Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by solfox 8 days ago
I reckon that if you replace "find" with "make", you might be closer to the truth about what this data will be used for.
3 comments

The boring truth is they’ll find nothing and the admin will pretend it never even looked. They’ve done this already with all the “very real and provable voter fraud” they investigated in previous elections. All the initiatives quietly disbanded after saying they found nothing.

They can’t even say they’ve found evidence when pressed https://newrepublic.com/post/213185/trump-election-fraud-guy...

Are you not counting the SAVE Act as an “initiative”? Even if it doesn’t pass, it’s certainly keeping the idea of election uncertainty front and center going into the midterms. Which gives cover to the local officials who have been inserted all over the country to mess things up.
Indeed. If the law passes they can use it. If the law doesn't pass, they can run against it not having passed.

There is a non-trivial chance that Trump prefers the latter and he'd end up vetoing SAVE because it has some small amendment he claims to hate.

Worth remembering that there was strong bipartisan immigration reform on the table in 2024 that Biden would have signed, but Trump told its own GOP co-sponsors not to pass it because it was easier for him to run against "open borders".

Drummed-up fear from the absence of the SAVE act might be the one thing that gets Trump's disillusioned base out to vote for him. By contrast, getting the SAVE act passed might be a dog-catches-car thing.

I’m not sure what you’re asking. All I’m saying is they keep saying they’re “going to prove it” and when they find no evidence, they don’t stop acting like they’re going to solve the problem that they know doesn’t exist. The investigations are a waste of time and money because they already decided it’s true. They don’t care what the results are.
I’m responding to the “quietly disbanded” part. Neither is true; they continue to loudly come up with new initiatives. I don’t even know that they “decided it’s true”, as that’s irrelevant to the strategy, which is just to maintain a continuous atmosphere of loud uncertainty.
The groups established to investigate. Not all initiatives related to it. Clearly the save act exists. Clearly they legislate based off this issue.

It seems you’re looking for the most binary, worst possible interpretation of my comment. I feel like what I’m saying is plenty clear at this point.

Either outcome is risky for TR here. They're a very respected news publisher, so if they start colluding in fraud that would damage all their other business. If they take it seriously and don't produce results they'll get reprisals. I suspect they'll dig up every random voter registration paperwork error they can find and hand that over, while trying not to have their name tied to bigger conspiracy theories.
At this point I think they are already screwed. Just collaborating with MAGA has destroyed their credibility.
Anecdotally I was considering dropping my Washington Post subscription and instead paying for Reuters. Now I'm definitely not doing that.
They're not a news publisher. Not exactly anyway. They are a huge conglomerate and Reuters is just one division - and a recent addition at that. TR is probably more known for legaltech, Westlaw and ancillary kind of stuff that ends up spilling over into other industries like tax and accounting. They also have a large government division, which presumably will take on this project. Their bread and butter is enterprise tech, consolidated public data and research tools. That's sort of where the news fits in. It's just another data source.
So the fraud perpetrated here will be this administration denying people their right to vote?
My guess is the fraud they are looking for vs the fraud they find will not at all be related. If they find the fraud at all, it will be entirely the current administration at fault.
My bet is that they'll find a few jurisdictions where the voting rolls or other paperwork were altered in a way that runs afoul of some reconstruction era laws. The root cause will likely ultimately be metric gaming. They'll find a few more people from Chicago, New Jersey and the other "usual" places who did "real fraud", likely at the local and party primary level and immaterial to federal elections. This is technically election fraud, not voter fraud, but that won't matter. They'll flamboyantly prosecute everyone they can, maybe for a dozen total, and declare it a success before moving on to the next shiny distraction