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Hold on. I grew up in Oregon, they have had mail in ballots for a very long time, and nothing yet has surfaced as a problem despite this worry of yours that vote-buying is possible.
I’m of the school of thought that the system is responsive enough that we can actually wait, yes actually wait until we start to see hints of an actual problem before taking action. Otherwise just let things take their normal course, that has a long history of decently functioning checks and balances.
That system, which involves judges sometimes making calls in cases that don’t allow for the full regular process to play out, due to time constraints and the nature of a national emergency, is a fine way to resolve things. Sometimes I think a few judges overstepped. That’s not okay to be upset about, but it’s also normal. Nothing was diabolical about it. And in fact despite the so-called massive weaknesses of how things played out, practically zero evidence of fraud showed up to court. Due process after the fact was followed, and that due process determined that most every allegation was either worthless or unsubstantiated.
Moreover, guess what? People in every state are still armed with democracy even now. Many but not all states have reverted parts of their covid changes. And in all states, if voters want to “tighten” (quote marks because it’s a misnomer, IMO) voting laws, they are perfectly free to vote to that effect and elect representatives who share their views to make or revert changes moving forward.
Classic example is Raffensburger in Georgia. Voters re-elected him with a significant margin. In other words, The People we’re perfectly happy with how the process went.
I didn't write this was only a "worry" about "vote-buying." The "worry" of others I described was how mail-in ballots are far more prone to various types of fraud and other concerns, one of which was "vote buying" tying the comment into the above about the importance of secret ballots in "democracy"; whether or not this is done through "vote-buying," isn't necessary, but there are more than enough "hints" of this happening with the target gift-card description not being something I made up but something which was alleged to have happened in Las Vegas, Nevada. The affidavit of which was collected as part of a filed election lawsuit.
How would you know whether or not these "checks and balances," are decently functioning? What do you think are the current "checks and balances"? Could you describe to us the apparatus which investigates this in Oregon? Could you detail for us some of the investigations they've done in Oregon? Do you know which, if any, of these "decently functioning checks and balances," were discarded or ignored in Oregon in the last few elections?
What is your level of knowledge about how the election system, i.e., registering, printing, sending, collecting, counting, canvassing, etc., for the state of Oregon?
dozens of binders of sworn affidavits showed up to court in many states, but those affidavits and lawsuits weren't heard on the merits
and the "process," wasn't followed either, with an easy example being the district court responsible for expedited process in the Trump's filed election contest simply refusing to start the process, an appeals court dragging their feet and refusing to make the district court do the process, and then that lower court declaring the whole thing was moot because of Jan 6
Did you know that?
You keep using this word "due process," but what does it mean to you? "Due process" doesn't necessarily determine something on the merits, so making a statement about evidence which exists and was determined by a court to be "worthless or unsubstantiated" is simply wrong and evidences a lack of knowledge about this topic.
In the above example, the explicit process wasn't followed. So was that the "due" process? Or does it just not matter because Raffensberger was elected a year later anyway?
First, your specific reference to a Las Vegas lawsuit, as near I can tell, does not exist. There was this story? If that's it, the fact you are misremembering specifics that do not exist is concerning. If you mean that story, it was about a GOTV effort that offered a raffle entry to Native Americans for voting (only illegal if proof of voting is required to enter the raffle, something the news story doesn't really address) and perhaps gave gas cards to voters who were in remote locations (apparently, legal if the gas cards are used to go to the polls, so that one might be a question mark).
If vote buying actually occurred, much less if it occurred on a scale needed to actually tip an election, we would know about it. Conspiracies are easy to hide for a few people, for a few isolated cases. Conspiracies that are capable of actually tipping an election? Practically zero chance they are undiscovered.
As to the history of how the balances work: a simple google will lead you to the Oregon SoS page which will tell you:
So clearly they are on the lookout but consistently don't find much. Going farther back? "[T]he Division obtained 38 criminal convictions for voter fraud out of the 60.9 million ballots in Oregon elections cast over a 19-year period". Oregon has an extensive and well-tested system of voting by mail with very little history of issues of nearly any kind and nothing I have ever seen gives me any reason to think otherwise.
