This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
We also had the problem with the database earlier this month, so some of these comments aren't available in their original context. However I am reposting the comments themselves below; it's not a perfect solution, but in various ways it beats the alternatives I could think of. That said, if you find any errors in need of correction (misattributed comments, for example) please feel free to @ me. The number of copy/paste errors I made in the process of trying to put this together is... not small.
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Notes -
Hlynka and all the people supporting his QC confuse me.
It's confusing because it seems like there's a great deal of people who think the fact of the matter is that the 2020 election was unfairly stolen by Trump. They argue the facts and think their side is correct in a verifiable manner. I understand this perspective, even if I disagree on the facts.
Hlynka's post and subsequent comments aren't about this. It's about how election deniers have to be persuaded by the non-deniers that there was no ultimate theft. He interweaves this with references to attempts to suppress investigations into election fraud, but his subsequent comments in that thread make it clear that he assigns the election deniers no obligation to evaluate their own motivations.
If I talked with a person who disagrees on the facts, I know they would be willing to publicly state that the facts are the only thing that should determine the conclusion. Whether there was fraud or not, a stolen election or not, the facts are the sole method of determining this. But Hlynka isn't arguing the facts because his revealed preference is debates over policy. And no, elections are not the same thing as debates over policy.
I will ask anyone here who supports his view the same question I asked him - do you actually care about the facts of the 2020 election, or are you just interested in negotiating over policy? Because if it's the latter, just be honest and we can avoid debating a topic which doesn't actually touch upon your real concern.
I don't always agree with you, but I agree with this above comment absolutely.
Attitudes towards the legitimacy of the 2020 election is probably the one area where I feel most out of step with the modal opinion on this site, and I'm consistently surprised by the hostile reception that "no, the 2020 election was fair actually, and no one has presented remotely persuasive evidence to the contrary" comments get.
I don't have anything against anyone who thinks the election was fair or finds evidence to the contrary unconvincing, it's the idea that believing in fraud is unreasonable that bothers me.
I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a given election (even a given American election) could be fraudulent. But when no persuasive evidence has been presented that a specific election was, and when the "evidence" presented that it was is so uniformly weak and has been patiently, exhaustively refuted, it seems reasonable to conclude that this specific election wasn't fraudulent.
I also think it's a bit tiresome when I was agreeing with Republicans for four years that "Russiagate" was a load of hooey, a nationwide cope for Democrats to avoid confronting the fact that they lost an election fair and square. Then December 2020 rolls around, and the people who last week were loudly declaring that the 2016 Presidential election was fraudulent and compromised by Russian hackers - these same people immediately declare that the 2020 election was as fair and legitimate as they come, and you'd have to be a nutter to think otherwise; and vice versa. Like, do Republicans honestly not remember how recently the boot was on the other foot, how they spent the years 2017-20 (correctly) deriding Democrats as a pack of whiny sore losers, credulously falling for obvious rubbish like the "Steele dossier"? I guess we really have always been at war with Eastasia.
All of that is absolutely fine, and that's not the kind of talk that trips my wires and makes me react, let alone with any sort of hostility.
Fair.
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Think about this in terms of the external audit of a public company.
A public company has its own accountants. They may notice money going missing, track it down, and report the employee to the police for fraud.
As a public company it must also submit to and pay for an external audit. The external audit is not looking for fraud. The external audit is auditing the internal controls and the procedures. Are the internal controls sufficient (if the procedures are followed) to stop money going missing? Are the procedures being followed? It gets a little tricky because a big business is inevitably full of minor lapses and edge cases. The external auditors will not qualify the companies accounts unless the weaknesses of internal controls and breaches of procedure are material.
However, if there are material weaknesses, the external auditors will qualify the accounts, saying that they cannot be fully relied upon because blah blah. This is a big deal. Remember that the external auditors are not looking for fraud. Looking for fraud that is really there is often futile; the fraud only took place because lax procedures that were not even followed, provided an opportunity to get away with fraud. Once the accounts have been qualified the company takes measures (perhaps under a new board of directors) to remedy the problems.
The weaknesses of internal controls and the failures to follow procedures are treated as dispositive. It is presumed that there was fraud and action is taken to prevent it. It would be wrong to say that people don't care about the facts or whether fraud actually happened. If perchance fraud can be found there will be efforts to identify the perpetrators and prosecute them. But there is an acceptance that finding material weaknesses in procedures is as "we found fraud" as it gets.
Perhaps some-one will claim "Sure there are problems with the procedures that might in theory have allowed fraud to go undetected, but no fraud was proven, so I'm content that no fraud happened and no action is required." But where money is at stake, this is naive and silly.
The core of @Hlynka's claim is that votes are as valuable as money, so the same presumption of fraud applies.
I agree that - if there were clear and severe control / procedural problems - that's almost as bad as actual fraud. I think the cases for procedural problems is as weak on the facts as the case for actual fraud though.
