[fennecfoxen]

> would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence?

0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but

1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?"

In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts?

2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia.

I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here?

Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3

[tzs]

I did not downvote you but I was tempted to for the ridiculous Bush v. Gore remark. Bush v. Gore was a 0.009% difference in a state where both sides agreed that there were problems with a large number of ballots. The poorly designed ballots made it impossible to ever determine who a large number of voters intended to vote for. The dispute was over how to handle that. This is not even remotely like any other major disputed election.

[rayiner]

No, that’s whitewashing what happened: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa...

Bush won Florida in the first machine count. There was an automatic recount, and Bush won again. Gore then proceeded to create a cluster—k by demanding a hand recount of under votes only in counties he had won.

> Bush won the initial count by 1,784 votes, and he was still ahead by 327 votes after the automatic statewide machine recount. Gore then filed “protests,” demanding a hand recount of the ballots in four heavily Democratic counties, only three of which are relevant to the following discussion: Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade. Gore apparently chose these counties for one or both of two reasons. First, to the extent that errors by the counting machines were randomly distributed, Gore could expect to be a net gainer in these most heavily Democratic jurisdictions. Second, the hand recounts would be supervised by local elected officials, and the chances that such officials would be biased in Gore’s favor (or at least not biased in Bush’s favor) would be highest in the most heavily Democratic counties.

It’s a simple trick that leverages the large number of under votes (1-2% of all votes) generated by these punch machines. The machine can’t read cards that aren’t fully punched out, so there is a large pool of potentially discernible but uncounted ballots. If you only recount ballots in counties that went say 2-1 for Gore as the base rate, then when hand counters look at markings on the ballot to identify “voter intent” you’ll get 2 new Gore votes for every new Bush vote. Not only that, but there was some insane maneuvering by Gore to include partial recounts in the results. The Florida Supreme Court found this unconstitutional and ordered a statewide recount. 7 to 2, the Supreme Court found that recount unconstitutional as well. (The Court split 5-4 on what to do with the mess. But people overlook that Gore precipitated the mess, burning a ton of time before the safe harbor deadline, with his partial recount strategy.)

[Dylan16807]

> It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it

Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much.

> Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it

She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.

[caseysoftware]

I'm not seeing your "on the night of the election" qualification and she may have said it in other interviews but the "under any circumstances" bit is true:

“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday.

Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...

[fennecfoxen]

Even if she did qualify it, it's reasonable to expect that hundreds of millions didn't see it either, and they might quite reasonably default to cynicism on the matter.

As a pragmatic matter, running any party on Not As Bad As The Other Guys™ rules will not earn you respect, at least not outside those who were already voting for you; it's impossible to send virtue signals if they don't meaningfully cost you.

[Dylan16807]

And immediately preceding that in the video is:

"They have a couple of scenarios that they're looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting, so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the electoral college, on election day."