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No because that's not how Democracy works.
You want Democracy? You need buy-in from the démos.
That means you don't really even want elections, right? You just want negotiations over policy. Because if the losers, as I suspect, are a bit more motivated by losing than they claim to be, then no amount of proof would work because they don't care about proof in the first place.
Perhaps this is the Leviathan-shaped hole in the discourse rearing it's ugly head again, but "negotiations over policy" (or rather who gets to set that policy) is exactly what an election is, is it not?
Otherwise, I refer you to @DuplexFields' response above.
No, my point is that you and anyone else who takes this viewpoint is essentially claiming that you don't care about proof over whether the election was stolen in the first place. You just want a guarantee that your policies are enacted.
Suppose the Democrats were to offer a guarantee that they'd quash any attempt at enacting laws which would shift the government's stance to be more socially progressive in exchange for Republicans (including the MAGA ones) never bringing up the 2020 election again, and that this would hold for the next 10 years. God himself comes down and says they're not lying about what they'll do. In this scenario, I would expect people complaining about the election losers to largely come down against this deal on principle. Instead, I suspect the losers would actually, seriously debate if they should accept.
Isn't this, like -- strictly way better than relitigating 2020 in excrutiating detail over and over again? The evidence is what it is, we aren't getting more, and even outside of partisan hacks pretty much everyone has made up their mind.
"I don't care about 2020 proofs and never want to hear about it again -- but we need to bake accountability for following voting procedures and anti-fraud measures into the system so it never happens again" is at least actionable -- and something that is difficult(ish) for either side to object to. (and no, "it doesn't matter, those dumb MAGAs will protest anyways" is not a valid objection)
Why would it be better? It's a flat-out rejection of the idea that the truth should inform action. I have no problem with litigation over the facts of the 2020 election, but the frustrating part is that the election truthers don't ever give me confidence that they care about the truth for its own sake, but more because they think it's impossible Trump could have lost in the first place.
You are describing hardcore truthers though -- isn't it way easier to engage with people who say 'I can't be sure whether fraud had an impact (and therefore the results should stand) but it would be better for everyone if the system were such that it is possible to be sure that fraud can't have an impact'?
Who is objecting to that on the "2020 wasn't stolen" side? Put simply, if you open your argument with "I don't think 2020 was stolen, but here are cases where we need to tighten election security", I think you'd find earnest discussion in even the most pro-Biden/left-wing spaces.
I mean I don't really inhabit such spaces, so I'm open to updating -- but which left wing spaces are discussing tightening the eligibility/confirmation requirements for mailin ballots for example? All I'm hearing is "what do you mean, we should send them out to everyone (ed. instead of restricting them more) -- do you want to disenfranchize people or something?"
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Because "Elections are by their nature a contested environment"
Because "the purpose of an election is not to produce a "true" or "accurate" result. It is to produce a clear result that the candidates (and their voters) can accept as legitimate, including the ones who lost."
To paraphrase you earlier comment, it sounds to me like you don't really want elections. You just want to dictate terms.
So is capitalism. I don't see that getting in the way of two competing rational capitalists being unable to agree to facts.
You misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't arguing about why we have elections, I was arguing about how we understand if the procedure/process was followed conditional on our agreement to such a process. Basically, I reject the notion that the election process' outcome doesn't need to be truthful just because the real contention is the policies both sides want.
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Traditionally, even the losers in the US have been quite principled and put country over party, and their own specific interests.
Even Nixon stepped down.
You’re trying to justify a race to the bottom instead of calling out unjustified behavior.
No non-authoritarian system of government is going to do well with unprincipled, unreasonable behavior at scale.
No, those objecting to the election shenanigans are trying to call out bad behavior. Those excusing them on the grounds that it's bad to question elections are attempting to elevate the appearance of legitimacy over actual legitimacy.
You’re doing the motte n bailey between “were things perfect” and “was the election rigged/stolen.”
Instances of bad behavior can be acknowledged and we are still nowhere near what was claimed by Trump or TTV.
Nobody is even "acknowledging" "bad behavior".
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It does not follow from "The election has not been demonstrated to hostile adjudicators to be as bad as was claimed by Trump or TTV" that "The election may not have been perfect but it was good enough".
Well there’s a great deal of evidence from all the recounts and investigations that in fact it was good enough.
We have a ton of procedures in place so that the baseline is supposed to be “good enough.”
Hanging chads and glitches and Covid issues can all still happen, even low-level fraud, but that’s pretty far away from the claims made that 2020 was illegitimate.
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