This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
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 -
No, Hlynka is clear that elections are negotiations and that the winners have to convince the losers to cede power. He says as much here. I can't show him wrong under his standard because it's not about facts - if the convincing fails because the losers don't like losing, Hlynka wouldn't tell them to accept it.
Moreover, Hlynka was never clear if he was a principled election fraud investigator (in the sense that he only cares about ensuring valid elections) or if he's only being that way because he doesn't like that the Republicans/conservatives don't have their man in the White House.
Facts, obviously, because my contention is that there isn't evidence of the election ultimately being stolen from Trump. I ultimately wouldn't have had a problem accepting a possible Trump victory in 2020 if that was the verdict at the time.
Hlynka is bucking because you're trying to smuggle in your default position by attempting to put burdens onto "election deniers." Assuming a default position isn't an argument based on facts, it's a choice of how you're going to analyze the conflict.
There were 74 million people who voted for Trump according to Wikipedia. Even if we think that number is too low, or that Biden had some part of his supposed 81 million votes forged from nowhere, it seems like reasonable to say that Trump supporters were not sitting out election day hoping that only others would vote him. They probably went and voted for him as well. If you accept this premise, then we seem to have the basis of an agreement to a contract - using established election rules, both sides would vote and the winner would be who got the most votes (nominally speaking). Trump supporters added their bit of strength to the validity of using the election as it ran to decide if Trump would continue to be the president.
Given this, I don't see why it's attempting to smuggle in my position as the default to say that the party who alleges the agreed-upon method was invalid due to fraud has to demonstrate why that is the case.
Because you're trying to shift the burden onto the people who are "election deniers," using terminology itself which is smuggling in your default position the election should be assumed to be legitimate unless there is a strong showing of facts to meet some high standard. It "seems reasonable" to do what? You think it's reasonable to have your default position and burden obligation and evidence standard. And that's fine by itself, but this language is all part of how you're attempting to simply assume the default position by fiat to shape the field against anyone who would question the results of the election.
Hlynka's point is that this default position is wrong in this context, the "agreed established election rules" were not followed or enforced, and additionally this is not the normal state of human affairs and that elections are negotiated "default positions" anyway and therefore it is wrong to use assumed legitimacy as the default position.
what agreed-upon method? election rules were changed by fiat in the months leading up to the election and courts wholly failed to address these issues leading to a even more clownish election than usual
much of the way the election was conducted was declared illegal after the election when the outcome could no longer be changed; much of the way the election was conducted in explicit contravention to state law, i.e., the "agreed-upon method"
Why would random people or even Trump be required to agree to the election is assumed legitimate standard because "his side" lost a bunch of court challenges about illegal election law changes? Your argument in support of the election is assumed legitimate standard rests on the claim the negotiated settlement and dispute resolution system is legitimate and then when I or others buck at that argument, are you going to zoom further out arguing the ___ system is legitimate therefore the negotiated settlement system is legitimate? It's smuggling your default position because it relies on another assumed default position in the first place and that one likely relies on another assumed default position. It's turtles all the way down.
the 2020 election wasn't decided by 7 million "votes," it was decided by
50,000 "votes" in5 stateswe're not talking about millions, we're talking about tens of thousands
What's the non-presumptive phrase to describe people who deny the 2020 election was legitimate, and why would it not be subject to the euphemistic treadmill?
What's the source for this?
"Required" is a strong word. But the case gets weaker with each failed court challenge. At some point, there's no vitality to it left.
That's not the point. The point is that millions of voters, who I suspect didn't think they could ignore the results of another state simply because the laws in that state changed, still went out and voted for Trump.
This isn't, in other words, a case where a disinterested party is being approached to accept the validity of the 2020 election, this is a case with a very much interested party.
Ultimately, this still leaves me no more persuaded on the "and then?" part of Hlynka's position. Even assuming that the truth of the 2020 election is unknowable, why is there no obligation for those think Biden didn't win fairly to consider how much of their motivation is simply losing the election?
Describing election disputers, election fortifier, election revisionist, election skeptic, etc., etc., doesn't need to be absent all presumption, but when you write a phrase like "election denier," you are at the extreme end of presumptive and it is another example of smuggling in your default position (not to mention your distain).
I'm not playing the "source?! source? You have a source?!" game in a dialogue about another user's statements around disputing the default position to judge a disputed election. Additionally, examples of election procedures, guidance, application, and rules in PA, WI, and others which were declared illegal are easy to find.
It depends on the challenge and the court holding. If a court declares your challenge isn't going to be heard because you cannot show you, specifically, will be harmed by this illegal rule, this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether some rule or procedure or application is legal let alone to the point where one can buttress a claim of an "agreed-upon" set of rules. This is the reason garbage journalists print "TRUMP LOST COURT CHALLENGE" headlines dozens of times to create this sort of narrative and implication, but it's nonsense.
If you're going to attempt to argue "then we seem to have the basis of an agreement to a contract," then this is required. Your statement itself also smuggles in a bunch of disputed assumptions around participation meaning something which it doesn't. Trump famously and repeatedly claimed he would not "concede" to the winner if he thinks the election is unfair, but somehow he accepted "the basis of an agreement to a contract" because he ran anyway? Or he voters/supporters did because they voted anyway?
Your argument is built on top of another default position argument whereby the shitty court system which wholly fails to address large parts of the electorate's concerns with elections, not to mention flatly ignoring explicit statutory language to the contrary, is legitimate and their declarations are presumptively right and form the basis for agreements. Is your response to this argument going to be another default position assumption about the system generally being legitimate therefore courts declarations are legitimate, no matter how stupid their decisions, therefore elections should be presumed to be legitimate? This is why I describe this as a turtles all the way down argument.
I suspect many millions of people who voted would answer "yes" to the question, "If another state has fraud in the way their election was conducted and it possibly affected the outcome, should the results be contested/set aside/redone/etc.?" Especially given there are outlined legal procedures, including an explicitly outlined process in the US Constitution itself, about going about doing exactly this.
Some voters discovered this process after they lost and may have been partly motivated by losing, but then what does this have to do with you adopting your default position? Unless someone declares they don't care who won/lost, they just care about the integrity of an election then what? The only people who actually do anything in the world are interested parties. Correctly described "disinterested parties" aren't typically involved at all.
obligations must be justified in the first place, they don't just exist unless I provide a reason they shouldn't
why should election losers be obligated to do this? and if they are, then therefore what? if they fail to meet that obligation, then therefore what?
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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