his bills.Report
Heh… I’m not sure what the ethical requirements are regarding payment mid-suit… but assuming you could walk at any time for services in arears that would strike me as a fine point to make.Report
The Lincoln Project are grifters and self-promoters — insult the all you like, and I’ll cheer you on.
But assuming the withdrawal is due to them rather than to being unwilling to keep filing meritless lawsuits is unwarranted.
Also, this kind of BS can hurt a firm’s reputation as well as lead to legal sanctions, so it’s self-interest either way.Report
The Lincoln Project are grifters and self-promoters
Yes, but no more or less than any other campaign operatives or politicians.Report
comment in mod.Report
This is yet another vivid illustration of how the conservative faction in America has become a revolutionary faction, battling against not any policy or idea or theory of government, but against the American government itself, seeing it as illegitimate.
Their embrace of the conspiratorial term “Deep State” is a good example. What this refers to is simply the civil service bureaucracy, but to them, this is their enemy and wholly illegitimate.
What is astounding is that even when they themselves control the Presidency and the Senate, they still view the government with fear and suspicion, and view the organs of the state as enemy forces.
Not even entities with defects to be cured, but enemy forces working with malign and illegitimate aims.Report
I’m shocked by these revelations by which I mean I am not shocked at all: https://twitter.com/Bill_Maxwell_/status/1327273831937892352?s=20Report
I don’t see a problem with recounting and triple counting and whatever else it takes to get the full count. What I suspect will happen though is something like climate change, where no evidence that is ever marshaled can convince a certain group since the real aim is to keep the debate going indefinitely and gum up the works, rather than arrive at the truth. See also: the “fake” pandemic.Report
Kristin, I don’t know if you’ve seen this:
Report
But the Pee Tape was real, Jaybird!Report
If you look at the last 4 years, you see Putin’s fingerprints all over this presidency and you just know that Putin wants to drive a wedge between the US and China!
The most honorable Joe Biden will bring us back to China’s sweet embrace and we can say goodbye to Putin’s harmful meddling! Three cheers for Joe Biden! Three cheers for Kamala Harris! Three cheers for Xi Jinping!Report
I haven’t read any of the comments yet–mostly because I wanted to say this before I let myself be influenced by them. I do agree with your chiding those of us who have opposed Trump for looking at things ahistorically. And I confess that I, for one, am guilty of that. Yes, Trump came from somewhere, not out of nothing. I’ve also been pretty firm in my conviction that removing Trump legally was one of my highest priorities.
At the same time–and please forgive me because I’m being personal here and “personal” is code for “anecdote” and “touchy-feely, but not real argument,” but I feel I must say this–I never questioned the legitimacy of Bush’s victory and I never bought in to the notion that 2004 was rigged. I never questioned that Trump legitimately won in 2016. I may grumble (and in my opinion, with good reason) about the voter repression efforts that helped make that victory (and 2004 and 2000) possible, but I accept that those efforts were probably mostly legal or quasi-legal. And I am, and have been since it became a “meme,” hostile to the “it’s the Russians!” argument (I’m not a big fan of red scares). I also believe fraud can theoretically exist in a way that Mark from New Jersey didn’t address.
All that said, I do think Trump is different, and his way of challenging the election is very different from what has come before, at least in recent history. In my opinion, it’s dangerous in a way that prior challenges haven’t been. He is a wolf, though I admit that I’ve cried wolf before (abut W. Bush, even though I didn’t question the legitimacy of his election). But this time, I do believe that he and those who support him are in the wrong. And not in the “well, they disagree and I think they’re mistaken” sense of wrong. But wrong in the sense that we–the country–is in a real danger here. It was, of course, in real danger before Trump, and you and I might agree on some of the reasons even as we disagree about others of them. But I do see this as the house being on fire, and the fire needs to be put out before we can resume either business as usual or (one would hope) a better and more just (as in “fair,” not as in “retribution”) reckoning than before.
I know this probably sounds as a criticism. But I’d like to be clear that your post really made me think about the issues at hand. Thanks for writing it!Report
Is ED Kain still running this site? I haven’t been around for ages, and it’s shocking to see the drop in quality of the front pagers here. What is this site even for anymore? To promote conspiracy theories?
And the quality of the writing has fallen off a cliff as well. At least in the old days, the front pagers are actually good writers, even if I don’t always agree with what they’re saying.Report
Hey, were you back here in the days when a commenter by the name of M.A. commented here? Man, those were some crazy days, huh?Report
I would say the conspiracy theory is that Biden won.
Only three of 17 bellwethers said he did. In aggregate, those 17 bellweathers have a 90.58% success rate, with 231 correct calls out of 255, across 15 election cycles (ignoring 1960 because it was rigged).
What is the expected number of bellwethers to miss at that rate?
18.6% of the time, it’s a perfect call – all counties correct.
32.9% of the time, one county should miss.
27.3% of the time, two counties should miss
14.2% of the time, four counties should miss
5.1% of the time, five counties should miss
1.4% of the time, six counties should miss
0.29% of the time, seven counties should miss
0.047% of the time, eight counties should miss
0.0057% of the time, nine should miss
0.000066% of the time, ten should miss
11 or more didn’t miss in a billion elections (billion with a B), which would be almost as old as the Earth itself.