As to the legal process. Maybe you don't know how courts work? I am starting to genuinely wonder. Sometimes, a lawsuit is filed, and it's so obviously false, unsupported, or has such a disproportionate ask (or of course lack of standing/wrong jurisdiction) that a court declines to even consider it. This is not a random gut decision but a process involving often multiple hearings and submissions from lawyers. In these cases, even though nothing is publicly examined and goes through some sort of trial-like process, the judges certainly look at and study the submissions they receive. They then evaluate the submission on its merits. News organizations as well as citizens kept a close eye on these and virtually none of them panned out -- and huge majorities of people actually in the know and experts on election processes, when they actually examined these affidavits, almost always found them to be poorly researched, based on hearsay only, misunderstandings of legitimate vote counting processes, etc. All this to say, it's certainly due diligence (due process, if you want to get real technical, is a more specific term about individual rights, but I'm using it in the broadly acceptable and widely used sense of "to fully and fairly traverse the full normal procedures").
There's basically a mountain of reasons to believe that by and large the voting system works pretty darn well, and by that token I refuse to be drawn in to some off-topic epistemic debate. The whole thing just frankly reeks of cognitive distortion and confirmation bias on a massive national scale. That's why Trump never actually settles on a single list of reasons why the election was "rigged", because it wasn't evidence -> conclusion, it was "I feel like I won" -> "let's seize and publicly endorse any and all claims that match but the specifics don't matter because I am so sure I won"
No. You get a target gift-card if you allow your ballot to be collected.
If only this were true, but it's not "hidden" you just didn't know about it.
Does this webpage constitute your understanding of all the questions I asked? If so, this doesn't inspire confidence you have any granular knowledge about these topics at all; In the few states I've worked politics in (not Oregon), the SoS/AG and other parts of the government do not have a good apparatus to catch voter fraud; they essentially just rely on local election officials to report things and they sometimes look into a few of them to make a show of it. Local election officials are not equipped to catch voter fraud; they rely on the legal requirements as to what constitutes a "legal ballot" to fight fraud. If those requirements are removed or simply ignored (as happened en mass in 2020), then you have destroyed the "checks and balances" you claim work well because they were ignored and not enforced.
Courts didn't throw these lawsuits and contests out because they entirely lacked merit, but for lack of standing, mootness, etc. Lack of standing doesn't have to do merits of any particular substantive case, it's something which was dreamed up 100 years ago to enable courts to simply refuse to get involved. Mootness has to do with the wanted remedy being now impossible or the underlying conflict not mattering anymore. In some election cases such as the election contest in Georgia, it's because the lower court flat out refused to schedule a hearing despite it being required, by law, for them to do just that, and then once Jan6-20 rolled around they simply declared the contest moot anyway and discarded the case.
Judges and clerks do regularly look at the "merit" part of cases even when they dispose of them for the reasons I described above, however, that doesn't mean they "found" them to be lacking or however else you characterized it. In normal cases, this typically does influence judges into massaging or overlooking procedural errors. In a case like the election lawsuits and contests for an institutionally disliked President to "overturn an election," the strength of the merits has an inverse effect because Courts were desperate to simply not be involved. Again, Trump's GA election contest is a good example.
Given a situation where a litigant shows up to court with a lawsuit, the court tells them they're not the proper party to file the lawsuit, and doesn't allow them to present any substantive evidence in court, implying the underlying evidence is garbage because it "practically zero evidence showed up in court" is simply dishonest. There was a ton of "hints," and a ton of evidence, but the fact none of it "showed up in court" is a condemnation of the legal system and not a defense of it.
that's not what "due process" means, especially "substantive" due process, and again, I specifically cited a case which didn't "fully and fairly traverse the full normal procedures"
when you use statements like these in direct connection to legal arguments, using a vernacular or general definition of "due" "process" is going to confuse who expect the word to be used in the legal definition (whose implication you're using to give more weight to your assertion)
"huge majorities" huh? How would you know? Have you looked at a single one?
even if one were to believe this is true, and it is sadly not if you understand how elections happen and votes are counted in the real world in districts all over the country, the voting system "working pretty darn well" and still having enough failure modes to sway the results of very close elections, e.g., when the highest office in the land is decided on tens of thousands of votes across 5 states
refereeing in a football game can be pretty good generally, but one wrong call can decide the outcome of a game
your comments avoid specifics and want to talk about generalities and imply because of those generalities that the specifics don't particularly matter on net
and I think it's because you don't really know any of the specifics about the vote process, the vote counting, the fraud allegations, the filed election contests, the filed lawsuits, etc., you just sort of have a good feeling about it therefore people are wrong or something and I do not think proving any particular specific thing is going to dislodge this belief in you
is that accurate? What type and amount of evidence do you think would change your mind from "everythingisfine" to "maybe I don't know if it is"?