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How far am I supposed to take this analogy? Because if I take Hlynka's position and apply it here, then we are left with the idea that outsiders have no obligation to actually consider the probability of fraud occurring, and that they should be free to accept payment to accept the idea that no fraud occurred.
That doesn't strike me as particularly rational and virtuous, respectively.
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His post isn't a disagreement over "policy," it's a disagreement over the default position. It's possible to show Hlynka wrong under his standard; the issue with the 2020 election is the "facts" which would do this are not available due to the shoddy and essentially audit-proof way elections are done in the USA as well as the total failure of the legal system to enforce any rule or standard in that environment, not to mention the laughably high levels of resistance by those who conducted the election to engage in real transparency or upholding of legal standards.
You want the default to be to assume legitimacy absent strong showing of facts meeting a high burden. The highest legal standard in the US which is rarely used unless the court likes the outcome is to merely show the number of "likely" illegally counted ballots is greater than the difference in the disputed contest. Is your belief, one which is likely higher than this legal standard, one of "policy" or "facts"?
No, Hlynka is clear that elections are negotiations and that the winners have to convince the losers to cede power. He says as much here. I can't show him wrong under his standard because it's not about facts - if the convincing fails because the losers don't like losing, Hlynka wouldn't tell them to accept it.
Moreover, Hlynka was never clear if he was a principled election fraud investigator (in the sense that he only cares about ensuring valid elections) or if he's only being that way because he doesn't like that the Republicans/conservatives don't have their man in the White House.
Facts, obviously, because my contention is that there isn't evidence of the election ultimately being stolen from Trump. I ultimately wouldn't have had a problem accepting a possible Trump victory in 2020 if that was the verdict at the time.
Hlynka is bucking because you're trying to smuggle in your default position by attempting to put burdens onto "election deniers." Assuming a default position isn't an argument based on facts, it's a choice of how you're going to analyze the conflict.
There were 74 million people who voted for Trump according to Wikipedia. Even if we think that number is too low, or that Biden had some part of his supposed 81 million votes forged from nowhere, it seems like reasonable to say that Trump supporters were not sitting out election day hoping that only others would vote him. They probably went and voted for him as well. If you accept this premise, then we seem to have the basis of an agreement to a contract - using established election rules, both sides would vote and the winner would be who got the most votes (nominally speaking). Trump supporters added their bit of strength to the validity of using the election as it ran to decide if Trump would continue to be the president.
Given this, I don't see why it's attempting to smuggle in my position as the default to say that the party who alleges the agreed-upon method was invalid due to fraud has to demonstrate why that is the case.
Because you're trying to shift the burden onto the people who are "election deniers," using terminology itself which is smuggling in your default position the election should be assumed to be legitimate unless there is a strong showing of facts to meet some high standard. It "seems reasonable" to do what? You think it's reasonable to have your default position and burden obligation and evidence standard. And that's fine by itself, but this language is all part of how you're attempting to simply assume the default position by fiat to shape the field against anyone who would question the results of the election.
Hlynka's point is that this default position is wrong in this context, the "agreed established election rules" were not followed or enforced, and additionally this is not the normal state of human affairs and that elections are negotiated "default positions" anyway and therefore it is wrong to use assumed legitimacy as the default position.
what agreed-upon method? election rules were changed by fiat in the months leading up to the election and courts wholly failed to address these issues leading to a even more clownish election than usual
much of the way the election was conducted was declared illegal after the election when the outcome could no longer be changed; much of the way the election was conducted in explicit contravention to state law, i.e., the "agreed-upon method"
Why would random people or even Trump be required to agree to the election is assumed legitimate standard because "his side" lost a bunch of court challenges about illegal election law changes? Your argument in support of the election is assumed legitimate standard rests on the claim the negotiated settlement and dispute resolution system is legitimate and then when I or others buck at that argument, are you going to zoom further out arguing the ___ system is legitimate therefore the negotiated settlement system is legitimate? It's smuggling your default position because it relies on another assumed default position in the first place and that one likely relies on another assumed default position. It's turtles all the way down.
the 2020 election wasn't decided by 7 million "votes," it was decided by
50,000 "votes" in5 stateswe're not talking about millions, we're talking about tens of thousands
What's the non-presumptive phrase to describe people who deny the 2020 election was legitimate, and why would it not be subject to the euphemistic treadmill?
What's the source for this?
"Required" is a strong word. But the case gets weaker with each failed court challenge. At some point, there's no vitality to it left.
That's not the point. The point is that millions of voters, who I suspect didn't think they could ignore the results of another state simply because the laws in that state changed, still went out and voted for Trump.
This isn't, in other words, a case where a disinterested party is being approached to accept the validity of the 2020 election, this is a case with a very much interested party.
