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But the contested environment includes whether people believe the claims of illegitimacy. There may be no presumption of legitimacy but there can also logically be no presumption of illegitimacy.
If a person who has no information is at state 0 and 1 is legitimate and -1 is illegitimate, then the only thing that matters (in your model at least) is convincing enough people to move towards 1 and away from -1.
People (who have no exposure to attempts to sway them one way or the other) don't start with thinking the election is illegitimate or legitimate , they start by not having an opinion EITHER way.
No presumption of legitimacy, no presumption of illegitimacy.
No, because again this is a contested environment and legitimacy is a product of agreement. You're not starting from zero, you're starting from negative one because in the absence of information there is no agreement, and no agreement means no legitimacy.
But no agreement is not the same as no legitimacy! Because this is fundamentally not a symmetrical world. People have to actually disagree and act as if they disagree, because inaction IS implicit acceptance of legitimacy when there is already an existing governmental system. And most people, I submit, will not (and I think this is born out by history) act as if an election is illegitimate just because they have no information either way. Hell even when it is clearly illegitimate most people simply will not act. Government legitimacy is a product of your actions not your beliefs. And most people do not act on things where they have no information (or think they have information).
In other words, it requires actual disagreement, with actual actions taken off the back of it, to render something illegitimate practically. Not simply not agreeing. So I think you are incorrect on where most people actually start from. Bob is not going to go out and start a revolution because he doesn't have information one way or the other. He may not think it is definitely legitimate, but he isn't going to go and take up arms based on that. And if Bob doesn't then the election is de facto legitimate. The courts and the agencies and other world governments will keep on treating the winner as the winner, until and unless enough Bob's actually do something about it.
Bob can internally think the election is illegitimate as much as he wants, but until he actually does something about it, it is irrelevant (and as you pointed out, it is only the contested nature that is important) if Bob is unwilling to actively contest it, then no matter the reason, it is no longer contested.
The election is legitimate until enough someone's do something about it. And they are extremely unlikely to do that if they don't have actual information (or believe they have actual information) showing it is illegitimate. It doesn't even have to be violence, it could be mass civil disobedience. Many millions of American's refusing to pay taxes and daring the illegitimate government to do something to all of them or something else.
Logically by your own definition, Biden's election WAS legitimate enough. Because he remains President. He convinced enough people to act as if he was. In a contested environment it doesn't matter what people believe or say, it matters what they actually DO. It doesn't matter whether the results were accurate, or truthful, only that enough people act as if they were. And that is exactly how people are acting. My MAGA neighbors are complaining about it sure, but they are still filing their taxes, and going to work, and buying their groceries and going about their day, exactly as they would if they thought Biden was legitimate. And therefore Biden is legitimate.
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Endlessly repeating "contested environment" does not negate the fact that the steal crowd is making claims about factual matters which can be evaluated on a factual basis given the evidence available to us.
If they don't care about facts, and want to "take their ball and go home", and force us from a real existing condition where the guy with the most votes wins to one where we have to renegotiate our electoral processes from the ground up, that just means they've been prosecuting aforementioned claims in bad faith-- and their bad fath claims should be responded to appropriately--
We are not though.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett; Take the universe, grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve, and show me one atom of "Legitimacy."
Truth, justice, legitimacy, Et Al are fundamentally subjective measurements.
Right, this is what I repeatedly alluded to, why I called your original point incoherent-- if legitimacy is subjective, still, any one's assessment of what is or is not legitimate cannot be, in and of itself, a basis for a practical election process. It is a fundamentally unworkable position to take, because it is impossible to simultaneously meet all standards of credulity. I suspect you are only retreating to it to avoid having to argue your position on its merits.
But also, the claim that deniers arent making or haven't made categorically factual claims is not true. It's just a straight lie.
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