I looked at a non random but still what seemed to be adequate sampling of the actual court cases within a month or two or the election and in pretty much every case, saw nothing at all to indicate extensive fraud. This includes not just the allegations but also looking into the actual comments and rulings by judges in some of these cases. I did see a lot of fraud claims simultaneously disproved. Based on that sampling I concluded that the process seemed to be working just fine. Obviously it’s been a while and I feel little need to revisit that, especially given that every specific brought up in this site so far over the past few months when it’s come up has turned out to be hogwash. Classic example: this supposed target gift card scam. I can’t find anything at all about it on Google. Zero. And the fact that you still declined to provide a source is absolutely screaming at me.
Also, precedent beats speculation. We do have a great precedent for a disputed election! Bush vs Gore. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. I know people have mixed feelings about the results, but the very fact that a legitimate grievance went through the full process, strongly implies that the same will happen again to future legitimate cases. And that was escalated from a state, Florida, that was horrifically unprepared for a recount and had poor procedures in place. So not only have we a demonstrated court escalation even when local government process is poor, we have a lot of other states that took lessons and tightened things up in terms of more and better written and followed procedures and many other improvements.
Meanwhile a lot of the 2020 lawsuits had trouble finding lawyers to pursue them, much less expert witnesses who declined to participate in droves once they saw the “evidence”.
You looked at Trump's GA election contest, which I specifically mentioned 4 times now and you've seen no evidence of any fraud? It was filed "within a month or two" of the election, but you decided to avoid the election contests filed by the Trump campaign by lawyers representing Trump and the campaign? Gosh, if only I specifically linked this case, the one I've talked about 4 or 5 times, you'll read it then, huh?
Let's say I give you a link to the exact sworn affidavit where a person describes offering people at their apartment complex target gift-cards for unenveloped ballots, what will that change? If you're honest with yourself, it will change nothing and you'll have the same opinion as before just perhaps a slight admission of "okay there was vote-buying/fraud, but not enough to change the outcome and it's just this one incident" which is the motte and bailey game which is normally played here.
I've found people who write comments like yours who are unwilling to do the legwork and want to pick out one example, demand it be spoonfed linked to them, ignore other examples they could also easily find, and in the end they don't really care about the specific incident anyway. Again, there are thousands of affidavits attesting to "fraud" across the country. Have you read a single one?
yeah? could you go ahead and describe the context of the lawsuit, who sued whom, what it was specifically over, what they sued for, what was done at the lower court level, and the issue which went up and down and up again?was it an election contest or not?
did the lower Florida court simply refuse to schedule the first hearing to start the process, i.e., specifically denying the process to the party filing?
the truth is you simply do not have granular knowledge about these topics or lawsuits
You can go watch the disbarment hearing going on right now, live, for one of Trump's attorneys John Eastmen to maybe understand part of the reason why this is the case; you can even watch his first witness, retired Supreme Court of Wisconsin judge, Michael Gableman give you a detailed account of what he found in his independent investigation authorized by the Wisconsin legislature into the 2020 election.
Enjoy!
Dude. LMGTFY link... I can't find anything. I'm like 5 pages in. I LITERALLY CANNOT find the claim, and suspect you can't either, or else you would have given me a link. Instead you perform a CLASSIC gish-gallop, throwing out a ton of detailed questions and zero actual answers nor any actual claims. I decide to call you out on one specific piece of bullshit and you dodge the question.
You know what I DO see? Articles like this that cite some of these affidavits. They are poor quality. Misunderstandings of proper procedures, claims that poll workers were grumpy with observers, even one that talks about how he just can't believe so many military members voted Biden. Seriously? What else do I see? Oh yes, an example of a judge who looked at evidence directly in Michigan and called it "generalized speculation" and "simply not credible". You have a great article here that also mentions some of these allegations. And this is only one example of many. For example:
This is not only NOT evidence ("I heard someone else say...") but this claim is literally impossible and has been proven false. These are the kinds of allegations we are talking about. There were dozens of lawsuits and rather than instantly suspect some sort of conspiracy among both GOP and DNC nominated judges alike, doesn't it sound much more likely that there's just nothing there? I strongly suspect that this likely nonexistent Target gift card buying falls under this category: "I was talking with my neighbor and HE said that someone offered him a gift card to vote" is very different than "I had a man knock on my door and offer me a gift card for my ballot, which I reported to the police and there is a paper trail proving it". Organized door canvassing is very obvious and that kind of vote-buying is very blatant. I find it extremely unlikely that such an effort occurred on any sort of scale undetected beyond a single affidavit.
