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What is the steelman for the establishment being unable to steal elections?
Not unwilling, unable. Arguments from unwillingness, such as the ostensible criminality of mass electoral fraud, are tautological, as they assume the ability to read minds. Arguments of it being unnecessary are supremely tautological, as their first assumption is legitimate elections. Tautologies are not steelmen.
That sufficient measures exist to stop illegal voting; that sufficient measures exist to prevent the mass injection of fraudulent ballots; that relevant executive agencies have an interest in auditing elections and investigating to the fullest extent and neutrally charging electoral fraud, so leftist electoral fraud; that the courts have an interest in neutral hearings of electoral fraud, so leftist electoral fraud; that the media has an interest in investigating and neutrally reporting to the fullest extent electoral fraud, so leftist electoral fraud. The caveats of "fullest extent" and "leftist electoral fraud" are necessary, as no national-scope investigation has happened, and while there are rarely stories of left-aligned individuals being charged with electoral crimes, relative to those, stories of right-aligned individuals being charged with electoral crimes occur far more frequently. For the sake of charity, I will agree the inclination to criminal behavior as equal among the left and right, it is however no question that support for criminal behavior is a dominant ethic of the modern left. For these, the probabilistic assumption is one side is caught and/or reported on less often.
Do also consider the history of American conspiracies; principally, that evidence indicates coordination and silence are solved problems.
And to repeat myself, "it's a crime" and "they didn't need to" are not positions of a steelman. Not unwilling, unable.
The fact that they didn't in 2016. (Unless you believe trump and hillary were secretly on the same side.)
The establishment must be at least one of: {unwilling, unable}.
And anyways, every political faction is fractally composed of sub-factions feuding over electoral legitimacy. Ideological alliances can put aside power-grubbing for the common good, but if you're going to assume cynicism in the first place, history has endless examples of the aristocracy fighting against central tyrants because they'd rather do the tyrranizing themselves. If you give your king too much legitimacy he doesn't need to delegate to you anymore. Rigging swing state elections would benefit national parties, but destroy the outsize power and influence of the local parties.
2016 is a starting point, but it is only a weak indicator of inability or unwillingness. I indict the administration of elections at all levels, so an adequate steelman incorporating the 2016 general election only pushes the question back. Were they unable to inject large numbers of fraudulent ballots? Or were they unprepared and failed to inject enough?
A common oversight on this subject is the thought that stealing national elections requires national coordination. It is in the interest of the California Democratic Party to win California elections, if they are fabricating large numbers of ballots in the general, they can achieve the immediate goal of maintaining local power while achieving the incidental goal of the state's electoral college votes going to the Democratic candidate for president. Same for Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia. It's the simulacra, the copy without an original. Many small groups who benefit from stealing local elections, who with no explicit cooperation steal a national election.
It sounds like you're assuming that democracy is and has always been a sham. (Or at least, has been a sham since some undeterminable point in the non-recent past.) But if democracy was merely a facade over authoritarianism, then we should expect there to be little difference in how "democratic" and "nondemocratic" states behave-- and little difference in their economic and military outcomes. But a cursory examination of history demonstrates exactly the opposite. If you compare european countries, the wealthy and prosperous ones are correspondingly less authoritarian, and while the authoritarian states pretend at democracy, they're transparently worse at in in various ways. If at some point the US stopped being democratic, we should expect some sort of regression towards an authoritarian mean-- except the US economy is one of the best-performing advanced economies worldwide.
There's still a lot of space for anti-democratic intervention; when it comes to elections "stolen" isn't a checkbox, it's a gradient. But self-evidently, whatever efforts the democrats have been making are on a lower order-of-magnitude scale of effect than the structural anti-democratic interventions of the electoral college and the fixed size of the house of representatives.
Not exactly. The point of forming political parties is to acquire power and resources-- not for the party, but for the individual members of the party. In a competitive environment, yes, it's in the interests of the members to work together to defeat common enemies. But as a group eliminates its competitors, intra-group conflict rises in intensity... and many of those specific factions and people involved see that, toward the tail end, if the group finishes eliminating its competitors-- then suddenly they have no more bargaining power within the group. And all of this happens fractally.
