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Another reminder that glitter doesn’t always lead to gold. FTX and its oh-so-scruffy whiz kid have tanked, and they’re bringing a lot of risk-takers down with them. But some of us can’t help but wonder if they were even tricked by actual glitter. If they had been paying attention to Rich Goldberg—host of our Cryptonite podcast—they might’ve seen it coming. If they tune in today, they might at least learn a lesson or two.
And while we’re on the subject of misguided expectations, we’ve invited back Charles McElwee of RealClearPennsylvania. He’s here to explain the demographic entanglements that make PA a hard state to call and the mistakes the GOP made that’ve made us blue these days.
And Elon Musk sure has a way of keeping us talking about his new tweet factory. Happy Thanksgiving! See you all in two weeks.
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That’s fine if you catch them beforehand. Not so great if too late.
I understand that. But I think there is a profound cost to reversing any election that has been certified based on the rules in effect at the time of the election — even if there is inconclusive evidence that fraud determined the outcome. I think we’re usually better off accepting an unjust outcome than acting in a way that fully half the population is likely to consider deeply anti-democratic.
Our job must be to create a secure process and to prosecute violators.
Prison terms may be insufficient, especially if there’s enough chance of getting away with it that people would still take the risk. As I suspect many would, to keep Trump from being re-elected, for example.
As with excluding trial evidence based on “fruit of the poisoned tree” etc, or which can happen when chain of custody is not maintained, why not exclude election results that have been similarly tainted?
Why do you think this hasn’t already been explained to you?
What that probably means is that even if I have received an “explanation” I didn’t find it credible, or something.
If you think the net price paid for your option is worth it, then so be it.
I guess that’s the point. There’s a cost to accepting a possibly-invalid election, and a cost to overturning a possibly-invalid election. The latter is, from the standpoint of maintaining our tradition of orderly and peaceful transition of power, probably the more dangerous option.
The challenge is to prevent invalid elections from being certified. I think that’s where we have to focus our attention. We have to be informed by the past, but we have to be focused on the future.
This is the way to analyze it.
Of course, having that attitude is to the benefit of the other side.
Punishments for misbehavior may have to be rather draconian to get some people to not do them. Don’t you think a lot of people would be willing to do time to keep Trump from being elected?
It might also be helpful if election officials faced prison time for misbehavior as well. Including the “certification” of elections that are found to have been invalid, and which the officials knew or should have known were invalid. Certification of elections should not be just a rubber-stamp. Especially when a lot of people *cough*Gary*cough* think it actually means something significant. Unless, that is, “certification” is intended to have even less actual validity than notarizing a document.
(Notarizing a document doesn’t prove the document is true. Notarizing just means that the preparer/provider/whatever of the document ASSERTS that it is true, under penalty of perjury etc. A notarized document is subject to challenge, and so should an election be. If a notarized document is found to be false/fraudulent, the person who swore – via notarization – to its authenticity is subject to prosecution. As should someone who falsely “certifies” an election.)
I’m assuming that when you say “having that attitude,” you are referring to my belief that overturning a possibly ambiguous election is probably worse than allowing it to stand.
If so, let me explain my thinking, and do so by way of analogy.
I raised five sons. There were occasions — mercifully rare — on which their behavior deviated so far from the acceptable norms that punitive action on Dad’s part was unambiguously justified and promptly forthcoming. But there were also times when the situation was ambiguous, when I couldn’t be sure of who did what or what was the actual intention behind the apparent malfeasance. On almost every such occasion, I erred in favor of leniency. My thinking was that it would be better for my children to consider me imperfect at catching them in transgressions than it would be for them to think me unjust in meting out punishment.
I think the same applies to elections. We all know that fraud occurs. We also all know that we are a nation of laws, and that we have to hold our government to a high standard of compliance with those laws. We want the laws to be upheld to the best of our ability. When there is evidence of fraud we want to prosecute those who committed that fraud. But when that evidence is insufficient to convince a substantial majority of Americans that the electoral outcome was determined by fraud, then overturning that result will appear to be — and in fact will be — a misapplication of government authority. Because the people have one opportunity to direct their government in its actions, and that is via the ballot box. If the government overturns the results of an election, there must be absolutely unambiguous and compelling evidence that the election was invalid.
We do not have that unambiguous and compelling evidence. We all know the government is imperfect at catching fraud. We don’t want to compound that by having it nullify the apparent spoken will of the people by invalidating an election which was, arguably, legitimately certified.