You accuse "commenters like me" of moving goalposts or playing a motte-and-bailey game, but I could just as easily (and supported by evidence galore) say that the theories of how fraud happened are far worse offenders. What exact fraud occurred? Was it coordinated? Was it widespread? Please answer clearly. Bonus points for having the same opinion back in 2020, unchanged.
You want a specific claim? I claim, and practically everything seems to back this up, that 1) no deliberate county or larger scale coordinated efforts exist to fraudulently manipulate either vote totals or ballots, 2) that any fraud that did occur was both sporadic and unfocused in nature, and 3) occurred in roughly comparable scales to decades long precedent for electoral fraud, perhaps with a very modest allowance for Covid complications independent of the actual people on the ballot. I think that captures at least the gist of it. Notice the scale component. It matters. It's not just some motte-and-bailey, it's literally the criteria for determining how much we should care both as individuals, societies, and government bodies about fraud!! I of course support prosecuting individuals if it has any material deterrent effect, and increasing election funding and transparency, but otherwise why bother fighting a problem that doesn't really matter?
I do love that you provided a lone example, the Gableman report. I assume it's this one?. The one that recommends decertification of the results, which is both meaningless grandstanding from a practical standpoint and agreed by virtually everyone to be specifically illegal and unconstitutional? That aside, of course there are some good suggestions and some bad ones too that I do hope the legislature discusses, but most of them are process-oriented. In terms of content the report appears to focus on some Zuckerberg money that was sent to some counties to improve their election processes and help with extra covid costs. Which... well you might feel that it was bad, but the so-called statistical reasoning that appeared elsewhere in the thread about its supposed impact on vote turnout looks highly suspect to me. And more importantly a Bush-nominated judge explicitly allowed the money, which was upheld on appeal. So basically the process was followed just fine. Yes, I do read primary sources where practical and needed, thank you very much. And it's also... not even a fraud allegation, no vote counts nor ballots were changed. I can't emphasize this enough.
It's helpful here to separate the whole "voter disenfranchisement" (or "voter suppression" or whatever term is in vogue) debate on some level from the "fraud" one, as they are in many ways different cans of worms, and we've been talking about fraud. I think the former is beyond our scope... but notably, it is an absolutely massive paradigm shift to move AWAY from fraud/vote-buying/hacking/etc. and into the realm of, for lack of a better phrase, regular but high-stakes political maneuvering that's part of the normal lower-d democratic process (for better or worse). They are two different worlds.
I say that but I just can't help myself but to mention: Gableman's report also contains hilarious statements such as the following, where he - and I kid you not - forgot to include a citation, instead leaving in a "(CITE)" placeholder instead, like I did way back in high school once:
And, I assume, the reason no citation could be found easily is that the statement is... well, literally and objectively wrong. The phrase is old and has been used in both partisan and nonpartisan contexts. Just one example here from 1976 (of many possible) I plucked out of a google search that explicitly refers to "nonpartisan get-out-the-vote activities". It's the cumulative impact of things just like that which make the whole effort seem amateurish and further reduces my trust in the source.
How do you think we could make this a productive dialogue? You're demanding a specific links to an incident which you've already admitted in your own comment you don't really care about and wouldn't affect your thinking. We've moved from "hints" of vote-buying to now implicitly demanding a bullet-proof criminal conviction with enough scope to affect the outcome of the election in Nevada or else it doesn't really matter.
Gish gallop? When you make a variety of general assertions about topics you have little knowledge about, my string of questions are trying to get you to recognize what you don't really know. The truth is you don't know much with respect to Bush v. Gore or how that compares to Trump's election contests or other lawsuits about the election. I didn't skip along from refusing to spoonfeed you a link to an affidavit you don't care about to spam a bunch of other examples or topics. You're the person who brought Bush v. Gore up. I've specifically talked about 2 specific examples total, the gift-card incident and the Trump election contest in GA (which you've entirely ignored).
