patrick.net

FredH,

I think Patrick is asking for the perspective of some who is a bit of an outsider, in hopes of building some understanding of people's thinking. I appreciate this and I will volunteer despite being called a KommieKunt.

You have clearly researched the particulars of Arizona which I have not. Does that make me naive? Let me explain my perspective.

I think there was a close election that one side won and one side lost. And the losing side got out microscopes and went looking for any anomaly or circumstantial evidence that can be interpreted to mean they actually won. Despite the people who tan the elections and counted the votes saying the allegations are untrue.

In any process as complex as an election, if you get out microscopes and look for anomalies you will find them. That is not a surprise to me. And it's not proof of fraud. In my mind, the bar for me to reconsider accepting the result is much higher than the circumstantial interpretation of anomalies being presented here. It would take hard evidence. I just haven't seen anything that comes close to that. So I accept the outcome.

@Patrick see few previous comments and my above predictions

DeficitHawk says

I imagine that is some batch of votes getting added as the count goes on. I don't really know. Maybe someone was sorting into piles and the feeding into machines. But if all the votes are counted and tallied, then I'd go with the outcome, even if I lose.

There is no point defending this. The math says it's statistically impossible, so cheating is pretty much a fact. Math doesn't lie and isn't biased. Since they purposefully didn't make this process transparent of course you cannot prove the cheating with court admissible evidence besides arguing the math, the only way forward is to adopt stringent voter id laws with in person id-verified voting with paper ballots only to prevent cheating in the future and restore trust in fair elections. The fact that democrats oppose this underscores they have been and are actively cheating. Nobody who wanted to prove a fair election would be opposed to those common sense measures adopted by pretty much all western countries. There are better topics to debate with valid arguments on both sides, this one cannot be logically defended by the left, and that should be obvious imo.

While I volunteer myself as a moderate democrat for this debate, I do not claim to have researched every anomaly highlighted in the election and prepared a response. I haven't. I'm busy, and I trust the people accountable enough that I don't personally feel the need to investigate unless I see hard evidence, which I haven't.

I don't know who piles up the blue votes here and th red votes there and feeds them into a machine at different times, or this strongly blue district vs that strongly red district get tallied and added in at different times. No don't have an explanation to every glitch in those charts. But there are sensible explanations that don't involve fraud, and the people who oversee the process attest that there wasn't fraud. So that's basically where I stop my questioning absent hard evidence.

Do you debate a group who already have determined that you and at least 25 percent of the audience need to be murdered in order for them to ascend to absolute power?
The presumptions and rules of debate don't apply to treason, subversion and mass murder.

How many movies can you watch in which the politicians/ gangsters assemble, only for the dominant gangster to use the assembly to murder his opponents? Remember Saddam having his enemies escorted out of the assembly hall to have their bodies delivered in pieces in plastic bags to their families, or the recent Chinese assembly in which Xi had his flanking leader physically removed?

I don't want to murder any of the audience. Part of being American is that we don't all have to agree but we can still say what we think.

Ok, let's pick another topic then?

DeficitHawk says

I imagine that is some batch of votes getting added as the count goes on. I don't really know. Maybe someone was sorting into piles and the feeding into machines. But if all the votes are counted and tallied, then I'd go with the outcome, even if I lose.

So just confirming @DeficitHawk that you would not think such a large jump near the end in the swing states is suspicious even if it favored Trump?

DeficitHawk says

So given all the motivated trump supporters who never found any clear evidence...

What would count as clear evidence for you?

I think there's many ways to cheat an election that may be very difficult to detect via audit. And I think the methods they can use to cheat come from a variety of sources, so they use certain sources first, and then if they need more votes, they resort to the next best source, and so on... And some methods are just opportunistic. But I don't think the cheaters are stupid and will do things that will get them easily caught.

For example - the mailman throwing away the ballots from an area polling a certain way. It's probably easy to have a mailman park the full mail truck unattended somewhere weird, then a masked man sneak steals a bag of mail, and the mailman doesnt realize it but maybe a security camera catches footage of it, thus giving them an excuse that "we were robbed and didnt even realize it" if the audit spotlight ever ends up on them in the future for the missing ballots. The stolen bag doesnt even need to contain the ballots that will be discarded - they just need an excuse for some being missing. You don't even need to throw them all away - maybe just half of them or whatever they feel makes it stand out less.

