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Given the significant interest around the 2020 stolen election claims (definitely my favorite hobby horse topic), and the serious accusations that I have been weakmanning the overall category of election fraud claims, I would like to extend an open invitation to anyone interested in exposing the errors of my ways to a real-time discussion for a Bailey episode.
Here are the conditions I would suggest:
Are any of the above unreasonable or unfair? Do you have any suggested additions/changes?
I've been trying to set a conversation like this for years but haven't found any takers. @Dean, @jfk, @motteposting are the ones I know are sufficiently motivated and informed about the topic, and whom I'd most look forward to dissecting this topic with. Feel free to nominate anyone else you think would be good.
The best evidence that we have election fraud is that no one is using any of the many tools developed to detect and prevent financial fraud. We don't white hat test fraud prevention like we do in auditing, we don't audit votes verifying that people who are reported as voting filled out their ballots in compliance with the law. We don't do any of that, even though these tools widely known and used.
The prior should be that significant fraud exists until proven otherwise, by showing that the system catches frequent, thorough tests.
Assuming arguendo that voting fraud is possible because there aren't enough safeguards, I don't see how that gets us to 1) fraud did not cancel itself out and instead favored a particular candidate then to 2) the one-sided fraud was significant enough to affect results 3) the fraud remained undetected despite significant efforts to uncover it.
If someone just wants to argue that fraud is possible, I'll take whatever I can get, but I'm looking for the strongest possible claims.
I’m not knowledgeable enough about potential electoral fraud to get into much of a debate, but it does seem to me that any fraud should tend to favor Democrats over Republicans simply because it’s easier for Democrats to cheat.
As @SwordOfOccam pointed out, “the best check on election fraud at any scale is that people of various ideologies and parties make up the officials and volunteers in any given area, and all it takes is one witness to expose something.” The trouble is, that’s just not the case in all urban districts. In 2012, for example, 59 voting precincts in Philadelphia alone voted 100% for Obama. The linked article notes that precincts in Chicago and Atlanta did the same in 2008. It would be much easier to run up the tally in those areas, either via fraudulent votes or fraudulent tallies, than it would be in even the reddist of Republican precincts, since Republicans don’t cluster up in the same way that urban Democrats do, and there are always at least a few Democrats in the strongest Republican strongholds.
This is a coherent and testable theory and I appreciate you raising it. If anyone wants to either build on this or argue that it's the strongest 2020 stolen election claim, I'm happy to talk to them.
You're talking to them now.
Lewis2 said they're not knowledgeable enough to get into a debate, so I'm asking if there are other people willing to herald this argument as the strongest 2020 stolen election claim.
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