This is what a gish-gallop looks like:
can't find specific case I described which you don't really care about anyway? Okay, let's spam a bunch of derpy articles from journalists who have curated examples which you think shows those examples and allegations are nonsense, and therefore use that set in order to make claims and implications to reinforce your belief generally about the affidavits, the lawsuits, the contests, and the election
this is what you rely on regularly; spam responses to google searches which you read the titles of and convince you something is the majority or even near universal belief when it simply is not
this is the classic gish-gallop and the classic fallacy which it's used with
Don't you find it slightly interesting that when you search "example of X fraud" on google, it feeds you a bunch of articles which reinforce your belief that there wasn't any fraud, really, and basically everyone agrees with you about that?
That's not the lone example. I've specifically and repeatedly mentioned the Georgia election contest for both evidence of fraud as well as an example of how "due" "process" wasn't followed. You've ignored this for 3 comments now. I also mentioned the John Eastman disbarment hearing in response to you claiming Trump had trouble finding lawyers implying it's because his cases were so bad (as an aside, there were many lawsuits not connected with Trump which he had no control or involvement with whatsoever. IIRC, he was only directly involved with <5). In it, Eastman gives an excellent breakdown of a flurry of election lawsuits all over the country as the bar attorney attempts to trip him up in a CLASSIC gish-gallop similar to the one you've attempted here. Gableman, his first witness , was something mentioned in the context of that hearing. Also, I didn't mention the report at all and was referring to his testimony.
and even if I did mention the interim report (I didn't), alleging sending investigators out and finding people who voted who aren't legally allowed to vote is, in fact, alleging fraud and changing vote totals; I cannot emphasize this enough
frankly, I don't think continuing this is productive or that you're genuinely interested in this topic so forgive me if this is my last response
I do appreciate the response actually, even if it does happen to the the last. I do like to reassess my beliefs on occasion, though I've yet to see any reasoning or evidence forcing a reassessment, to be honest.
I guess from a bit more of a meta view, it feels a bit to me that maybe this comes down to a bit of a, for lack of a better word, epistemological disagreement? Sure, I'm not spending hours and hours scouring primary sources, but there are journalists who literally get paid to do so and report their findings. I know media trust is always a little sensitive, but my general sense is that enough journalists actually care and/or do their jobs that if there was real meat in these allegations we'd at least get a "recent findings in GA raise questions" article or two from at least one reputable publication. Wouldn't an actual election scandal be helpful for viewership numbers that journalists chase to the exclusion of all else, according to some? And I feel like I'm also capable of putting stories through a moderately decent sniff test. Many articles for example immediately after the election included examples of claims and then what the official response was. In most if not all cases, my assessment was that the official responses fully addressed each concern with high-quality information without suspicious gaps or non-answers.
So in that context, repeating a litany of detailed questions about e.g. Oregon election procedures that require far more effort to respond to than to type, feels like it's unclear if those are real questions, rhetorical ones, or simply aspersions about my subject matter expertise or lack thereof. Right? That's how it felt to me at least. And frankly, it's a little insulting that you are claiming that I somehow "have little knowledge about" these things when you yourself have done near zero legwork to back yourself up.
I mean, do you propose some other method of finding the truth? How did you arrive at your conclusion that the election was seriously questionable? That's an honest question.
In some sense maybe you are right about the Target Gift Card Fraud being ultimately unimportant, but I think the phrasing and quality of evidence can still serve as a basis for getting a sense of scale. That's why I brought up the example of hearsay about a neighbor being VERY different in its implications than a directly observed canvasser offering bribes -- they both can be described fairly as "someone was handing out gift cards for checking unsealed ballots". Yes of course I would read the source if linked. Yes, I made a good faith effort to find it. I was actually quite frustrated I could not, which led me to the completely defensible and logical conclusion that it must not exist other than you misremembering something!!! I focused on the report because I frankly hate video as a format and would rather do almost anything else other than watch court recordings (text is far superior for finding relevant portions of a longer topic efficiently).
I'm of course much more interested in an allegation like one much upthread where you claim "We're not talking about millions of votes needing to swap, but appx. 40,000 in any of 5 different states, any of which would change the outcome if a single one did something as simple as requiring canvassing hundreds of thousands of votes which had no signed chain of custody receipts (and no election officials have yet been charged despite this being a crime in multiple states like AZ)."