This time, 14 bellwethers missed. Either this was the one election that shouldn’t happen during the entire age of the universe, or all those hundreds of red flags indicated election fraud are really indicating fraud.
Happily, it only took my Ryzen 5 3600 a few minutes to run a billion simulated elections to give me those numbers. 🙂Report
This assumes that the bellwethers each have an independent 90.58% chance of calling the election, which I don’t think is a valid assumption. This also doesn’t account for the partial realignment, with the WWC going for Trump and affluent urban voters going more heavily Democratic (or at least for Biden). Under a realignment, the predictive power of the bellwethers declines.Report
The bellwethers are bellwhethers because for the past 60 years they been the most representative possible subsample of America as a whole. What happens in America happens in those, too.
For this result (only three right) to occur even 25% of the time, the odds of each bellwhether (which are scatter all across the nation) have to drop from 90% to 20%, in just four years, with no real shift in the voters. That’s about as infinitely unlikely than the previous result.
We’re talking unlikelihood so big that I had to change my approach to the problem because an Intel double-precision number doesn’t have a big enough exponent. It only goes to 2^1024, and I needed it to go over 2^6000.
And that’s just one of a staggering number of statistical analysis indicating massive, overwhelming election rigging, such as impossible turnouts, impossible ballot ratios, such as in Georgia where 95,000 ballots without any downvotes on them went 94,993 for Biden, 7 for Trump, or another apparent batch that was 20,000 Biden and -1000 Trump. How do you get negative votes?Report
Don’t worry, George. I’ve been assured by a conservative I know, George Turner, you might know him, I’ve been assured this massive fraud will be discovered in the recounts, and why was why the Democrats were against the recount.
Luckily, the Democrats attempts to block the recounts by *check notes* doing nothing to stop the recounts, have failed totally. So there will be recounts everywhere, even in Georgia, where it’s hard to get them, but the state is close enough to trigger automatic one.
And now you’re talking about bellwethers and nonsense like that, which makes me think you _don’t_ the recounts will help your position, now that they’re happening?Report
I like how you just wanders in with frothy-right conspiracy theories and expects anyone to understand it. So I had to google to find this nonsense:
https://boards.4channel.org/sci/thread/12318560/what-could-possibly-have-caused-this
*sigh*
I suppose I better explain ‘bellwethers’ to people, and why the entire concept is bogus.
So, let me introduce a specific sort of fraud. It’s very simple. You get 1024 people, and give them a stock tip. Half one way, half the other. The ones you guessed wrong, you drop. Now you have 512 people. And you keep doing it.
After 10 rounds of this, you have 1 person who just saw you guess ten stocks in a row correctly and in their mind, you know the damn future.
Guess how many voting counties there are in the US? 3243.
And how many counties guessed the results of the last ten elections before _this_ one? 6 of them.
It’s about double what pure chance would tell us juts from coin flip, which would be ‘3’. But…presidential election are not decided by coin flip. It’s actually weird it’s not higher then that, in my mind.
So there is nothing special about any of these counties…they are merely the lottery winners. The only thing I suspect is ‘interesting’ about these counties is that are fairly equally urban and rural, because those are almost the only counties that can _change_ politically, from year to year. They are ‘purple counties’, in that you don’t know how they’re going to vote in advance. But they, unlike probably a thousand other of the purple counties, rolled the dice better.
That’s how most ‘bellwethers’ work. They are just statistical anomalies, and don’t actually mean anything. It’s possible to _find_ smaller samples that reflect things, but generally we don’t do that geographically, we do it via _polling_.
As is pointed out on that very page, one of the most accurate counties in history is Valencia New Mexico, which has matched the outcome in every single election since 1956 until this year…and is 50% Hispanic and 1% Black. It is not some sort of mystical ‘typical American’ county.
Oh, also, you decided to throw away 1960 because it was ‘rigged’…but the problem is that doesn’t work unless you’re asserting it was rigged _specifically in the counties that were correct_. The actual ‘bellwethers counties’ were split, which means…_either_ of the election outcomes would be wrongly picked by half of the supposed bellwethers! Either Kennedy or Nixon was American’s choice, pick one…or possibly your assertation is that Democrats were cheating in North Carolina and Wisconsin!
—
And your math is horribly wrong on top of that. So wrong I honestly have no idea what you’re trying to do.
You have somehow asserted that 1.4% of the time, six counties should miss.
Six counties _did_ miss, back in 1968. Excluding this election, and the one you have magically decided doesn’t count, that’s 6.7% of the time.
You said there’s a 14.2% chance 4 counties missing…again, a thing that happened once, 6.7% of the time.
You somehow managed to skip list three, but we can add up the other percentages, which…add to about 100%, so…no change that 3 counties match? It actually happened 20% of the time.
Missing two counties happened once, so, again, happened 6.7 of the time.
I don’t even know what you’re doing with your math.Report
Starting with the baseline probability that some county might have called the election correctly the last x times through chance alone is a really good place to start with debunking this crap. You’ll need to do some kind of correction for multiple comparisons.
Then understanding that in the real world the counties votes aren’t statistically independent helps too.Report
The bellwether counties aren’t random guesses, or they’d miss about half the elections. Everybody would miss about half. An election is not like the NCAA tournament, because the outcome is determined by how the people in the counties are voting.