I have little patience with people who scoff at the very possibility that the election was illegally determined. I think they’re placing undo faith in specious arguments. Similarly, I have little patience with people who claim that the election was obviously and unequivocally stolen through ballot fraud. Again, I think they are placing too much faith in too little data.
What I do think is that we must err on the side of restraint when we talk of overturning certified election results. Extraordinary evidence should be required for such a radical action.
In many cases we don’t have that evidence because people don’t want to look for it, and some of that is because they know that many people – like you – would prefer to let it go if the evidence is uncollected/ignored.
Also, elections affect a lot more people than your kids. And elections can be monitored much more efficiently if we choose. Which then allows for more reliable dealing with known misconduct.
When you do that — pointlessly personalize an argument with an assumption (in this case, an incorrect assumption) about your interlocutor’s motives — I think it has the effect of making your argument sound less strong.
I have an idea. We could force this with political power.
But you’ve admitted that when the evidence is lacking, you prefer to more or less “go along to get along.” Which means that as long as the other side can make it so the evidence of fraud is not uncovered, they can count on your support.
That was YOUR argument, not mine. If you don’t like seeing it reflected in a mirror, that’s not my fault.
As opposed to… what?
No. I’ve said that, when the evidence is lacking, we shouldn’t overturn elections.
The alternative is to overturn elections even when the evidence is lacking. I just can’t get behind that.
I don’t support the other side. I support election laws that make fraud difficult; I support prosecuting those who commit fraud when we can catch them; and I even support overturning elections when the evidence that they were fraudulently determined is not lacking.
The only thing that I don’t support is overturning elections when there is insufficient evidence to justify such an extreme and radical action.
I am redundantly stating the obvious for my own amusement.
How is that different? If they cause the evidence to be lacking, you let them get away with it.
That said, there is quite a bit of evidence of fraud in 2020 for sure, and probably more to come for 2022 as well. It may be that part of the plan is to make it so that even the evidence that is possible to collect, wouldn’t satisfy you: i.e., not a stack of specific ballots known to have been fraudulently cast. When in fact, for example, as I’ve mentioned before/elsewhere, violation of chain of custody is cause for evidence to be excluded without any requirement to prove that the evidence was actually tampered with. And there are valid logical reasons for that.
We The People can’t individually monitor all the millions of ballots, therefore the election people have the responsibility to do their freakin’ jobs properly. And if they don’t, even under current law not requiring anything new, the “results” they come up with deserve to be discarded and done over.
I’m doubtful that anything other than failure to get their way, would suffice to get them to stop trying.
A better analogy, in terms of elections, might go something like: A car has been stolen. Your sons each blame the other, etc, so you don’t know for sure which one did it. So rather than cause hard feelings against you due to “unfair punishment,” you let them keep the car.
And then you say, “No, I wouldn’t let them keep the car.”
And I say, “And now you see how it should apply to elections.”
I’m going to make your analogy more accurately reflective of the current discussion.
A car has been stolen. You notice a fellow driving a car that looks like the car that has been stolen. You are unable to collect evidence that it’s the same car, or that the guy stole it rather than bought it legally. But you and a bunch of your friends think the guy is shifty, and that’s good enough for you, so you take the car away from him.
Oh, and it turns out that you can’t actually prove that any car was stolen in the first place.
I’ll stand fast on a pretty simple position: Don’t overturn elections unless you have convincing proof that they were illegitimate. The alternative is simply not something I can endorse.
Meanwhile, a majority of Americans are in favor of strengthening laws as regards election integrity. We should focus on that.
Evidence of fraud in 2020 is far more than that. The primary limitation seems to be that there aren’t ballots marked “THIS BALLOT IS FRAUDULENT” along with notarized statements from whoever did it. And some people will not be satisfied with anything less. Which pleases the left to no end.
One standard used to be – and arguably should still be – that if the number of fraudulent votes (which doesn’t require identifying the specific ballots) is greater than the supposed margin of victory, the outcome cannot be accurately determined EITHER WAY. What else is there, really, besides a re-do?
Arguably the laws are already cover these issues, they just aren’t being enforced and violations are not being punished. Often because the laws themselves don’t include punishment for violation, which they should.
Meanwhile your position seems to include ballots without chain of custody being counted anyway, lest there be “hard feelings.”
You keep using the word “fraudulent” when “questionable” might be better.
Hmm. Well, any ballot that is “questionable” is “fraudulent” in that it shouldn’t be counted as-is, at minimum. What reason is there to count “questionable” ballots?