Let's look together! Maybe this could inform in terms of how, today, I might look into an allegation. Googling for chain of custody problems, there seems to be a very worrying Georgia Star article claiming there are a lot of custody receipts missing, potentially a lot of votes. Maybe that's it? But wait, no, looks like there's also an article that seems pretty well researched with plenty of specifics that looks credible. They located all but 8 of ~1500 of the custody receipts, and with one county person saying she was alone and another saying she was too busy. But only 78,000 drop box ballots were submitted, so even assuming maximum fraud for the missing cases, I don't think that implies all that many ballots. Hundreds maybe? Bad, possibly deserving investigation (which the article implies but doesn't outright state is ongoing), but not election-tipping (the margin was what, 12k?). I don't default to assuming fraud of course, given its historical rarity etc etc. which I've mentioned, but on balance this doesn't seem to be something that makes me doubt the whole election. I don't see any reason to doubt the quality of the reporting nor the response from the elections department, do you?
Okay okay, looks like you mentioned AZ originally, maybe you weren't referring to GA, so lets keep looking and wait! Look here! A hit from some random message board linking the same original aggregator thegatewaypundit (which has overt calls to action at the bottom of their articles, not a great sign of an unbiased source) that led me to the Georgia Star article before. Maybe this is a lead? 740,000 votes worth with missing documentation? Tracing, tracing... Oh. Original source appears to be a "resolution to reclaim Arizona's electors" from some MAGA guy running for office whose Twitter... oh he's reposting a 9/11 conspiracy theory, stuff about the rapture, US government child abduction, all within the last two days or so. Credibility down the toilet and I'm not going to scroll that far back in his history, which is filled with basically the classic Twitter reposting of any and all theories about fraud, so I think I'm okay dismissing him as a serial reposter/hearsay guy.
Hmm, that also doesn't seem like what you might be referring to. Let's keep looking. I also come across a nice report again with a seeming good quality that seems a partial response to I guess it's Kari Lake's claim and lawsuit about 300,000 worth of missing chain of custody documents? I sort of dislike "fact checks" despite their usefulness and know they can have unfair assessments, especially in their "ratings" which don't always match the long-form responses but this one has what, on its face, appears to be a good summary of the case results:
Hmm. We see not only no evidence of wrongdoing, but also the process working (trial granted for strongest counts) as well as the one possibly questionable action affecting... 50 ballots. I think this is probably the claim you were referring to, and decide to stop my search.
If you see a flaw in my investigation technique, I'm all ears. But you can only go through this same source-seeking process so many times, obtain a totally reasonable and believable answer from a good source or sources before you start to assume a pattern. Yes, assumptions bad, but I mean, that's multiple times now across the last few days that you've had plenty of chances to bring up evidence and have not produced anything but either disproven or questionable or small-scale stuff. And, not a single actual link. Only a sort of vague 'hey go dig this way'. So the question really needs to be asked:
If this isn't how a normal interested citizen investigates, then how should they??? What are your actual expectations? Please help me out here. I cannot see what's so wrong about this kind of moderate depth dive that discovers little and decides to resurface.
The question of, well does that make it okay for the system to persecute or come down hard on people with doubts (or more) about the results? To an extent I actually agree with you. I think your original comment made some good points. For example, the disbarment attempt seems a bit much. However at the same time I do think I have the faith that the proceeding will end up being fair. It's also a bit of an interesting question exploring "how bogus does a bogus case have to be" to deserve to lose a law license? Rules prohibit, I forget the exact phrase, but roughly "knowingly arguing something blatantly unconstitutional or being grossly negligent in not knowing how blatantly illegal what you're arguing is" and say it is deserving of punishment "up to and including" revocation of the license. There might be a smaller punishment. There might be the other angle about duty to client vs. duty to fact/good faith that comes up. But painting it as the only reason more lawyers didn't join up is patently unfair, and mixes up cause and effect. Lawyers were already dropping off cases like flies even before their integrity came into question, quite a contrast to 2000 where lawyers flooded into Florida in short order. And I truly do think that it was a case of, they agree to take a look at the evidence and decide that the chances of victory are extremely low. At least that's my impression. My certainty on that particular isn't incredibly high I will concede.
All this to say, bringing it back, that near as I can figure, you just start with a baseline, strong distrust of all things justice system and government and media at once, while I do not? And that might truly be an irreconcilable difference. We all, epistemically, at some point decide to place our trust in some people or organizations more than others, on some sort of basis (whether passed on from another person of trust, personal experience, personal logical reasoning, etc). Perhaps that might be a more productive, other thread kind of question to explore.
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