Counties that are strongly Republican will miss all the elections where a Democrats wins, and counties that are strongly Democrat will miss all the elections where Republicans win. Thus, of those 3243 counties, the vast majority are horrible at picking elections, unable to beat 50%.
But in between those are counties that are very evenly spit, mirroring the country as a whole. Each of them has turned out to be a very representative polling sample of the nation, and each has a county-sized sample. Not 1,000 people as in most polls, but 20,000 or 30,000 people.
So it’s like a network built over a dozen giant, carefully-crafted focus-groups and had them all actually vote. That should be the best election predictor possible. The odds that all those focus groups would be wrong are, essentially, none, because they are just a very representative subset of the population that is making the decision about who actually wins.
And I added 1960 to see how it changed things. It dropped each county’s odds from 90.58% accuracy to 88% accuracy. I then ran 10 billion elections, which would be older than the universe itself, and there was still no case where 5 bellwethers were wrong.
The outcome simply isn’t possible. It’s what you might term a statistical tell. Natural outcomes don’t have the same signature as rigged outcomes, because the fake votes cause a major deviation from natural patterns, whether spatially, temporally, demographically, or in turnout, cross-over patterns, down-ticket patterns, male-female vote ratios, precinct-turnout rates, and all kinds of other natural statistical relationships that get violated. As you compare the statistical patterns of natural elections to rigged ones, huge anomalies pop out. You might see something where people who voted early in the day aren’t remotely similar to the people voting right before polls close (or days after!), and go back and look to see that the pattern doesn’t remotely match that pattern seen in ten previous elections. There are all kinds of statistical features that are indicating that this was a rigged election. Bellwethers are just one of them that I happened to do myself.
Yesterday I was completing a spreadsheet of the vote totals in the 50 largest metropolitan areas in 2012, 2016, and 2020. All kinds of glaring anomalies are popping out. Heck, Virginia 2016 looks highly suspicious.Report
you are not accounting for correlation between these. So you can’t just multiply them together as if they are independent predictors. this is shoddy statistical theater.Report
There’s a difference between saying ‘Foreign countries meddled illegal in the election and the campaign seems to coordinate with them’, vs ‘There is something wrong with the vote counts’.
Even if all the claims against Trump in 2016 were correct, those were not claims he had not _won_. Everyone acknowledged that Trump had won the election, and thus would be the next president!
People were just suggesting that various laws had been broken during that and needed to be investigated…which they _had_. Now, those specific crimes didn’t implicate the president, but even if they had, he would still be president. (Unless impeached and removed by Congress.) No one was arguing he hadn’t won the election, they were arguing that criminality was involved and there should be legal repercussions for that. Not _electrorial_ repercussions.
What Trump is doing is casting doubt on the actual outcome of the election, as in, who will become president next January. Which candidates don’t do.
There have been plenty of voting conspiracy theories over the years, and not a single one echo by the _candidate_ or the political party. (To the vast annoyance of people like me who would have liked people to look at the theories, not because I think they were true, I don’t. But to realize they _could_ be true and we’d have no idea and so we needed to stop using moronically insecure machine.)
And, no, waiting for recounts isn’t the same thing. If a recount of a close race could change things, yes, don’t concede yet. But…it’s very clear no possible recount can could changed things, and most people accept that, and the ones that don’t, like George Turner here, say the recounts will change things when MASSIVE FRAUD will be discovered. Not…normal recount stuff like ‘a couple of these votes were miscounted’, but a massive conspiracy.
The norms say a candidate concedes at this point…or, rather, last Saturday. Maybe Sunday, or evne Monday, that’d be fine. And, honestly, the ‘hasn’t conceded yet’ isn’t really the problem. It will become once the recounts are _over_, but it’s not the problem now. But once the recounts have finished and have resulted in…well, they’re going to result in the total for Biden going _up_, because Biden voters voted by mis-readable mail, while Trump voters voted in person and had their votes counted perfectly.
So when the recounts fail to help Trump, he will continue to conspiracy monger. A lot of which are involving lawsuits that literally…can’t do anything, and are only for PR purposes.
He’s suing in at least two states to demand less than 1000 ballots total aren’t counted. Amounts that will have absolutely no bearing on who won the election. He’s doing this not to alter anything, but simply so he can claim he’s suing and there is MASSIVE VOTE FRAUD.
Note: None of these lawsuits involve fraud of any sort, they involve changed deadlines and unreable postmarks and stuff. This are legitimate votes cast by legitimate voters, the only question is ‘Are they allowed within the rules?’, a technical issue, and…again, it’s utterly pointless, as none of them will change anything.
In fact, there are, legally, right now, no challenges that could change the results of a _single_ state. Not a single one. Or any allegations of fraud! The lawsuits are…literally nothing, all the ones but ‘obscure ballot rules’ were basically immediately thrown out because they were random allegations about things that _might_ be things.
And yet he’s repeatedly saying how he’s going to prove this is fraud.Report
Here are 234 pages of allegations, including people who said their dead relative voted (PDF).
The media is gaslighting the American public when they keep saying “There are no allegations of fraud.” There are lots.
Also, see my above math on the statistical near impossibility of Biden being the actual winner. The Democrats rigged the vote in some key states, but they forget to rig the vote in the bellwether counties.