Additionally, more targeted tactics can be employed. We live in the data collection era, where incredible amounts of social data are available for purchase, and most people don't realize how such data can be used. They could easily make very educated guesses as to which peoples / neighborhoods' ballots they could throw away without generating alarm. Like, maybe people who are identified as "unlikely to vote" by the currently widely accepted algo, might make for a good target to throw away since an auditor would probably just accept the argument that no ballots are missing since its a group that historically doesnt vote much. So, throwing away ballots from that group are "safer". And they do have records of campaign donations and voter registration, current and history, for most residential addresses - and they can combine that data with social data. They already do this for advertising, and it just so happens that the same data analytics they spend billions developing for advertising, is also directly useful for politics too.

And, there's plenty of legal ways to impact the vote, especially if you got lots of money. I mean, advertising is totally legal right? Sending people to senior housing to "help" them vote also seems a way to easily bias towards the vote you desire. Some of them are drooling, and thats basically a free vote however you want. But there's only so many droolers, and so the low hanging fruit is limited. But, even votes from cogent seniors are easily used in their favor: the "helper" knows which ballots are for which candidate, making it easy to "accidentally lose" a certain stack. Or, if you want to stay legal, they can probably figure out which senior homes will yield the type of votes they want, and which to avoid, allowing them to stay legal by just only "helping" the seniors in certain facilities.

I suspect biasing is probably one of the most widely used tactics, where they treat different groups of people differently to effect the desired vote. Like throwing away a small fraction of ballots from a certain neighborhood, or making it easier/harder to vote for certain people via long lines to discourage voting (due to "broken machines", ahem), or by adding ballot drop boxes in desirable neighborhoods, but not in the undesirable ones. I don't work in elections, but I guarantee if I did, I bet I could come up with large numbers of biasing strategies.

I think many of these cheat methods are enabled/enhanced by time. With time, they can get more bang for their cheat buck, and they can also bias towards cheat methods which are harder to get caught with. Time allows them to analyze, strategize, and act. This is why I'm so damn suspicious of the slow election counting that suddenly appeared out of nowhere these past ~5 years, and seems to crop up in regions where a rabbit needs to be pulled out of a hat to produce an unexpected win.

Maybe people disagree whether election XYZ was significantly affected by cheating, but I hope maybe people can at least agree cheating is trivially easy, and thus we need election integrity improvements that align with the modern world. But the powers that be wont let that happen because racism or whatever the fuck.

Patrick says

What would count as clear evidence for you?

@Patrick,

as I predicted, discussion degenerated into name-calling.

An easier to comprehend and more factual discussion could be about vaxx, shutdowns, and D-pushed mandates for masks and so on. In this case, there is plenty scientific evidence, which existed before covid, that forced upon us measures would not work or even would be harmful.

But I do not feel like [participating in this discussion even though my opinion here is the same as for 98% of Patnetters (as in mandates were/are criminal and not based in facts/science) because the D-supporting opponent will simple be called names.

Edit: and IRL when I discuss this with left-leaning persons, they just run away and don't talk to me about this topic any more.

I would have questions about it either way. But I would expect that recounts and cross checks can tell the difference between fraud and no fraud. Since I didn't count these votes myself, I have to rely on the people who did, and I have to examine their motivations as I place my trust in them. And, I have decided I trust them because I don't see a large conflict of interest that should cause me not to. I felt the same way when I voted for Al Gore in 2000 (I'm dating myself)

But I work with complex systems and complex data and quirks in data don't really disturb me that much. You can always dig in and figure out what is going on if you spend the time. But I don't unless there is cause to spend the time.

Hard evidence would mean identifying the glitch in code that miscounted, affirmed by the secretary of state or video of people altering enough votes to alter outcomes. Glitchy data and interpretations of it is not evidence in my mind.

DeficitHawk says

But I definitely have observed an increase in political one sidedness on this site over the years. I do feel it is becoming an echo chamber with only similar political mindset people contributing, and becoming hostile to other views. That's why I offered to take you up. I liked the old days of what this forum stood for, and would like to see it return.

And thank you again @DeficitHawk for speaking politely and clearly.

Yes, the site has become very one-sided and I'd like to hear polite arguments for the other side.

What the site stood for when it was about housing was exposing the scams in the real estate industry, how it's rigged against buyers. From my point of view, it has not changed as much as expanded into exposing other scams, like the 2020 election. For me, the evidence is truly overwhelming that the election was rigged on multiple levels. I hope to be able to point out some more of those levels and get the counter arguments.

Patrick says

DeficitHawk says

So given all the motivated trump supporters who never found any clear evidence...