So-- a member of the californian democratic party has incentives to force state elections to be as fair as possible, even at the expense of the CDP, because relative to their own state their greatest enemies are members of their own party.But they want national elections to be tilted as far towards the national democratic party as possible because "california" is one of the biggest factions in the democratic party, and can be confident that they can re-task federal resources toward themselves if only they can eliminate the republican party as a real competitor.
But a member of the Pennsylvania democratic party has exactly the opposite incentives-- they're in a fight for their life locally, but the national status quo (of getting money funneled toward them from the national organization that they can in term hand out through patronage networks to advertisers and campaign staff) heavily benefits them. If the national election was less fair, suddenly they would get a much smaller share of the democratic party's overall bucket of goodies.
And yes, presumably you have people who just want to win their city council seat at any cost... but they in turn rely on staff with unpredictable allegiances. Is that poll worker here because they feel a deep allegiance to the democratic party or to democratic ideals? Do my supporters vote for me because they genuinely like me or because they think I'm the least-worst option? Is any specific person in my hierarchy going to accept orders to fake ballots or are they going to rat me out to the media for a paycheck and (if they're lucky) a book deal?
I won't claim that no malfeasance goes on. But stealing an election and winning an election require a very similar set of skills and resources. Positioning yourself to do the former puts you most of the way toward doing the latter. And considering the existence of explicitly adversarial factions with difficult-to-gauge power and unity, it becomes very risky indeed to try and steal elections in any blatant way. That's why Obama gave up his position to trump in 2016 and why trump gave up his position to biden when he lost in 2020.
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I can think of 2 counterarguments about being unable to at least do so secretly:
The U.S. has an oppositional system. Corrupt states generally have one party so entrenched that the opposing party can't really do anything about it. Whereas if Republicans have strong evidence of Democratic cheating, they should likely have the means to either uncover it, or to cheat right back.
An internal defector would also be likely. The election system involves so many people that it would be difficult to not encounter someone with moral objections or simply wants the fame and cash that would likely result in running to Fox News. I know you precluded this with your link, but your link only establishes it as theoretically possible rather than likely. Becoming a poll worker doesn't require the same level of background checks as secret clearance, and seems much harder to ensure a cohesive conspiracy.
I wouldn't expect Republicans of a given swing state to be able to thoroughly investigate the electoral procedures of their blue island cities. More, up until 2020 there was no serious consideration on the right of leftist electoral fraud. They weren't looking for it, weren't thinking about it, now that they are, we might expect investigations. Especially with the next Trump administration.
A low level government bureaucrat probably belongs to the group of people least likely to defect, save for those in criminal groups where defectors are killed. It's their job, for many it's the best they can get, why would they defect? Moral concern begs the question.
Why not? State power trumps local power, and a swing state likely has enough Republican power to have a decent shot at investigating it. I also don't buy that the right is only just now thinking about election fraud. This has been a talking point for decades, even if it ramped up in 2020.
It's a low level job, and low level jobs typically cycle a lot of people in and out. Hell, isn't it a common saying that young people have no respect for their jobs and barely even show up? Plus for many it's a temp job.
As for why they would defect, let me put it this way. Stormy Daniels got $130,000 for the rights to her story about sleeping with Trump. Let's say I have solid proof of voter fraud. If I took said evidence to Fox News, how much do you think I could get them to pay for it?
With regards to moral concern, it's a numbers game. According to a quick search there were 774,000 poll workers in 2020. And some states like Ohio and New York explicitly require a mix of party affiliation. The point is that a conspiracy requires pretty much everyone at a given location to be in on it.
Judicial power trumps state power, and left-aligned judges have been prolific at stopping Republican attempts at legislating electoral security; why would they be any more cooperative in investigations obstructed by hyperblue municipal bureaucracies? Beyond that, while fraud has been something generally talked about, it was not a matter du jour of the 2016 electoral cycle or the 2020 electoral cycle, its prominence today is novel to post-9/11 American political discourse.