The problem for Democrats is that people like me, and the 70 million like me, aren’t going away. We’re going to be extremely vocal, forever. Victims are like that. That’s one reason normal, non-criminal people don’t run around robbing people blind.Report
Firstly, that isn’t what gaslighting is, second, I am not reading 234 pages, but I did read 40, and there not only were no allegations of dead people voting, there were actually no allegations of _actual criminal activity_.
It’s random complaints about positioning, people repeating _rumors_ they heard, people assering ‘hostility’, and people saying…very nonsensical things who clearly didn’t understand what was going on.
I stopped on page 39, when the actual low-quality became clear. That’s…random guy who showed up, not a observer, who couldn’t get in. And he signed an affidavite to that, and it somehow became ‘evidence’ of…something. Probably that the poll workers were doing and not letting random people wander around.Report
They’re collecting affidavits, not grading them.
The woman who’s dead son voted is towards the end. I’ve looked up lots of dead people who voted in Michigan, by their year of birth and Zip Code, and they indeed voted. I’ve even seen their death records.
But that’s just one kind of fraud. This time they used pretty much all known forms of election fraud, such as voting under women’s maiden names, voting for people who’d moved away (America’s national champion wrestler found out he voted in Arizona, and he doesn’t live there anymore and didn’t receive a ballot). A reporter there sent in eight ballots under eight names and the signature machines let all but one go right through. Pennsylvania is likewise not checking signatures, intentionally, or their mail-in-rejection rate would’ve shot up instead of plummeting to almost nothing.
Votes in Michigan were being moved from Trump to Biden using a simple algorithm based on the Republican/Democrat ratio of straight ticket voting (STVR), which would range from 0 (no Republicans) to 1 (all Democrats), as told by the straight ticket votes.
If (STVR > 0.2) then ‘district is not more than 80% Democrat – heavily Democratic
‘precincts are untouched
shift = Trump_total * (0.15 * (STRV – 0.2)) ‘start stealing votes at the 20% STVR
‘range, and steal up to 15% of votes in direct proportion to the STVR ratio.
Trump_total = Trump_total – shift
Biden_total = Biden_total + shift
endif
This left a glaring statistical foot print, which MIT researchers uncovered, and which cannot be explained in any other way.
And they sometimes just punched in made-up numbers, which is why Biden’s votes counts fail Benford’s law of first digits, unlike all the other candidates. You can’t even say “Benford’s Law” on Twitter without risking an account suspension. As they say, you know you’re over the target when the firing gets intense.
And there’s the swing over time in the ratio of Biden to Trump votes in mail-in-ballots. That ratio should remain fixed, or swing every so slightly towards Republicans due to their more rural locations and longer mailing delays. And indeed, those ratios are rock solid in states like Florida. But in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Minnesota, they are dramatically different. Since that ratio is like an isotope signature, and the Postal Service doesn’t have gaseous diffusion equipment, it means that the swings in the ratio were almost certainly due to fraud.
And there’s the percentage of ballots with no down-ticket votes. Anomalies in that rate are a red flag for election fraud, and three Pennsylvania counties stick out like a sore thumb in my plots. And there are wild anomalies in turn-out rates, with some places apparently exceeding 200%. And anomalies compared to other, similar demographics in similar cities. In explaining why blacks in city A where shattering turnout records, with Biden getting 178% of Obama’s turnout, you also have to ask why this wasn’t happening in any similar cities that finished their voting quickly and cleanly. Why did it only happen in the cities known for rampant voter fraud, which were still counting votes two weeks later?
An author asked professional fraud investigators their opinion of the case.
Their professional opinions were clear.
The answer was that none of them has ever even seen a case with this many red flags before. Usually they go on one or two red flags, sometimes three. This election has dozens and dozens. And again, they said that when a case starts out with flags like this, it is ALWAYS fraud. They knew of no exceptions.Report
“Wow, it sure is mysterious that a conspiracy-mind political party that started running around demanding people provide them with red flags sure had people provide a bunch of red flags! This is exactly the same as investigators objectively coming across independent people saying these things.”Report
Nobody demanded any red flags. We were just looking at the obvious fraud, and seeing it everywhere, each person noting dozens and dozens of indicators. Finally someone just asked if the sheer number of indicia of fraud is a direct sign of fraud, in and of itself.
The answer, from fraud investigators, was a resounding “Yes!”Report
BTW, while I think we all know how ‘I looked up their death records is’ (Hint: Different people can have multiple names and blindly looking up name si moronic.), it’s worth pointing out that a lot of George’s version of fraud is ‘Not enough mail-in ballots are being rejected’.
He’s just sorta _hypothesizing_ there’s a bunch of fraud, _and_ that that fraud is part of a conspiracy that is being done by the Democrats, _and_ the lack of rejection is part of the conspiracy.
Here’s a fun fact in Pennsylvania: It has no required voter ID at the polls, after the first time voting. None. People can show up, and if they know the name, and where that person votes, they can vote.
So explain to me, _exactly_, why Pennsylvania not doing a good job of checking signatures is a problem, when whoever cast that ballot literally could have walked in and voted in person, without having _any_ confirmation of who they were?
Because here is the actual truth: The only fraud that happens with mail-in ballots is a staggering minute amount of people who have access to someone’s mail and take their ballot and vote for them. That’s it. And that’s an incredibly small amount of people.
