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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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People seemed to have defined "election rigging" as specifically electronically hacking election machines to change votes.

Yes, because this is the universal definition of a rigged election and always has been (ie ballot-stuffing ie tampering with vote counts directly).

Shady behavior by an incumbent is universal in democracies. One party dominating the media is near-universal in democracies. The ‘establishment’ trying to stymie the ‘populists’ is near-universal in democracies.

The fact remains very simply that if most evidence that is considered evidence of 2020 being a “rigged election” counts as proof (or strong evidence for) a “rigged election”, then every election in American history has been rigged. Go back before about 1970 and corruption was vastly more brazen than anything Trump has seriously alleged, and that’s like 200 years of so-called democracy.

Low level corruption, propaganda and shady behavior is clearly universally accepted as part of America’s democratic tradition. The only thing beyond the pale (and even then only in the last few decades) is literal manipulation of vote counts in bulk, and this is the definition of “rigged”.

Well, that's your opinion, you can hardly expect people who do not belong to your socio-political tribe to agree just because you assert it.

Let me ask a question about election fraud, do you support the conviction of Trump on charges he tampered with the election by paying off a porn star?

No, why would I? That doesn’t mean the charge counts as rigging an election, though.