Money is an incentive for defection, but there must be an interested purchasing party and goods to deliver. Daniels is a porn star who had evidence of having had sex with the President, of course she was going to be handsomely compensated for the story. A poll worker would have no story merely saying "This many ballots were fraudulently filed," even an interested party would not likely pay them, because that testimony is worth nothing.
The procedure for striking ballots as fraudulent is not a poll worker coming forward and saying "I fraudulently filled 10,000 ballots." The procedure is the poll worker comes forward and says "I applied a secret watermark to these 10,000 ballots; forensic expert team A will prove all 10,000 watermarks are identical and were indeed produced by the same process and human hand rather than being an artifact of printing or processing; forensic expert team B will prove I am the individual who produced that watermark all 10,000 times."
Goes to court. Forensic teams successfully tie poll worker to a ballot. Yes, a ballot, 1 ballot.
9,999 hearings to go, because every single ballot must be individually proved as fraudulent, else a legal ballot be illegally struck. See the scope of the problem?
You also assume this as a complex process requiring many people be aware. We don't know how many people are required to flip elections because the process is closed to audit. It could take dozens, it could take hundreds, it could take a handful of people placed at the exact link in the chain where boxes of fake ballots can be introduced and laundered with boxes of legal ballots. We don't know, and this by the way is and has been my entire point throughout my time talking about fraud on this site. When I say "We have no way of knowing" I am describing the act of criminal fraud. It is tax fraud for a corporation to have numbers closed to audit and it is electoral fraud for a government to have ballot numbers closed to audit.
Republicans would still likely take the matter to court if they believed fraud existed. Also, Bush v Gore was famously decided in Bush's favor. Kerry supported a lawsuit by Green and Libertarian candidates. There was an interesting result in that one in that the random recount was found to be rigged but beyond that didn't seem to go anywhere.
I would note a correlation between its recent prominence and a candidate who makes a lot of wild claims.
I covered the interested party aspect already - Fox News. Or how abut the Heritage Foundation? Or Donald Trump himself? Hell, even without any evidence, claim to be a poll worker who found fraud and Trump will organize a parade for you.
I won't claim to be a legal expert, but this doesn't seem right. And even if it were, again the news itself would be something Trump would never ignore.
Yes, I do think it would lean on the complex side. Even a precision strike requires getting said people into that exact position. I don't think election fraud is 100% impossible, but I think this is a Russell's Teapot situation. I don't think that equal skepticism is being applied to claims of fraud being true as is applied to claims supposedly disproving said claims.
I can't say I strongly oppose more auditing, outside of that I suspect the only result of it would be that the people predisposed to believe in election fraud will latch on some innocuous detail and/or create a new appeal to missing information. I don't agree that Democrats have as much of a stranglehold on the gears of politics that their opponents can't and/or won't stop them. If they did Trump would be kept nowhere near power.
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While president, Trump had a 'voter fraud' commission. Republicans were thinking about and looking for electoral fraud, they just didn't find any significant amount.
You mean this one?
Make the argument he faced near-total bipartisan opposition, sure. Don't make the implicatively false tie with the 2020 General and the patently false "didn't find any."
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Just being sure, but I assume that the unwritten assumption here is "unable to steal elections without being caught", right?
After reading the post you linked, my basic counterargument is that massive electoral fraud is just much harder to pull off than anything else we've caught the government doing. Given that it is harder (because of the highly decentralized nature of US elections), there would be way more "breadcrumbs" left behind so we would have good evidence if it happened. I'm having a similar conversation with many people here which is that my priors for election fraud are clearly much lower than yours, so I need much stronger evidence to convince me compared to you.
Stealing an election implies not getting caught.
The essay elaborates specifically on how those programs weren't caught. COINTELPRO was a lucky break-in. MKUltra was uncovered while the government was looking at something entirely different, after decades of nobody coming forward. We know, generally, the CIA was running guns and drugs, but the extent is unknown, and what they do today is likewise unknown. How much does the CIA hold in unaccountable bitcoin, for example? It's certainly not $0.