—
In fact, that’s how _all_ the complaints are. They _start with_ the presumption there was some massive fraud operation, and thus any difficulties or oddities in a giant process is evidence of that, to the point of someone placing a ballot in what _might_ be the wrong place is part of it. Or ‘The room seemed anti-Trump’.
It’s literally ‘begging the question’, in the real meaning of that.
You know what will still notably _don’t_ have. Any _actual_ fraud. We’ve got:
1) Republicans misunderstanding how statistics work.
2) Republicans alleging things that could _cover up_ fraud
3) One or two instances of what sound like normal ‘voting for someone else’ mail-in fraud (Which…we have no idea what their political positions are.) aa the levels we normally have. Which Republicans seem to think implicates Democrats, somehow?
4) And then misc stuff, like Republicans asserting that delays THEY THEMSELVES CAUSED in Pennsylvania are evidence of fraud. Hey, George, if Republicans wanted those results faster, perhaps you should have let them _start counting_ earlier?
But this allegation of ‘massive fraud’ require _hundreds of thousands_ of voting alterations. And that is something we not only haven’t see, but don’t have any real allegations of how it could happen.Report
Okay, so we looked up people who had the same name, same Zip Code, and were born in the same month and year as each other, each over 100 years old…
So there were thousands and thousands of them who were dead, who voted, and yet had that doppleganger who shared their Zip, name, birth year, and birth month, who were obviously also over a hundred years old, and these quasi-twins were still up and kicking?
That’s really the defense argument you want to go with? How dumb do you think people are?Report
Anyway, in case anyone wants to know what’s frothing in the right-wing stew, here’s something talking about it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/technology/false-dead-michigan-voter-claims.html
The media is mostly ignoring these claims because they are…utterly false.
George, of course, has not bothered to cite any of _his_ examples, probably because people would, very annoyingly, debunk them.
But, again, one or two example of someone filling out a dead person’s ballot or a ballot mailed to someone that lived at the previous address would not prove a vast conspiracy, or any conspiracy at all.Report
Well, somebody got arrested for fraud. Not related to Michigan, but in Texas.
Allegations: https://thetexan.news/biden-campaign-operative-texas-state-senator-accused-of-mail-in-ballot-fraud/
Arrest: https://thepointnews.uk/2020/11/15/biden-campaign-director-arrested-for-electoral-fraud/
So at least one allegation has moved to the arrest phase….whether it speaks to a broader wave or not, somebody got put in cuffs.Report
Well, I’m convinced.
I believe, as Republicans are currently arguing in court, this taints the entire result, we cannot know what the voters actually wanted, and thus we should toss out the entire election and not allow Texas to vote this year.
Oh, wait, this actually a lie: No one has been arrested, and we are, at this point, still in the ‘Some former FBI agent is swearing that two other people told him something’.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/election-2020/2020/11/17/386312/dallas-jones-not-arrested-for-voter-fraud-ballot-harvesting/
But hey, it’s great this complete and utter lie is being passed off as truth.Report
Oh, and the court actually _denied_ the motion that these claims were made in support of, presumably finding them not credible:
http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=fec1d4c5-ea3e-408f-b447-73c3d1dc553d&coa=cossup&DT=PET%20MAND%20DISP&MediaID=66e01532-dad4-45e5-aaf1-e289d27c2437Report
Yawn…Yes…justice is done slowly…..thanks for the follow up days later on something the press was following. They never get the story correct from the get go.Report
In George’s defense, one might reasonably infer from typical Twitter-trash usage that the meaning of “gaslight” is “say anything I disagree with.”Report
Yeah, I know, I almost explained what it was there, but it’s honestly not worth it and would just give George another silliness to wander into. But here we go:
Gaslighting, for people who don’t know, is telling people who _personally know or have observed things_ that they didn’t see those things.
It’s trying to convince people their own memories and perceptions are wrong.
Thus, the media can’t be ‘gaslighting’ the American public that there was no fraud, because the American public did not _observe_ fraud.
Even if we want to count these dumb complaints as ‘observations of fraud’ (Most of them are actually complaints about how the people didn’t like how the observation process worked and that there could have, hypothetically, been fraud somewhere they weren’t allowed to see.), that would be _those people_ are being gaslit by the media, not the ‘American public’.Report
How it ends: https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-legislature-pennsylvania-b199b2debc87fbb20612a48835bc0dbaReport
This is a complete lie. That he keeps this shit up just further demonstrates that he’s unfit.
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Its not even a claim of fraud. Its a claim that something happened that might cause fraud to have been undetected.Report
Still a lie though.Report
This DID play out. The voted were counted. They told us Biden won the Presidency. They also told us Republicans likely improved their standing in Congress.
You’re asking for overtime in a game decided by 20 points because you think a few plays that were already reviewed by replay didn’t change and even if they had, they weren’t enough to change the outcome of the game. There’s no do-overs. This isn’t teeball.Report
Gee. Democrats said the exact opposite in 2000 and 2016. Apparently you can only demand thorough recounts or allege foreign election interference if a Republican wins. We’re still waiting on Democrats to concede the 2016 election. They never did, and spent four years saying that Trump was illegitimate, in the absence of any evidence to support it.
