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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   24185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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None of this is unique, unusual, or dangerous. Leftist NGOs and Democratic governors/AGs preparing for a potential second term of Trump. Sinister-sounding quotes like "controlling the flow of information" and "democracy-proofing our institutions" but nothing actually out of the ordinary in terms of real actions. I'll remind you that the vast majority of the actual escalation has come from Republicans. Remember J6? Remember "the election was stolen!!!" 70% of Republicans still believe that crap.

Trump will try some hamfisted executive orders, which will get massacred in the courts like much of his EO's did in his first term. He'll declare victory anyways, and the base will love him because they desire the appearance of "owning the libs" more than any actual substantive policy changes.

  • -27

Sinister-sounding quotes like "controlling the flow of information" and "democracy-proofing our institutions" but nothing actually out of the ordinary in terms of real actions.

In that such sinister actions are perfectly ordinary, yes. Leaning on social media companies to suppress inconvenient stories, wiretapping the opposition campaign, fabricating evidence of Russian collaboration by the opposition, etc.

I'll remind you that the vast majority of the actual escalation has come from Republicans. Remember J6? Remember "the election was stolen!!!" 70% of Republicans still believe that crap.

So the Democrats have a whole bunch of riots, then steal an election, and when the Republicans have one riot and complain about the election being stolen that's the vast majority of the escalation?

So the Democrats have a whole bunch of riots, then steal an election

Once again, there's no evidence the election was stolen. Just an endless gish gallop from Trump, and his supporters motte-and-bailey'ing him with vastly weaker claims when pressed (e.g. "the election was stolen because the media is biased against Trump") before going right back to assuming the strong claims were true when they weren't being pressed.

  • -10

Look at you, escalating by claiming there's no evidence. There was that Georgia water main break. And the Pennsylvania election law changes.

The Georgia incident wasn't a water main break, it was a leaking toilet. Nobody was instructed to leave the ballot counting area. No ballots were impacted. This has been documented already.

Nobody was instructed to leave the ballot counting area.

NEW: The election department sent the ballot counters at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta home at 10:30 p.m., Regina Waller, the Fulton County public affairs manager for elections, tells ABC News.

Did you read my original source? It covers this:

"The Secretary of State's Office opened an investigation into the incident at State Farm Arena. Our investigation revealed that the incident initially reported as a water leak late in the evening of November 3rd was actually a urinal that had overflowed early in the morning of November 3rd, and did not affect the counting of votes by Fulton County later that evening."

The affidavit also states, in part, that "observers and media were not asked to leave. They simply left on their own when they saw one group of workers, whose job was only to open envelopes and who had completed that task, also leave," the affidavit said.

Yes, yes, the crooked officials investigated themselves and found they did nothing wrong.

That's a pitifully weak argument that you could advance anywhere, anytime. You need to establish a larger pattern for your sentence to be anything other than hot air. And obviously, history shows us the larger pattern is that self-investigations in democracies actually do usually turn up the truth, especially when it comes to historically robust institutions like the election mechanisms in the US.

Since you seem allergic to actual evidence, I'll provide some even though I don't need to. North Carolina's board of elections investigated themselves and found an actual (rare) absentee ballot scheme. Indiana's secretary of state office investigated themselves and found they had purged a lot of voters when they shouldn't have. Kansas investigated themselves and found they did in fact mislead people about provisional ballots and threw out a few more than they should have. In that same drama, back in 2018 so pre-2020 stuff, in Kansas the Secretary of State himself was convinced that tons of noncitizens were voting and fraud was widespread, sound familiar? He was absolutely demolished in court and by the facts. Let's look:

But things didn’t go well for him in the Kansas City courtroom, as Robinson’s opinion made clear. Kobach’s strongest evidence of non-citizen registration was anemic at best: Over a 20-year period, fewer than 40 non-citizens had attempted to register in one Kansas county that had 130,000 voters. Most of those 40 improper registrations were the result of mistakes or confusion rather than intentional attempts to mislead, and only five of the 40 managed to cast a vote.

So yeah. Election officials are safely assumed to be regular, mostly competent people who do their job and don't lie unless you have strong, strong evidence otherwise.

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