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These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
We also had the problem with the database earlier this month, so some of these comments aren't available in their original context. However I am reposting the comments themselves below; it's not a perfect solution, but in various ways it beats the alternatives I could think of. That said, if you find any errors in need of correction (misattributed comments, for example) please feel free to @ me. The number of copy/paste errors I made in the process of trying to put this together is... not small.
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Notes -
It would only take a short amount of time before any of the phrases you used would be seen by the people they are being used to describe as just as hostile and presumptive as "election denier".
If you're going to claim the election laws were changed and found illegal, that's a claim you are making. It's entirely reasonable to ask you to explain what you're referring to with a source. I assumed you were referring to PA and WI, but I wanted to be sure. Regardless, the legality of the election methods themselves is of very little importance if you're not from that state - if a state had legalized letting non-citizens vote, that would hardly be a consolation to those who think the election was stolen.
This matters greatly because simply saying those rules were illegal isn't the same as saying the vote counts were inaccurate due to fraud, to say nothing of whether the outcome in WI or PA was actually changed as a result. For example, the WI court ruling on the drop boxes being illegal also said there was no indication of voter fraud in the election, though their citations might leave someone questioning the election frustrated.
Sure, not every failed court challenges was due to the facts/proof, some were dismissed over jurisdiction and standing. But ultimately, court challenges aren't, in my view, some lynchpin against Trump's claims.
I have no problem with a candidate declaring the election is unfair and then wanting investigations. But there is an obligation, I think, to accept that this claim is falsifiable. If the evidence coming back is that there's no clear evidence of fraud, then Trump ought to rethink his conviction on the matter.
A common argument against this line of reasoning is that fraud is undetectable, so not having clear proof is an unfair standard. But I rarely see people advance this to the conclusion that we therefore don't know who necessarily won the 2020 election, I only see it being used to argue that Trump did have the election stolen from him. That's a stronger argument that does need to have proof shown.
You should be obligated to do this because this because it divides the country further if matters of truth are subordinated to one's partisan/ideological goals. You cannot claim to be a rational or reasonable truth-seeking person if you cannot accept a truth which might hurt your in-group.
Speaking practically, denying the outcome of the 2020 election matters more to the people who lost than the people who won. If you cannot convince people that you are not reasonable or rational, that you cannot be persuaded that you might be wrong, then people will rightfully dismiss anything you have to say. You can sit back and revel in the supposed ignorance of your opposition, but they're in power right now and it seems like they're going to be there for a while.
But if losing while truth is apparently on your side is what you want, then I suppose you can ignore this obligation.
If that's the case, why do you insist on using the term election denier? After all, any of these other terms would mean the same thing anyway eventually, so why not use those terms and avoid my complaints? Frankly, this is nonsense. You use the term because you want to smuggle in your opinion as the default while signaling disdain to others.
the exact details of the examples aren't relevant to the actual dialogue we're having about obligations and the correct default position to analyze them, you don't really care about the exact facts of them, and your dispute with the examples you already know of which fit my description do not hinge on the exact details of statement
Whether or not "fraud" (whatever that means) is done, if elections are done illegally in contravention to law, you cannot then claim "well, actually there was an agreed upon method which was done so you are bound to the outcome" because it's explicitly not an "agreed-upon method." The numbers of affected ballots were higher than the difference in vote totals, the only plausible standard given the way elections are done and the reason it's the legal standard in the US.
If "fraud" is happening in another state which affects the outcome of a federal election, a politic both parties are part of, it makes sense people in one state would want to dispute that because it effects them and their votes which is why there is a process explicitly written in the US Constitution specifically to do this.
First, this obligation is goofy. "Do I care about this only because I lost?" Every person is going to think and say "no." Then what? This is why this just looks like an attempted beachhead in order to expand these obligations toward your default position. What you really want is to get election losers to have to meet some growing obligation and standard to analyze "facts," which you will morph and grow into proving something to others who are hostile, like you, for what I'm sure are purely truth-seeking, rational motives. This is why I claimed it looked like you're trying to smuggle in your default position because otherwise these meek obligations you're trying to get others to agree on don't matter.
Second, it divides the country to adopt your default position, demonstrated by the fact that is what we saw in the 2020 election, which is Hlynka's point, not that he or other "losers" don't care about "facts." Hlynka's opinions and election "deniers" claims are disprovable; the issue is you have no facts which are good enough to convince them and no explanations good enough to poster-board over their concerns and suspicions, and frankly any person who doesn't start from your default position, about the legitimacy of the election and its outcome. If this justifies obligations, I can think of a myriad number of obligations which conflict with and undermine your default position assumption.
The current standard: 'The election was legitimate, unless you can prove beyond reasonable doubt there was 'fraud,' and it has to be enough fraud to change the outcome, but also you have to do that while every portion of government who has that evidence will fight you tooth and nail, including lying to courts, destroying evidence, and refusing subpoenas (all without punishment) and you must do it before an incredibly hostile arbiter looking for any excuse to deny you and also the entire time we're going to try to demonize you in media, censor, make legal threats, and even criminally prosecute you' works fine in a stable society where there exists a very high trust in elections, but we're seeing how easy it is to destroy that trust and will continue to see it degrade as elections continue to be clownish jokes as everyone discovers how they're actually done in the US. This is why Hlynka harps on this not being the correct default position because it won't convince losers whenever anything slightly suspicious happens.
Because your objection isn't the phrase, it's the meaning you perceive behind it. The demand to use another phrase for the same thing is part of another euphemistic treadmill.
Whose law? The federal governments or any particular state's? As I said, you don't have a claim to the latter - your concern is whether or not there was fraud, not whether that election was done illegally.
See, that's the funny thing - Hlynka doesn't even care about this standard, nor do some people on this site, apparently. It says something that the most trivial of intellectual hurdles is apparently beyond what he requires of others. More to the point, just because someone says "I'm not doing this because I lost" doesn't mean we have to believe them. There are ways of evaluating whether someone is being rational that can find clearly irrational people even when we allow for ambiguity.
In your view, am I or am I not trying to establish a "beachhead"?
How can they be disproven when in the same breath, I'm told that fraud is undetectable, but we also know it must have occurred? If the former is true, then you can't deny the possibility of no fraud. If the latter is true, then it's disprovable, but you have to provide evidence of it. Yet, I see multiple people using the former as their justification for the latter. You have to pick one and stick with it, no jumping between stances when it suits you. (I mean "you" in the general sense, not just you specifically).
Moreover, if someone wants to come to the conclusion that we fundamentally cannot know, based on facts, whether the election was stolen or not, then it's very curious how this never comes accompanied with a suggestion for which outcome is more likely: stolen election or not. I understand why this happens, but it's very telling that Hlynka and those who agree with him on this issue don't seem to care about evaluating what their real objection to the election actually is.
And it doubly won't convince them if their real objection is the outcome of the election, not its integrity.
But Hlynka isn't interested in asking himself or others if that's actually the case. What a shame.
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