What would count as clear evidence for you?

Trump and the Republicans take blame here as well for - as soon as the leftoid shenanigans started - not having the back-bone to hold in person, id-verified elections only via executive order, backed by the military if necessary, paper ballots only, and making the ballots observable for everyone. Going forward, anybody not supporting changing the elections to be verifiable and transparent like all other Western countries do, has a clear interest in continuing the Democrat fraud imo, and arguing about election results/fairness with people not supporting the constitution/law and its mandated election fairness and transparency is utterly moot. This needs to be the axiom to start from, accepted by both sides, no more banana republic style elections.

Bd6r says

IRL when I discuss this with left-leaning persons, they just run away and don't talk to me about this topic any more.

It's clearly an uncomfortable process to get red-pilled, and I think this is a major reason most Democrats have left this site and why left-leaning people run away when you talk to them.

The biggest lesson from running this site for many years is that all debate stops the instant personal insults are allowed. I try to do something about the personal insults, but it's still difficult.

Bd6r says

An easier to comprehend and more factual discussion could be about vaxx, shutdowns

Not really, this discussion is fairly easy. If you don't support changing the election from cheating banana republic style to in person, id-verified, ballot/paper supported elections only, you have lost the argument and support the cheating by the left. You can be left leaning without supporting the cheating by purposely obfuscating the election process.

mell says

Trump and the Republicans take blame here as well for - as soon as the leftoid shenanigans started - not having the back-bone to hold in person, id-verified elections only via executive order, backed by the military if necessary, paper ballots only, and making the ballots observable for everyone.

At the state level, yes, but Trump could not have personally enforced election integrity because the "time and manner" of elections is explicitly left to the states in the Consitution, iirc.

I think that is one of the many good things about our constitution. I don't think you want the president meddling with the election methods.

FredH says

The reality is there was never an actual investigation into the 2020 election.

I think this is true. From what I understand, all of the lawsuits calling out the fraud were dismissed for lack of standing, not lack of evidence.

Patrick says

mell says

Trump and the Republicans take blame here as well for - as soon as the leftoid shenanigans started - not having the back-bone to hold in person, id-verified elections only via executive order, backed by the military if necessary, paper ballots only, and making the ballots observable for everyone.

At the state level, yes, but Trump could not have personally enforced election integrity because the "time and manner" of elections is explicitly left to the states in the Consitution, iirc.

I'm not a constitutional expert, but from my understanding the way these states hold elections, violates the constitution, sure you'd probably have to go through SCOTUS, but there was plenty of time to do so. The fact that previous and moreso current presidents have violated states rights with pretty much every EO, I and many others would have supported the override via EO/martial law, or "emergency" (such as covid). Is that hypocritical? Maybe, but since the left has hollowed out the constitution and violated state and federal at will for so many years now, sometimes you have to use the same tactics to rectify a broken system.

Case in point, in CA I walked in the voting place to drop off my wife's and my ballot and wanted to announce it and possibly show id, nobody gave a fuck, I could have dropped in 100s of ballots all fake signed, and they would have counted them. Don't tell me they will verify against "voter records", they won't (plenty of anecdotal evidence). No verification whatsoever. The system is broken.

Patrick says

were dismissed for lack of standing, not lack of evidence.

What is lack of standing?

DeficitHawk says

I think that is one of the many good things about our constitution. I don't think you want the president meddling with the election methods.

Disagree, it's one of the biggest weaknesses. You don't need states to interpret fair elections, it's axiom based like math. Common sense dictates what free, transparent and fair elections look like, and the manner on how to hold them should be easily codifiable. The president is not "meddling" in any states elections by making sure they are fair, the only "meddling" is the cheating by the left which has been ongoing for too long. This is a classic example of twisting words by the left and projecting of what they have been doing onto others. Meddling with an election is generally understood as changing its outcome, arranging fair and free in person, verified, and transparent elections does not change the election outcome, it guarantees a real and fair outcome in the first place by manipulating voters and votes. The states should have no rights in deciding on how to do the actual election and verification process. That's why in this case all other Western countries function much better, as they don't have states whinging about Jim Crow 2.0 bullshit so they can cheat.

Hircus

I agree that there are lots of ways to cheat. And maybe there are better systems for conducting elections.

For example, maybe people who are familiar with encryption methods could find a way to do an election digitally that would enable every voter to verify that their vote was counted as cast, without violating anonymity. Maybe such a scheme could allow public audit, with strong enough digital tracking to publicly tie votes to individual registered voters without revealing identity. I would love it if someone could come up with such a scheme. I personally haven't figured out a way without violating anonymity.

