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No I think 2020 disproves this quite soundly.
If you arrest dissenters and punish them severely enough; you’re fine
Ah, the myth of the stolen election rears its ugly head again.
As conspiracy theories go, it seems rather weak. I mean, the way election disputes were settled pre-Trump was generally through the SCOTUS. In 2020, Trump had the most conservative court any Republican could wish for, the one who would overturn Roe. If the Democrats had a way to blackmail the SCOTUS, we would not have gotten Dobbs.
Say what you will about the left, but they at least have the grace to accept a defeat at the ballot booth when they get handed one. With Trump/MAGA, it is not "the election was rigged because of this or that irregularity", but it is fundamentally "the election was rigged because our side did not win".
Also, who was arrested and punished for merely disputing the election result, exactly? It is a free country, you can claim that an election was stolen or that your neighbor is an alien impostor all day long. However, if you decide to do something about your beliefs, like storming the capitol or shooting your neighbor you will still get in trouble for that.
Ahem. somethingiswrong2024? The numbers are wrong? Lawsuits? Accusations that the voting machines were tampered with (after reassurances four years previously that nobody could meddle with the machines and it was the safest election ever)? Trump faked his own assassination attempts? Any querying of how elections are held, counted, or returned is right wing attempts to subvert elections and destroy democracy?
Stacey Abrams claiming she wuz robbed in Georgia?
There are conspiracy theorists on the left as well as on the right.
Sure. Both parties do their best to make the election outcome not reflect the will of the people, and both parties whine about how their loss does not reflect the actual sentiment of the population because the other side did that. Gerrymandering and making it maximally inconvenient for demographics who lean towards the opponent to vote while making it maximally easy for your demographics to vote (think "we will make you wait in line for hours" vs "there is a bus to pick the elderly up from care homes and ferry them to the voting booth") are time-honored strategies.
However, both these strategies and the exaggerated whining about them are of limited badness. The effects of gerrymandering on the outcome of a particular election can easily be determined with sixth-grade math, there is little dispute what the outcomes would have been if the districts were drawn differently, or the difference between seat distribution and popular vote. Likewise, wrongful claims of voter suppression are of limited badness, because they can not persuade the people who voted that their vote did not count, only that their candidate would have done better if the other voters were not suppressed.
By contrast, saying "the totals do not reflect the will of the people because of election fraud, i.e. either your vote did not make it into the totals, or the other side just stuffed the ballot with fake votes to win" is much more corrosive. The main selling point of democracy is that it offers people a way to change their government without all the bother of violently overthrowing it. Telling someone that the ballot box is broken is the same as telling them to use the cartridge box instead.
From the link, it seems that Stacey Abrams mostly did the former, whining about voter suppression. While some might be persuaded to rise in armed resistance despite their vote being counted because they think that there is some Black voter whose vote was suppressed, I feel the danger of that is limited -- the actual nucleus of such a resistance movement would have to be the suppressed voters, so if there are hardly any there is no movement.
By contrast, denying the legitimacy of the Biden election is a basic tenet of MAGA. It is not just a cope from the base (which we certainly have about 2024 on the left, like "Musk stole the election for Trump"), it is what a Republican congressman has to claim to believe to be in good standing with his party.
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"Grace to accept defeat" being utilizing their legion of plants already in government to harass their enemies and prevent their legitimate governance even after losses!
Not to mention rioting on inauguration day. And after the election in 2016.
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My point had nothing to do with whether the election was actually stolen. I was responding to the claim that democracy can’t work if the losing side doesn’t accept the legitimacy.
Many didn’t in 2020, yet hour democracy continues.
I'm not an American, but it seems the losing side did, grudgingly and for the most part, eventually accept the legitimacy. Not everyone, but enough. The majority at least, and the Republican Party as a whole.
That said, at least when seen from across the pond there was enough weirdness that, if the same thing were to happen in e.g. an African country, everyone internationally would've said it was sus. I'm not assuming there was enough fraud to actually change the election. I'm perfectly happy to recognize Biden's win. But none of it looked good, and I would expect better from a first-world democracy.
This is the insane thing that Democrats seemingly cannot get through their heads. If you went to any politically inclined person in 2000 and described the 2020 election without telling them the country, they would have assumed it was Russia or Iran or Congo. If you told anyone about California today without telling them its California, they would tell you to send in the UN to monitor the election because its almost certainly being manipulated.
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The left did not have the grace to accept defeat when they lost to Trump. Instead, see what Obama did on his way out. Biggest underdiscussed scandal of all time.
The left created a system that enabled fraud without significant ability to detect fraud. They then claimed the absence of evidence was evidence of absence.
The court you cite decided not to fix this system prior to the election; they weren’t going to overturn after the fact without fraud being established beyond a unreasonable doubt.
Georgia seemingly has proven shenanigans occurred.
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You're assuming that our democracy is still working
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