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Actual voting fraud convictions are extremely rare. Actual voting fraud is unknown as the Republican party was unable to perform any investigation into it for 30+ years.
The consent decree you reference hardly prevented investigation of voter fraud. As described in the 2009 decision modifying the decree, said that the RNC agreed (a consent decree is exactly what the name implies):
(a) comply with all applicable state and federal laws protecting the rights of duly qualified citizens to vote for the candidate(s) of their choice;
(b) in the event that [it] produce[s] or place[s] any signs which are part of ballot security activities, cause said signs to disclose that they are authorized or sponsored by the [RNC];
(c) refrain from giving any directions to or permitting their agents or employees to remove or deface any lawfully printed and placed campaign materials or signs;
(d) refrain from giving any directions to or permitting their employees to campaign within restricted polling areas or to interrogate prospective voters as to their qualifications to vote prior to their entry to a polling place;
(e) refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting; and the conduct of such activities disproportionately in or directed toward such districts that have a substantial proportion of racial or ethnic [minority] populations shall be considered relevant evidence of such a factor and purpose;
(f) refrain from attiring or equipping agents, employees or other persons or permitting their agents or employees to be attired or equipped in a manner which creates the appearance that the individuals are performing official or governmental functions, including, but not limited to, refraining from wearing public or private law enforcement or security guard uniforms, using armbands, or carrying or displaying guns or badges except as required by law or regulation, in connection with any ballot security activities; and
(g) refrain from having private personnel deputized as law enforcement personnel in connection with ballot security activities
That's it.
btw I think it's funny people downvoted a factually true comment that took some effort to dig up, and didn't even bother refuting it
Sadly, that is par for the course.
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What does this even mean? Are you assuming that voter fraud is only/primarily committed by Democrats? Because why would it be the Republican party's responsibility? And why/how were they "unable" to investigate the issue? What was law enforcement doing this whole time?
I believe that he’s referring to this. Per the article: “After more than three decades, Republicans are free of a federal court consent decree that sharply limited the Republican National Committee’s ability to challenge voters’ qualifications and target the kind of fraud President Donald Trump has alleged affected the 2016 presidential race.”
Presumably, republican organizations that aren't the "RNC" would be able to do that? And there are a ton of those.
Or you know, law enforcement. I'm guessing the counter-argument is that the consent decree that the RNC voluntarily agreed to had such a profound chilling effect that it spooked the RNC and their allies from even raising the issue, even after the decree expired in 2018.
The RNC of 30 years prior, you mean? And aren’t consent decrees settlements to lawsuits? Seems pretty disingenuous to call it “voluntary” when the nigh-certain alternative was an even worse court-imposed judgment.
Yeah, surely the prior three decades of forced atrophy had no effect on their ability to effectively discover and root out such things. Two years should be more than enough to get them up to speed! Not to mention that they obviously extensively raised the issue in 2020, their next earliest opportunity, much to your oft-voiced chagrin.
Why do you think the prospect of a worse court-imposed judgment was nigh-certain? Do you believe it's disingenuous to label voluntary any lawsuit settlement? I'm assuming the RNC is not a mom & pop business whose legs start shaking at the sight of a legal document. They had the resources to litigate the allegations and chose not to, I'm assuming because the chances they had a meritorious defense was dim.
Right, we're back in familiar unfalsifiable country. If the RNC lose on an issue it's not because it wasn't meritorious but rather because the RNC is perpetually helpless and unable to defend its interests against an onslaught of relentless attacks. These types of excuses can be self-soothing as a coping mechanism, but they're not very persuasive to other people.
You've conveniently supplied an easy answer to your own question:
Whether or not they had a meritorious defense, I cannot say. Either way, settling because you are highly likely to lose at trial is not "voluntary" in any meaningful sense, any more than cutting off your own finger to avoid someone else cutting off two.
Again, I neither asserted nor implied anything as to the legal merits of the RNC's position. I simply drew the obvious inference regarding the effects of the settlement on their institutional capacity to effectively engage the relevant issue, entirely independently of whether that settlement was warranted.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Republican Party. Now that I've sworn the oath, can I speak without further insinuations?
Cool. So to recap, @atelier 's explicit claim is that it's impossible to know how much voting fraud happens in this country because the RNC was subject to a 30 year consent decree about the conduct of their polling observers. Somehow (unsure how) this on its own hobbled their institutional capacity to such a devastating degree that they were left helpless from effectively engaging on the issue of voter fraud, even years after the decree was lifted and despite significant motivation and resources on their side. Somehow (again, unsure how) the consent decree about polling observer behavior had ramifications that extended well beyond to other arenas, and crippled the RNC's ability to litigate, investigate, or otherwise advocate against voter fraud. Simultaneously, institutions that would also have a strong interest in investigating voter fraud (such as law enforcement, or other republican organizations) abdicated their responsibility for some unknown reason. Of course, I'm setting aside the underlying assumption that only democrats engage in voter fraud.