As the fraud investigators pointed out, sometimes there’s one or two red flags but no fraud, but it’s rare to have three, and almost unheard of to have four and not be able to prosecute the case to a successful conviction.
This one has dozens of red flags. During the act, we have:
1) Trump was winning all the keys states by huge margins on election night. Even people here said 2020 was reminding them of exactly what they went though on 2016. And then, in the middle of the night, Biden surged ahead. That doesn’t happen in multiple states.
2) All the key states mysterious stopped counting at about 1:00 AM, and only the key states stopped counting. Why would a state do that? Red flag.
3) Georgia claimed they stopped counting, saying the Atlanta arena was flooding from a burst pipe and the vote counters had to be evacuated. That was false. The arena never filed any paperwork for a contractor to come and fix anything. The only confirmation that there was even a leak said it was a minor drip that was quickly mopped up, and was nowhere near the counting. Red flag.
4) Republican observers were sent home because ballot counting had stopped, and that’s when the new fake ballots showed up. The delivery vehicles full of ballots were caught on video. Ballots aren’t normally driven across a state to be counted somewhere else. Red flag.
5) How did Biden’s lead massively increase while ballot counting was stopped? If you’re not counting ballots, the number shouldn’t be changing. Yet it did, by hundreds of thousands, but only for one candidate. That one would cause any international election observer to throw a red flag.
6) Republican election observers weren’t present when the new ballots were arriving in the middle of the night, because they’d been sent home. Another red flag.
7) Republican election observers weren’t allowed to observe in many of the states. Trump is correct, as backed up by their affidavits. Many were barred, many were ejected, some by “security”. In Philly they weren’t allowed to observe, even with a court order. The sheriff blocked them. That went on for days. Huge red flag, and another that UN observers take as evidence of election fraud.
8) Long delays in counting the votes in key states. Under international standards, long delays in vote counting are taken as suspicious, and usually indicate election rigging. Counting just isn’t at all hard compared to making up fake ballots that can survive cursory scrutiny. A long delay likely means they’re making sure they have enough “recount survivable” fraudulent ballots, or enough to cover for a rigged vote tally that was made up on election night.
9) All the long counting delays concerned cities with a long history of machine politics and rampant election fraud.
10) Observed real-time vote tally’s in multiple states where Trump or Jorgensen’s total count decreased. Negative votes aren’t supposed to exist. That’s a sign that the election were being hacked.
11) Mail-in-ballots arriving in Pennsylvania before they were even shipped out. That can’t happen in this universe, and is definite sign of fraud.
12) Large numbers of dead people, who were born over a hundred years ago, being recorded as having voted. I’ve confirmed plenty of those myself.
13) Large number of women reporting that someone voted under their maiden name. This happened to some of the women I comment with.
14) Large numbers of people showing up on election day and being told they’d all ready voted.
15) Republicans checking to make sure their ballot was recorded and finding out that it wasn’t, and then having to harass election officials for days to get it recorded. This happened to a blogger I’ve read for years, who happens to be a member of the US diplomatic corps.
16) The use of different voting standards in Democrat counties compared to Republican counties. One of Trump’s lawsuits is based on that.
17) New ballots showing up days after the election. The number of ballots still to be counted kept increasing, for days in some counties. Nothing like this remotely happened in normal states.
18) Late changes to election laws (in many states) and last-minute changes to election procedures and standards. Changing the system virtually during the act is a sign of election rigging by people in power. Trump has already had some rulings in his favor on that issue, as state election officials only have the power to enforce election laws, not to modify them on the fly.
19) Turning off or turning down voter signature verification so fraudulent ballots aren’t caught. This occurred in most or all of the key states. One reporter in Arizona voted nine times under different names, and all but one of the votes passed their signature checks. Pennsylvania’s mail-in-ballot rejection rate plummeted from 0.95% to 0.03%. It should’ve gone up because of the vast influx of first-time mail-in-voters, who often have a 3% rejection rate in that state. Since only election officials (the people running the election) can do that, it is a sign of election rigging.
20) Observations of people outside election areas making fake ballots. Some of this is on video, with “activists” signing multiple ballots just outside the election locations, with boxes of ballots in their vehicles, and with attempts to keep people from photographing them.
21) That the media was making very unsupportable calls on election night, all favoring one candidate over the other. In other countries, this is taken as evidence of a thumb on the scales.
22) The press suppression all allegations of voter fraud. Again, that happens in banana Republicans and is often evidence of voter fraud. Note that the same media organizations doing this are the ones who spent four years hyping every last hint that the Russian’s may have flipped even one vote, or that big data may have been used, or that dozens of people trolling Facebook counts as election rigging.
23) A rush to be declared the winner and get a concession, so as to avoid any recounts or investigation into election irregularities. Shoplifters try to get out the door as quickly as possible, just as all criminals try to avoid being searched or questioned.
24) Attempts to intimidate opposition lawyers. Some of the law firms hired by Trump have quit because of attacks, doxing, threats to their firms, and death threats. This is common in corrupt countries where an election has been rigged, and is a clear indication that one party does not want any evidence presented because it will expose their criminal activities, or show that the rigged an election. In normal legal practice, law firms are rarely if ever threatened, even when they’re defending ISIS terrorists.
25) People coming forward saying they were paid money to rig the election. That’s was already happening even prior to the election.