Ultimately, this still leaves me no more persuaded on the "and then?" part of Hlynka's position. Even assuming that the truth of the 2020 election is unknowable, why is there no obligation for those think Biden didn't win fairly to consider how much of their motivation is simply losing the election?
Describing election disputers, election fortifier, election revisionist, election skeptic, etc., etc., doesn't need to be absent all presumption, but when you write a phrase like "election denier," you are at the extreme end of presumptive and it is another example of smuggling in your default position (not to mention your distain).
I'm not playing the "source?! source? You have a source?!" game in a dialogue about another user's statements around disputing the default position to judge a disputed election. Additionally, examples of election procedures, guidance, application, and rules in PA, WI, and others which were declared illegal are easy to find.
It depends on the challenge and the court holding. If a court declares your challenge isn't going to be heard because you cannot show you, specifically, will be harmed by this illegal rule, this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether some rule or procedure or application is legal let alone to the point where one can buttress a claim of an "agreed-upon" set of rules. This is the reason garbage journalists print "TRUMP LOST COURT CHALLENGE" headlines dozens of times to create this sort of narrative and implication, but it's nonsense.
If you're going to attempt to argue "then we seem to have the basis of an agreement to a contract," then this is required. Your statement itself also smuggles in a bunch of disputed assumptions around participation meaning something which it doesn't. Trump famously and repeatedly claimed he would not "concede" to the winner if he thinks the election is unfair, but somehow he accepted "the basis of an agreement to a contract" because he ran anyway? Or he voters/supporters did because they voted anyway?
Your argument is built on top of another default position argument whereby the shitty court system which wholly fails to address large parts of the electorate's concerns with elections, not to mention flatly ignoring explicit statutory language to the contrary, is legitimate and their declarations are presumptively right and form the basis for agreements. Is your response to this argument going to be another default position assumption about the system generally being legitimate therefore courts declarations are legitimate, no matter how stupid their decisions, therefore elections should be presumed to be legitimate? This is why I describe this as a turtles all the way down argument.
I suspect many millions of people who voted would answer "yes" to the question, "If another state has fraud in the way their election was conducted and it possibly affected the outcome, should the results be contested/set aside/redone/etc.?" Especially given there are outlined legal procedures, including an explicitly outlined process in the US Constitution itself, about going about doing exactly this.
Some voters discovered this process after they lost and may have been partly motivated by losing, but then what does this have to do with you adopting your default position? Unless someone declares they don't care who won/lost, they just care about the integrity of an election then what? The only people who actually do anything in the world are interested parties. Correctly described "disinterested parties" aren't typically involved at all.
obligations must be justified in the first place, they don't just exist unless I provide a reason they shouldn't
why should election losers be obligated to do this? and if they are, then therefore what? if they fail to meet that obligation, then therefore what?
It would only take a short amount of time before any of the phrases you used would be seen by the people they are being used to describe as just as hostile and presumptive as "election denier".
If you're going to claim the election laws were changed and found illegal, that's a claim you are making. It's entirely reasonable to ask you to explain what you're referring to with a source. I assumed you were referring to PA and WI, but I wanted to be sure. Regardless, the legality of the election methods themselves is of very little importance if you're not from that state - if a state had legalized letting non-citizens vote, that would hardly be a consolation to those who think the election was stolen.
This matters greatly because simply saying those rules were illegal isn't the same as saying the vote counts were inaccurate due to fraud, to say nothing of whether the outcome in WI or PA was actually changed as a result. For example, the WI court ruling on the drop boxes being illegal also said there was no indication of voter fraud in the election, though their citations might leave someone questioning the election frustrated.
Sure, not every failed court challenges was due to the facts/proof, some were dismissed over jurisdiction and standing. But ultimately, court challenges aren't, in my view, some lynchpin against Trump's claims.
I have no problem with a candidate declaring the election is unfair and then wanting investigations. But there is an obligation, I think, to accept that this claim is falsifiable. If the evidence coming back is that there's no clear evidence of fraud, then Trump ought to rethink his conviction on the matter.
A common argument against this line of reasoning is that fraud is undetectable, so not having clear proof is an unfair standard. But I rarely see people advance this to the conclusion that we therefore don't know who necessarily won the 2020 election, I only see it being used to argue that Trump did have the election stolen from him. That's a stronger argument that does need to have proof shown.
You should be obligated to do this because this because it divides the country further if matters of truth are subordinated to one's partisan/ideological goals. You cannot claim to be a rational or reasonable truth-seeking person if you cannot accept a truth which might hurt your in-group.
Speaking practically, denying the outcome of the 2020 election matters more to the people who lost than the people who won. If you cannot convince people that you are not reasonable or rational, that you cannot be persuaded that you might be wrong, then people will rightfully dismiss anything you have to say. You can sit back and revel in the supposed ignorance of your opposition, but they're in power right now and it seems like they're going to be there for a while.
But if losing while truth is apparently on your side is what you want, then I suppose you can ignore this obligation.
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