I anticipate I'll be accused of a misleading summary. If so, it would be useful to know which step exactly is erroneous. For now I'll just refer you back to atelier's comment that kickstarted this thread.
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As much as I am annoyed by the Democrats saying "there is no almost no fraud in the places it is easiest to look and someone would have to have shit for brains to try to commit fraud", it is the same annoyance when Republicans forget their own commissions set up to exactly find fraud and then do not find any.
It is like there is no room for nuance at all and it is all signalling.
The investigation in Wisconsin didn't turn up definitive individual examples of fraud, but it turned up a lot of sketchy evasion of normal laws with hundreds of thousands of people avoiding normal voter ID procedures in 2020. If you're ever bored, I recommend a full read through of the report. The lack of security measures makes it difficult to trace individually fraudulent actions, but the overall impression one gets is not that this is a particularly secure process.
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The problem is that just because an event is rare, it can still be high-impact when it does occur.
I tend to hate that the Blue Tribe talking point states that "WIDESPREAD" voter fraud is a myth.
Because it doesn't have to be 'widespread' to have a significant effect on outcomes. Even accounting for how ambiguous that term is. If 50,000 fraudulent votes are cast in one precinct, that might not count since it wasn't taking place elsewhere?
And the rarity of it occurring in the past is not sufficient evidence that it won't be widespread in the future, if conditions change.
Of course, the Dems spent years alleging Russian 'interference' with the 2016 election despite no direct evidence, so I also don't think they've demonstrated good faith on the issue anyway.
Surely "widespread" here means "significant"
Of course there is evidence of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election.
How many votes were flipped, added, or otherwise how was the actual outcome impacted by Russian interference?
No clue. Perhaps not at all, though of course some states were so close that even a small change might have been significant. But I did say only that there is evidence of attempts to influence the election. That seems pretty clear.
So was it or was it not appropriate for Democrats to claim Russia helped Trump win the election?
Especially one year+ after the fact?
Was that backed by the evidence or not?
If you are asking whether it is appropriate for anyone to intimate that the election was not legitimate: No. Absent something like hacked software or massive ballot box stuffing which is so extreme that it is reasonable to conclude that the vote count did not reflect how actual voters actually voted, it is not appropriate for anyone to claim that an election is not legitimate. So, eg, it is inappropriate to claim that the 2000 Bush victory was illegitimate (it is also unreasonable to make that claim, but that is a topic for another post).
If you are asking whether is it is reasonable to claim that Clinton would have won, absent the Russian efforts, let’s do the math. The closest states that Trump won were Michigan (0.3% margin); Wisconsin (1% margin); and Pennsylvania (1.2% margin). Had Clinton won all three, she would have won the election. So, the question becomes: Is it reasonable to claim that the Russian efforts caused 0.6% +1 of voters to switch from Clinton to Trump (half the largest margin, plus 1)? Based on my understanding of the poli sci literature, I am personally skeptical that campaigning, etc, have much of an effect on voters. And, it is my understanding that the volume of Russian intervention was, in the grand scheme of things, not all that large. So, I, personally, would not make that claim. Nevertheless, there are a lot of unknowns in this area, and given that the margins were so small, it seems to me that reasonable minds might differ on this question, so, no, it is not completely unreasonable to claim that Clinton would have won, absent the Russian efforts.
Is it reasonable to intimate that the election's results are correct, but that Trump would have won had the processes around elections not illegally been changed in various states?
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Interference versus influence.
Whats the difference?
I don't understand your question.
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I am not aware of anyone pointing out 50 fraudulent votes within a single district, let alone 50,000. If something like 50,000 in a single district was something that had actually been shown to have happened, that argument would be a lot more relevant. Particularly if those 50,000 fraudulent votes came from individual people who should not have been allowed to vote individually deciding to vote.
Basically my issue with this is the type of fraudulent vote they're going after here isn't the type of fraud that I would expect to swing elections.
Agreed.
Honestly I feel like all the talk of fraud is a distraction from things that are legal but have significant effects on voter turnout (e.g. polling place locations, canvassing, changing laws around mail-in ballots, etc).
To expand this point, a great number of things were done along these lines in 2020 that were not legal, and yet were not fraud either, e.g. officials changing rules regarding mail-in ballots without the legal authority to do so.
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Cool, but I am not sure why this was a response to me.
Because you stated that Republican Commissions to find fraud tend not to find fraud.
Which is not really proof that we shouldn't place measures against fraud in place, or that Republicans are wrong to worry about it, even if they are obnoxious in their arguments.
The guy I responded to said that Republicans were "unable to perform any investigation into it for 30+ years."
There are absolutely investigations into fraud. Your very sentence implies their existence!
I do NOT think that, as many Democrats say, that "looking for fraud and not finding any means we can stop looking."
But I also do NOT think that "if we look for fraud and and do not find enough to flip an election, that means we were just not permitted to investigate hard enough."
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