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Notes -
Something else I just thought about. We know about dozens of people who knowingly distributed false information connected to elections - namely, the lie that Biden's laptop has been a foreign intelligence fake. We know that it significantly influenced the elections. We know there wasn't not only a single conviction but even a single attempt to open investigation into the matter. I think this should bury the idea that anybody is interested in prosecuting "election interference" that is committed by lying. Not that I would call for it - on the contrary, such a prosecution would be as big a spit in the face of the First Amendment as this one is, but it doesn't happen. Which clearly establishes the zeal for truth, even misguided, is not why this prosecution happened. What was the real motive I leave as the exercise for the reader.
No, that would be more of something like - statements of fact / material statements relating to a political candidate or issue, which would receive broad First Amendment protection, as restricting that gives the govt/courts a way to directly censor some political positions. That's clearly different than issues solely related to election procedure like 'where and how to vote'.
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Sure. If you blow up a polling station, or ruin the road leading to one, or sabotage people's cars so they can't come to the election - or all your voting machines have mysterious malfunction all over the district and voters can't vote for many hours - there could be grounds for prosecution. At least if Democrats don't win there could be. But just putting a meme (clearly a ridiculous one) out there on the internet doesn't do any of that.
That needs to be proven, and it wasn't.
Nobody interfered with that right. The assumption that some idiot didn't vote - which is not proven even in a single case! - is not interfering with the right, they very well could vote if they wanted to. If I convince you not to go to vote, because it's useless and the system is rigged - would I be convicted for "interfering with the rights"? After all, as we all know, "the system is rigged" is a lie, or at least the government knows that, which is enough - and here you go. Then if I try to convince people that they shouldn't vote for a certain candidate who is running unopposed, because he's a piece of shit - that also would be interfering with elections. Then there's almost no space left between that and jailing me for advocating any electoral position - after all, if I convince you to vote certain way, I also convinced you not to vote some other way, and we already agreed convincing you not to vote is a crime.
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Spiritually worse, because they miss out on the precious "I voted" sticker? Or quantitatively half as bad, because the margin of victory changes by 2 for everyone tricked about a candidate but only by 1 for everyone tricked about a polling rule?
I'm all for limiting fraud claims to polling rule deceptions, both because that gives a bright line to limit abusive prosecution and because there's way less room in those cases for plausible deniability by the deceitful, but that doesn't mean the deceitful in other cases should be proud of figuring out how to promote a falsehood with twice the effectivity and none of the criminal liability.
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