Voter id laws are a common topic, maybe it solves a problem with unregistered or ineligible voters, but it has no bearing on the data glitches we've been discussing.

The topic of whether we can improve the election process to build transparency and trust without violating anonymity or systematically excluding groups of potential voters is important and constructive.

But throwing allegations that "I only lost because you cheated" is quite a different thing.

Hircus says

Patrick says

were dismissed for lack of standing, not lack of evidence.

What is lack of standing?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/standing

At the federal level, legal actions cannot be brought simply on the ground that an individual or group is displeased with a government action or law. Federal courts only have constitutional authority to resolve actual disputes (see Case or Controversy).

In Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (90-1424), 504 U.S. 555 (1992), the Supreme Court created a three-part test to determine whether a party has standing to sue:

The plaintiff must have suffered an "injury in fact," meaning that the injury is of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent
There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct brought before the court
It must be likely, rather than speculative, that a favorable decision by the court will redress the injury

DeficitHawk says

The topic of whether we can improve the election process to build transparency and trust without violating anonymity or systematically excluding groups of potential voters is important and constructive.

Nobody is being excluded unless they exclude themselves, there is no reason to discuss systematic exclusion, it doesn't exist in this context. It's a real issue when you start debating whether convicts should be able to vote, which they should imo, regardless of their crime. With regard to the election process it's a non issue.

DeficitHawk says

But throwing allegations that "I only lost because you cheated" is quite a different thing.

After the fact I somewhat agree with this, barring any smoking gun evidence. 2000 mules comes very close, but it's not good enough after the fact, particularly because the left made sure to obfuscate the process enough, shutting out observers etc. so that hard evidence will almost be impossible to find. One very easy common sense part of the fix to this is to declare ballot harvesting illegal, punishable under the law with lenghty jail time. Ballots can only be dropped off by family members or registered care takers, or the voter themselves. Done.

Mell,

I don't think I am twisting words. I'm trying to say my perspective on things. I am telling you that I have some degree of trust in public officials to do their duties as long as they are not making decisions that directly impact themselves and create a conflict of interest.

I don't want the president who is up for re-election to be telling me who won the election. That is why I want the individual secretaries of state doing that job. Maybe a secretary can be corrupt, sure... But not 50.

I just simply don't take the losing guy saying "the other guy cheated" at face value when 50 secretaries of state representing the whole swath of political spectrum are all agreeing that trump lost. That's just how I process and contextualize information. I weigh the motives of who said it along with the statement.

I voted by absentee ballot, and put it in the mailbox for the mailman to pick up. Should my mailman go to jail?

DeficitHawk says

I just simply don't take the losing guy saying "the other guy cheated" at face value when 50 secretaries of state representing the whole swath of political spectrum are all agreeing that trump lost. That's just how I process and contextualize information. I weigh the motives of who said it along with the statement.

True, but most of them are saying Trump lost with the reasoning that there was cheating but not to the extent that it could have swayed the election outcome, and that's not valid imo. That's like saying, yeah there is shoplifting, but it's mainly smaller items, it doesn't really affect the success or failure of a business, so let's let it happen. But I was pointing out that you used meddling to describe my example of the president arranging fair and free and transparent elections, that's not meddling with the election outcome itself, it's just setting fair rules and setting it up for success. Comparable to Democrats crying "jim Crow 2.0" when voter id laws are introduced. It's not meddling, it's giving the election validity and fairness in the first place.

If you guys are tired of circle-jerking, maybe consider the many insulting responses in this thread, and how you've treated the other side for years now.

You all know I'm not a Democrat, but I'm also NOT a Republican. If you just want an anti-Republican to debate, I can certainly share an opposing perspective. But I'm sure you're all sick of hearing from me by now.

DeficitHawk says

I voted by absentee ballot, and put it in the mailbox for the mailman to pick up. Should my mailman go to jail?

I would only allow absentee ballots if they are verifiable, tamper proof etc. That takes the mailman out of the question. If he doesn't deliver it, it's a risk you take, Democrat or Republican (unless one can prove they purposely didn't deliver it knowing your party preference etc. which is almost impossible to prove). If they tamper with it, they should go to jail.

FredH says

DeficitHawk says

I imagine that is some batch of votes getting added as the count goes on. I don't really know. Maybe someone was sorting into piles and the feeding into machines. But if all the votes are counted and tallied, then I'd go with the outcome, even if I lose.