26) Whistle blowers coming forward saying they were told to perform illegal acts to sway the election. We’ve already got those.
27) Attempts to suppress and intimidate whistle blowers, along with attempts to silence or discredit them. We’ve already had that.
28) Attempts by top officials to suppress evidence that there was a coordinated effort to rig the election. We’ve had that too, with threats by a state AG to prosecute a reporter for playing a tape of instructions being given to election workers, in which they were told to attack Republican observers and throw away Republican ballots.
29) Attempts by media or other large communications concerns to suppress any discussions of election rigging, or anything questioning the results of the election. We’ve got that happening at Communist Chinese levels of censorship. The conservative half of the country can’t say anything on Twitter or Facebook. This just screams organized election fraud.
30) Organized media and tech suppression, to extreme levels, of stories that would harm their candidate, especially stories about ongoing criminal behavior. It means access to public information is being restricted, and if they will do that, they will do anything else. In other countries that is taken as a glaring red flag that the media is as corrupt as the system itself.
Statistical red flags
31) Extremely large and unusual voter turnouts in key areas that overwhelmingly favor one candidate. This is very prevalent, and also appeared in Putin’s re-election.
32) Voter turnouts that are above 90%. The highest turnouts in 60 or70 years in some areas (breaking records set when election rigging was commonplace), while most areas have close-to-normal turnouts, is a red flag of of election rigging to all international observers.
33) Voter turnouts exceeding 100%. If you run out of people long before you run out of ballots to count, you’re obviously counting fake ballots. In this election, some precincts exceeded 200% turnout.
34) extremely high turnouts for one candidate among certain demographics, which didn’t occur in similar cities in nearby non-battleground states that have similar demographics. This sticks out with a sore thumb where ever you look in this election, with northern Indiana and northern Ohio looking nothing like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, or Atlanta compared to Birmingham, etc.
For example, in Miami-Date, Baltimore city, and New York City’s five counties, Joe Biden got less votes than Obama or Hillary (99%, 99% and 76%). He barely outperformed Hillary in Chicago (up 4%), Columbus (11%), San Francisco (8%), Boston (3%), Washington DC (8%), New Orleans (10%), Arlington VA (14%). But then he does 50% better in places like Phoenix and Colorado Springs, 40% better in Austin, and 32% better in Atlanta? And Biden does this after ditching the Democrats’ famous and effective voter-turnout ground game?
35) Unusual ratios of Biden votes in mail-in-ballots in only certain areas. In Pennsylvania, Biden’s gap over Trump in mail-in-ballots was 40% of Trump’s lead in same-day voting, across all counties, except in the problem areas around Philly, where the gap inexplicably skyrocketed.
36) Swings in the Biden/Trump ratio of mail-in-ballots over time. When you look at the time when mail-in-ballots were counted, they’ve been randomized by the individual voters’ daily routines, personal procrastination levels, pickup routes, post-office procedures, sign-in times, and where they got placed on the floor at the election sites. The ratio should be like an isotopic signature at the point, and be extremely constant, as it is in non-key states. In the problem areas were fraud is historically highly prevalent, this ratio goes nuts, with the later ballots becoming more and more skewed towards Biden. The only way that can happen is through fraud.
37) Biden getting more and more of the expected number of votes, as predicted by the ratio of straight-ticket voters, as a district or precinct becomes more heavily Republican, again judged by the ratio of straight-ticket voters. This can only happen via a computer algorithm, because real voters don’t know how everybody else is voting, much less defect to Biden the more Republican their district is. In fact, the opposite should happen due to social influences like seeing thousands of signs supporting their favored candidate. This is very clear evidence of intentional election rigging via computer, and appears on a very wide scale.
38) Straight lines showing up in scatter plots that should look random. This is related to red flag #37, and show up in data in Wisconsin. Real data is messy, and when a statistical analysis turns that mess into a perfect, straight line, you’re seeing the work of a computer rigging results, not the actions of human beings who are hard to predict, and who drink a lot and sometimes lick Tide Pods.
39) The polls, which were wildly wrong, apparently got the suspect states surprisingly more accurate than states that got their ballots counted quickly. Basically, it looks almost like the vote in the late-counting states is being rigged to match polls that were wildly off everywhere else. Obviously all the pollsters shouldn’t have been close only in a couple of states.
40) It’s pretty much impossible for the result to deviate so much from the bellwether counties. Even if we’d been holding elections since before the Big Bang happened, we still wouldn’t have had a result where even eleven of seventeen bellwethers were wrong. This time 14 of them missed. Statistically, that simply can’t happen. When you find a result that is statistically virtually impossible, it is. So Biden forgot to rig the bellwether counties when he was rigging the key states, because only statisticians care about bellwethers.
41) The New York times election night live feed of raw data – for Virginia. Virginia is odd in that it apparently allows fractional voting, so a batch will come in that looks like this:
Batch stamp (GMT) Biden #, Trump #, Biden %, Trump %
2020-11-04T13:02:17Z 252.39 210.09 54.573171% 45.426829%
That one had 252.39 votes for Biden, and 210.09 votes for Trump, which were added to the running totals.
42) But the fractional voting gets weirder, because some of the batches have huge negative votes, like 2020-11-04T05:12:38Z, which had -37,510.39 votes for Trump. Kind of odd, eh?
