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by aredox 245 days ago
>Which is it? The MAGA people tried many lawsuits and many appeals to voting authorities for investigations. The unanimous response “safest election ever”.

What you handwave as "the unanimous response" has in reality been dozen of trials, where the people pretending there has been election fraud weren't able to offer any proof, and some were even held in contempt for refusing to substantiate their baseless claims in front of a judge.

2 comments

Great, so I’m sure that you will not complain at all if Democrats lose in the future where a single company controls so many voting machines, unless they are able to prove fraud beyond a reasonable doubt in mere days after the election, right? And you’ll not complain if the vast majority of the suits filed are dismissed on procedural grounds such as standing, right? Because voters and candidates and state attorneys general obviously have no case or controversy in a contested election?

Yes there were a very small number of kooky cases in 2020. The vast majority did NOT get a fair hearing at all.

> The vast majority did NOT get a fair hearing at all.

Which ones?

Lots. Anything involving standing at the least, but also many of the “unauthorized people changed the rules without the authority of the state legislature”.

https://election-integrity.info/2020_Election_Cases.htm

You’ll find similar lists on Wikipedia and at the American Bar Association; they slant their interpretations differently than I do here. Look into a couple of the “standing” or “no merit” cases and see if you really think they were without merit or that there was no “case or controversy” as defined in the Constitution.

Yes, a couple were kooky, particularly around voting machines, but most were “you changed the rules in a way that weakens election security and you are not Constitutionally allowed to do that, since you aren’t the state legislature and the written law is at odds with your rules”.

So I did go ahead and read over the first on your list, claims, Pennsylvania supreme Court ruling, and the district court ruling (super fun reading) and yeah... Not convinced. I won't attempt to summarize everything here because it's a grab bag, which is common with all these election cases. Throw a bunch of shit at the wall and hope something sticks. The claims pretty much boil down to X common practice (including many that are common in my state of Idaho, ex mail in ballots, drop boxes, which, weird, no challenges) could lead to fraud and are therefore unconstitutional, under some fuzzily spelled out mechanizm, and we are entitled to ??? (Seriously, no clear cut relief was spelled out for most claims, which is generally a requirement).

Now sure, maybe this is one of the "kooky" ones, but then we are back to, which ones? "Here's a list of 100 cases, read them all" isnt a reasonable ask. Getting a handle on this one was a significant (wasted) time investment. One which I already wasted significant amounts of time on back in 2020-2021.

You claim "most" did not get a fair hearing. It shouldn't be hard to pick one and clearly explain what was unfair about it.

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And, notably, Republicans have been making claims of widespread voter fraud in favor of Democrats since well before Trump, have gotten into state office in part on a message of cracking down on it, followed up with investigations, and come up with... nothing. A handful of "whoopsie" mistakes (still prosecutable, sure, but probably not done on purpose) and the odd one or two actual attempts at individual fraud, with no strong partisan slant. No conspiracy, no rampant fraud at all.

Where's Trump's investigation of this? Any of the Republican governors in the states he or his proxies allege widespread fraud? That should have been a top priority! They're not aggressively pursuing it because there's nothing there, and they know it. Anyone looking critically at their behavior over the couple decades, at least, that they've been alleging organized Democratic voter fraud can tell they don't believe their own allegations, because they don't act like they do when it comes time to put up or shut up.