To be honest, I take the statements from the secretaries of state who manage elections at higher value than my own speculations on how counting/batches is done.

I tend to interpret information by discounting people who highlight information that would benefit their position, and putting more weight on neutral parties. Even more weight on the statements by people who's interests are not served by information they highlight. Such as the secretary of state of Georgia etc. So given all the motivated trump supporters who never found any clear evidence... And gop secretaries of state affirming that the allegations are not ...

I consider that very shallow thinking. And again naive. You don't seem to be able to grasp or even ask why the Georgia or the AZ Secstate would not be credible. That being because both were part of the election compromise. You also seem to think the dissemination of information is a "position". You also seem ignorant of what is happening to the country in an overall sense. That you mention "trump supporters" without capitalizing Trump's name is a clue that you are in fact a leftist. That you still say that there is no clear evidence only points to a HUA position held by many leftists.. It is this seemingly low iQ approach leftists use, like you are doing showing your lack of give a shit for the country. Recounts in which the same ballots are counted again are not going to give any new information. But to the low IQ leftist that is just too far over their heads. Quirks in data are important just not to leftists as they are all programmed by the same retard bot programmer having a Fetterman level stroke. They under no circumstance want to ask questions or even act curious about things far more obvious that "quirks" like the FBI furthering the Hillary instigated Russia hoax or the FBI calling the Hunter Biden laptop "Russian misinformation". Nor do they care that social media platforms are interfering with political speech. In fact I consider every leftist on the planet either so corrupt or so stupid that removing them would be the best thing for all.

DeficitHawk says

Maybe a secretary can be corrupt, sure... But not 50.

How about just the four swing states that determined the outcome? Still impossible?

And even then, the government officials do not have to be corrupt except to the extent of allowing drop box voting and voting software from China, eg:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/technology/election-software-arrested.html

I don't want anybody to sway or intimidate others to change the election outcome. I just want in-person, id-verified, ballot driven, election-day only, elections, with few exceptions for absentee ballots for those who aren't near a voting place. No ballot harvesting, only family members or care takers can drop off, id-verified. Done. How difficult is it to agree on these handful of simple rules to keep it fair, transparent, observable, and verifiable? Again, most Western countries follow these rules, we MUST too.

I know it was delivered because the envelopes have individual bar codes and I get email when it is received by election officials. But I did place trust that my mailman would not alter my votes covertly and it have no way to verify that.

I would love to see a proposed election system that allows me to verify my vote was counted as cast, and that no one was stuffing ballot boxes with ballots not tied to any registered voter... But I don't know how to do that without sacrificing voter anonymity.

If anyone has proposals, I'm game for that. People should have trust in elections. If there is no trust in elections, there is no democracy.

personal

I'm anti deliberately-insulting speech.

If someone happens to be offended when you did not intend to offend them, that's their problem.

But if you're deliberately offending someone, then you're not debating at all, and in fact have just made it completely impossible to have a debate.

Patrick. Not impossible for 4 people to be corrupt, but unlikely in my mind. Also no motive or evidence.

I don't know why a republican secretary of state would engage in systematic fraud against his own vote preference. I just doesn't make sense to me.

So again, people with microscopes who lost but wish they won can spend time until the cows come home looking for anomalies. But that doesn't mean there was fraud, and it doesn't mean the election outcome isn't legit.

I am not going to spend the same amount of energy chasing and investigating anomalies people highlight because I simply don't think there is enough credible motive or evidence to support the allegations. Only hard proof will make me reconsider, and no one has any.

@DeficitHawk Do you have any concern at all about the 200,000 votes that appeared late at night, almost entirely for Biden, and changed the result?

https://patrick.net/post/1377632/2022-11-10-can-anyone-find-some-democrats-willing?start=35#comment-1896497



Would you have any concern about that anomaly if it were almost entirely for Trump?

DeficitHawk says

Only hard proof will make me reconsider, and no one has any.

I'd say the math is hard proof. This statistical anomaly is as close to impossible as it gets. The math alone should have triggered a run-off or recount in battelground/close states, in person only, possibly the entire election. It's ok to redo elections if the math doesn't support the outcome.

In 2000 we all were hyper focused on hanging chads in 1 state for a couple week. But at the end of the day it was a super close election and one person won and one person lost. And it has to be that way for the government to function.

In 2020, it wasn't anywhere near as close. But still the debate rages. And still the truth is it was a close election and one person won and one person lost and it has to be that way for the government to function.