43) But it gets weirder. In that dump, the first seven batches each gave Trump 45.4278% of the batch total, even when the number of votes was 11.28 to 9.39 or 1544.41 to 1285.57. The standard deviation of the Trump % of those 7 batches was 0.001653%, or a thousandth of a percent. The next 11 batches shifted slightly, giving Trump 45.22% of the vote, with a standard deviation of 0.02587%. The second group differed from the first group by 7 standard deviation of the second group, and 125 standard deviations of the first group. Only a machine creating fake ballots could do this, and by the way, there’s no such thing as a floating point vote. My assumption is that some coder didn’t realize he’d declared the wrong data type for his fake vote generator – which fed the New York Times election feed.
44) Hundreds of thousands of votes came in for Biden, out of nowhere, late in the night, while hundreds of thousands of Trump votes disappeared from the totals. The vote ratio on the later batches didn’t look remotely like what it had been in the first 125 batches of votes, in which Trump was taking a commanding lead. It’s like someone saw Trump was easily winning Virginia and hit the election-rigging panic button.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten many, many other red flags, but the point is that three or four red flags usually indicate a strong case for conducting an investigation that will most likely result in prosecution and conviction. Here, off the top of my head (except those last 5 because I’d just been punching them through a spreadsheet), are ten times the number of red flags that you’d probably have when looking into a company like Enron. There’s so much of it, that you can probably see this fraud from the moon.Report
1) counterpointReport
All three attorneys representing Trump in Pennsylvania have quit the case, and a brand new one has been brought in for tomorrow’s hearing. IANAL but I understand that’s not a plus.Report
Many Trump attorneys are quitting because they’re being doxed, having their firms threatened, and getting death threats. That’s a common occurrence in Third World Countries where all the elections are rigged. We’re supposed to get used to it under Biden.Report
Hey George – where are the Hillary indictments and John Dunham’s obama official indictments? You have been promising them to us for 4 years now.
given your track record there, perhaps you should put down the kool-aid and come back to the real world.Report
YOu can count to 44. Or did you just copy/paste this drivel.
Voter turnout exceeding 100%. This is funny. Many states have same day voter registration. People who aren’t registered can just show up an vote. And how amazing is that!?Report
I didn’t copy and paste it, I wrote it off the top of my head, just based on all the fraud I’ve seen. However, it’s now being copy and pasted all over the place. I posted it at Instapundit and told everybody to grab it, use it, and expand it, and they did, posting it on their own blogs and sending it to their friends and family. It’s just going to grow.
Try explaining any four of those red flags, much less all of them.
Heck, maybe there’s some rational explanation for why Virginia votes in floating point numbers, so a person can cast 1.29 votes for Biden. I’m assuming it didn’t get flagged earlier because most everyone who’s set up an automatic processing of New York Times raw vote data would have programmed their end of the feed to use integers, so they weren’t even seeing what was really coming in.
Maybe there’s a natural reason that some batches of Virginia votes had -373,121.35 votes (negative). Maybe there’s a reason that all the tiny little numbers coming in had the same Biden/Trump ratio with a standard deviation of 0.001%. I can’t think of one. Can you?Report
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/brad-raffensperger-georgia-vote/2020/11/16/6b6cb2f4-283e-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html
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Trump also wants to connect the signed ballot envelopes with the ballots they contained, that is, break ballot secrecy. Not because they have any evidence of fraud, just as a fishing expedition.
This is playing out, and we’re seeing exactly who Trump and his bootlickers are, not that there was much doubt.Report
I may have had something to do with that, though I’m not sure. I’ve been talking it up. One of the odd statistics I’m seeing is that Biden is outperforming Hillary by pretty good margins in many cities, but not Milwaukee, Chicago, Philly, Detroit, and parts of Atlanta. It’s like voter turnout went way up in the key states, but not in the cities known for cranking out fraudulent votes, where we would normally point to a ridiculous rise in turnout as evidence of possible fraud.
So what I’ve been suggesting is to look at the postmarks on the ballots, not for the time stamp, but for where they originated, as they get postmarked at the first post office that processes them.
With mass mail-in-balloting, the fraud-factories in the machine-cities would’ve been smart to forge ballots for contests everywhere in the state – except the city of origin. So Philly will look clean, and simultaneously it will look that there was an unusually large Biden turnout in Mechanicsburg, Lancaster, and Hershey that nobody expected.
But if they did that, large number of ballots in those smaller towns and cities would likely carry Philly postmarks. Say there’s 800,000 of them. There’s no way 800,000 Pennsylvanians drove to Philly and crashed on somebody’s couch just to mail a ballot. The same thing would be true in Detroit, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. Almost no Hershey ballots should carry a Philly postmark, as anyone who’d moved to Philly shouldn’t be voting in Hershey.
Yet even if the ballots are separated from the envelopes, the envelopes are still election-related papers that must, under Federal law, be retrained for 22 months after an election, so at some point that will be looked into. The pattern to look for would be an unusually large number of mail in ballots from across a state that came from a particular place.Report
this is getting to the point of the Hitler Is Alive conspiracists who claim that a report of no submarines leaving port on a certain day means that day was when the secret submarine with Hitler on board escaped…Report
The fact that numbers weren’t elevated in the places where, if they were elevated you’d yell fraud, is proof of a different fraud.Report