[sidenote]

Do you believe all American elections are most likely stolen unless someone presents you with facts that satisfy you? Trump, Obama, Bush, all the result of rigged elections too? What could ever satisfy you that you know, without a doubt, how millions of Americans voted?

[chordalkeyboard]

> Do you believe all American elections are most likely stolen unless someone presents you with facts that satisfy you?

No, not all elections.

> Trump, Obama, Bush, all the result of rigged elections too?

Perhaps, how would one know? Are you at all aware of the allegations about Bush 00 and 04?

> What could ever satisfy you that you know, without a doubt, how millions of Americans voted?

The results of a system that was designed to be verifiably resistant towards fraud would go a long way towards removing reasonable doubt.

[sidenote]

So the entire system cannot be trusted and is entirely vulnerable to fraud, but all elections are not fraudulent? So the big bad guys are only being fraudulent once in a while, even though they get away with it every time. I don’t understand these mental gymnastics. Either believe in democracy (with all its flaws) or you don’t. You can’t just sit here and cry about what might have happened because you can’t verify it yourself. Democracy works and is trusted because we can verify with hand recounts what happened. Saying that the results are unverifiable is dishonest. If you want to reinforce democracy, then put effort into fixing it. Your current tone only serves to cast doubt about democracy.

[chordalkeyboard]

> So the entire system cannot be trusted and is entirely vulnerable to fraud, but all elections are not fraudulent?

I’m only aware of allegations of fraud pertaining to 1960, 2000, 2004, and 2020. I’m not really able to sit here and tell you what elections were fraudulent and which ones were not. That’s basically the point. No one knows, and the government never bothers to investigate or update the systems to anything less reliant on the honor system. They buy new equipment all the time, but it never becomes secure. They get allegations of fraud from time to time, but somehow no one ever gets away with it, even though election security experts have long sounded the alarm about election integrity. Imagine that: an adversarial contest with high stakes and poor process controls, but no one ever cheats! The casinos should hire the people in charge of elections.

> So the big bad guys are only being fraudulent once in a while, even though they get away with it every time. I don’t understand these mental gymnastics.

Frankly thats because you’re not trying to understand very hard. I have not spoken on the frequency of fraud nor argued that they do or do not “get away with it.” The gymnastics are all yours.

> Either believe in democracy (with all its flaws) or you don’t.

I’m glad you recognize that its a belief system and not any sort of rational social function.

> Democracy works and is trusted because we can verify with hand recounts what happened.

That doesn’t protect against ballot stuffing, among other things. You still have to trust the people doing the counting. This doesn’t do anything to protect against spoiling ballots for candidates that you don’t want to win.

> Saying that the results are unverifiable is dishonest.

It is dishonest to say that results are verifiable when they are not. It is dishonest to say you can prove the election wasn’t stolen when you cannot prove so. Why are you so threatened by plain statements about the security of elections? What is there to hide?

> If you want to reinforce democracy, then put effort into fixing it. Your current tone only serves to cast doubt about democracy.

I can’t even get you to acknowledge there is anything to fix.