[taxicab]

Let's address the elephant in the room since tons of this style of HN posts are appearing all of a sudden: this is probably the most uncertain period of time in most of our lives. No matter who wins the election, it will be close and there will be a legal battle. Many people will be upset with the outcome.

Retreating into conspiracy theories is well known to be a coping mechanism for dealing with exactly these types of fears. Fixating on articles about election fraud in the US over the next couple of days is the same as diving into wikipedia about the materials science of steel beams after the 9/11 terrorist attacks because you want to believe that it was an inside job. I'm also seeing stuff pop up on here about Benford's law which is uncertain science at best [1].

The next few weeks will be a difficult time for our country and we need to be prepared to accept the results of the election without devolving into conspiracy theories. We should carefully consider whether our sudden "academic interest" in the history of fraud is real or has more to do with a wish to rationalize what we are seeing in the US today.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/a...

[wyattpeak]

I've got to say, I came away from that with a very different feeling. A lot of my concern about the current election is about the state of democracy: whether we* can return to a civil process whose outcomes are accepted by all, or if we are doomed to increasingly partisan affairs won by any means necessary.

Reading about a similarly fraught election, which seems to have vanished almost entirely from modern discourse, is a comforting reminder that, while a return to the status quo may not be guaranteed, it has at least happened before.

* I should note I'm not American, but how American politics plays out has a strong effect on our own politics.