The end of democracy thread

Why?

I think what you and I can agree on is elections can be rigged. We don’t doubt Russia rigs their elections.

In the US there is a desire among some to discuss how elections may be rigged, but not with everyone and in fact the topic is being made taboo to question the legitimacy of elections in the US.

The.comtext of what they’re bitching about would be nice, don’t you think?

The wink is you say it’s never said - but we don’t even know what was said that they’re taking snippets from. soooo, yea.

I’m not following you. The article is clear to me. I still don’t understand what your objection is.

That’s definitely what they’re doing, and it seems to me like it worked, given their success (relative to expectations) this time around. It’s certainly an improvement on the MAGA strategy – telling people their vote doesn’t matter isn’t a great way to get votes.

Tangentially, I’m really pleased with how things turned out: we now have two years of a power balance that might actually result in some modest bipartisan achievements, and conventional Republicans beat the Trumpists pretty much everywhere. Another Trump term suddenly looks a lot less likely.

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See what Mick said.

I’ll be back in two years to see what happened with this bipartisan approach you mention.

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I see a lot of things to be concerned about on all sides in the US, but I’m not seeing the possibility of Russia-level election rigging, not at present anyway.

Election rigging can have multiple facets to it. The easiest one is preventing people that would vote against you from voting. The US has that one in spades.

You don’t see Hunter Biden on the horizon?

Do we? We have all kinds of voting methods available and turnout has been high lately.

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2008 VEP 62.5%. VAP 57.1%
2012 VEP 58%. VAP 53.8%
2016 VEP 59.2%. VAP 54.8%
2020 VEP 66.9%. VAP 62%

VEP stands for voting eligible population.
VAP is voting age population.

The 2020 election provides the most in depth look at the machinations of the election process. Republican states tended to remove prepoll voting options from neighborhoods that were likely to or had a history of voting Democrat. They also reduced the number of polling stations in those areas, tried to ban handing out drinks in waiting lines to vote, and a number of other measures such as removing post boxes to make it harder to post mail in ballots.

There was one example (off the top of my head) where polling stations had been reduced to a single one with a population that equaled a republican stronghold (in the same state) that had 14.

These measures predominantly target poorer neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color.

Well, there were some efforts to add to election security, which is also important. Stuff like drinks in line is so minor and makes sense to prevent electioneering. Seems like people were able to vote in large numbers from all the reports I saw. You’d have to give me details on stuff like “Republican states tended to remove prepoll voting options from neighborhoods that were likely to or had a history of voting Democrat.”

The Democrats gerrymander as well and we’d have to look at all of their machinations too.

One thing I linked to the other day is Tennessee making it very difficult or impossible for felons to vote, which definitely disproportionately impacts on black Americans for no good reason I can see. So, I’m not saying it’s all beauty and light. But, not Russia. In general it’s easy to vote in the US with multiple options, all over.

I’d have to search through internet archive. This is one of the bad things that has happened in the last couple of years. Lots of websites are no longer retaining the material they posted. It started back in the early 2010s with newspapers removing material from search requests and then removing articles altogether.

It’s only gotten worse in this last few years. However archive.org should have the articles.

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You can certainly question legitimacy but if you continue doing so without any evidence of fraud…then you look foolish.

REDMAP changed the game in favor of Republicans and the opportunity to tip the scales back came and went in 2020. Yes they can gerrymander to survive, but they’re already behind the 8 ball.

But that wasn’t the start of gerrymandering. The Democrats might just have easily have done it if the Republicans hadn’t stolen a march.

Not really, can you prove Russia is rigging elections? Do you have proof they rig the elections? Would you sound stupid if you voiced the opinion they rig elections?

All that’s needed is to be in control of the elections, the counting of ballots and any recounts. Then tell people they can’t question the legitimacy of the election.

I don’t live in Russia, speak Russian nor know anything about Russian society. In the US, however, it’s not possible to rig an election without evidence. We have rule of law, free press, freedom of information.

Just arguing it could be possible, is either not accepting defeat or deliberately undermining confidence.

They might have in an alternate universe but they didn’t. I don’t support any party gaming the system to perpetually keep themselves in power. Dems told people democracy is under threat because it is. If all the Trumpers had won, they would be forced to follow Trump’s agenda of undermining elections.