What are your "priors" for no fraud? I can conceive of what those priors would necessarily include.
Necessity? This assumes consistent electoral legitimacy and this is a necessarily irrational belief. There is no basis for a necessity prior.
Morality? It requires an unwillingness to break the law. It's no longer journalists making the comparison, a general calls him Hitler, Harris calls him a fascist. True or false, there is no basis for a moral prior.
Journalism? The modern media establishment would neither investigate nor report on systemic leftist fraud, as they would be reporting on themselves. There is no basis for a journalistic prior.
Investigations? The FBI has been working against Trump since the Obama administration, they were working against him while he was the sitting President. No evidence supports the impartiality of the agency. Additionally, Republicans have only recently been made aware of the potential fraud occurring beneath them, and the areas for that potential fraud are hyper blue cities of purple states. How do Pennsylvania Republicans investigate fraud in Philadelphia? Who's cooperating with them? More, in states like California and Oregon, who would possibly investigate leftist fraud? There is no basis for an investigative prior.
A note before the last, since your priors can only rationally hinge on this: in the United States, to strike a ballot, it must be proved how that exact ballot is fraudulent. A hypothetical poll worker who fraudulently fills out 1,000 ballots and washes them together with legitimate ballots cast at their precinct has no fear of reveal or recourse because in this instance there is no method to differentiate legitimate and fraudulent ballots. It would not only require the poll worker to admit what they did and the exact number, but also be able to identify and prove with court-accepted evidence what ballots they cast in fraud, as it is illegal to destroy a legitimate ballot.
Courts not hearing the cases is all you have, and it would be fair were it not for the above. The citizenry has no method of auditing elections, and it should surprise no one that a crime that is so enabled by the system its revelation all but requires its perpetrators come forward has such little evidence. I would say in real fairness to the courts, what were they going to do? Pause the process for citizen journalism? I would say it, but leftist judges in random circuits have no problem making sweeping constitutional rulings. It is as simple as this: the matter was not given a full hearing by SCOTUS, their declination to hear the case is the strongest argument, but what would they hear? What results from what formal investigation? No, it is the strongest evidence because it is the only evidence, it is very weak evidence indeed.
All of them? Every single one? Every single MSM journalist is in on this? I 100% believe in institutional biases that can lead to things that looks like conspiracies but are not actually, but this is well beyond bias into a full blow conspiracy. Now, me saying conspiracy doesn't automatically dismiss it like some who say throw around conspiracy do, but it does mean that the more people you add, especially if you add people from more and more disparate groups (keeping a secret in one group in the CIA is easier than keeping it in one CIA division is easier than keeping it in the CIA is easier than keeping it in the CIA + journalists, etc), the more likely it is for things to leak.
Do you think it's impossible to investigate things like criminal gangs as well? The problem is similar, but it still happens. People will never be 100% lock step with the party, especially as you expand the scope of the fraud. There are always people willing to whistle blow if the group gets large enough.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is why they have explicitly partisan poll watchers to watch the poll workers to make sure they don't cheat. You can literally walk in and watch poll workers work and if you see someone doing something, they will throw out the votes before they ever get put in the pile and get mixed up.
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Also, there is this grand jury report into electoral fraud that occurred in Chicago in 1982: https://sites.duke.edu/pjms364s_01_s2016_jaydelancy/files/2016/04/Report-of-the-Special-Grand-Jury-US-District-Court-NE-Illinois-.pdf
It is a good example of a large scale conspiracy that must have gone undetected for a number of years before they were caught. There are references to precinct captains passing on fraud techniques to the new generation of precinct captains.
The report has a list of fraud techniques they use and its interesting to look at the list and look at some of the flash points around electoral security at the moment. For example Republican's seem to be very concerned over voter rolls not being up to date but this report shows that voter rolls that have voters on them that are no longer living or no longer capable of voting are a target for fraudsters.
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