# Poll: did Trump really win the 2020 election?



## Costello (Nov 17, 2020)

I'm curious to see if there are Trump supporters here that believe Trump actually won the election, or that the left cheated, etc





(November 16)




(November 16)


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## Megradome (Nov 17, 2020)

Costello said:


> I'm curious to see if there are Trump supporters here that believe Trump actually won the election, or that the left cheated, etc
> 
> View attachment 234166
> (November 16)
> ...


I believe so


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## MikaDubbz (Nov 17, 2020)

Seems pretty evident there was no real fraud, and even if there were, certainly not enough to have shifted things in the way Trump wants to believe would have.  Biden may not be who you voted for, but I see no reason at this time to believe he in any way cheated the election, beyond people just being passionate and deciding that their feelings are therefore facts.


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## morvoran (Nov 17, 2020)

There should not be any doubt in any sane person's mind that the left cheated this election as it's quite clear that they didn't even try very hard to hide it.  You can't just use computer software to "flip" votes and drop off hundred of thousands ballets all for one candidate and expect nobody to question it.

As far as the "winner", since the election is not over and neither candidate has the required 270 electoral votes to win, nobody has won, yet. 

The real losers here are all US citizens as the left has sullied our election process deeming it untrustworthy and unreliable.


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## guisadop (Nov 17, 2020)

with how they don't ask for ID to vote in the US and the postal voting system, you can't ever guarantee there wasn't fraud. I think biden won, though.


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## Xzi (Nov 17, 2020)

There was a minimal amount of voter fraud as usual, and what little there was was mostly committed by Trump supporters (he literally told them to vote twice rofl).  Certainly nowhere near widespread enough to flip Biden's wins of tens of thousands (or in some cases hundreds of thousands) of votes.

Put simply: this is a toddler tantrum.  Trump has been an excessively-sheltered yuppie scumbag his entire life, so he can't stand being told "no" in regard to anything.


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## SG854 (Nov 17, 2020)

Costello said:


> I'm curious to see if there are Trump supporters here that believe Trump actually won the election, or that the left cheated, etc
> 
> View attachment 234166
> (November 16)
> ...


Are you curious to see how many people are stupid?


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## brickmii82 (Nov 17, 2020)

Recounts need to finish. That was close, but I doubt there's any fraud on a multi-national organized scale. Plus the electors need to cast their votes. All of the process has to wrap up, however I still accept the outcome just as in 2016. I hope everyone else will as well.


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## Sicklyboy (Nov 17, 2020)

morvoran said:


> There should not be any doubt in any sane person's mind that the left cheated this election as it's quite clear that they didn't even try very hard to hide it.



The left cheated so hard that they forgot to get the senate seats? The evidence of election fraud is so un-hidden that courts, lawyers, FOX News, and OANN can't even find it?


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## tiamat999 (Nov 17, 2020)

morvoran said:


> There should not be any doubt in any sane person's mind that the left cheated this election as it's quite clear that they didn't even try very hard to hide it.  You can't just use computer software to "flip" votes and drop off hundred of thousands ballets all for one candidate and expect nobody to question it.
> 
> As far as the "winner", since the election is not over and neither candidate has the required 270 electoral votes to win, nobody has won, yet.
> 
> The real losers here are all US citizens as the left has sullied our election process deeming it untrustworthy and unreliable.


Quick the Hunter Biden laptop you guys forget already


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## WiiHomebrew+Snes (Nov 17, 2020)

I wonder what percentage of Biden supporters think Trump won the election?


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## tiamat999 (Nov 17, 2020)

Also didn't Mike pompeo say something about doing a massive email leak on Hunter or Hillary in 
October what happened he forgot


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## Taleweaver (Nov 17, 2020)

Occam's razor: if there really was vote fraud, it should be easy to prove. But thus far, Trump's lawyers managed to prove nothing. Okay, perhaps that they're reaching for straws.
"I've got from hearsay that republicans weren't allowed to watch."
"this unsigned anonymous post it note says some votes shouldn't be counted"
"why yes, I said stuff on YouTube about voter fraud. That was a joke. Can I go home to repeat it?"
"there were a nonzero amount of republican representatives in the room!"
"I saw a Biden Harris van nearby doing suspicious stuff. What? No, didn't file complaints. No, I don't step forward so it can be investigated."
"i don't get why I'm on a list of dead people who voted. I'm alive!"
"some people wore black lives matter t-shirts while counting! What do you mean, so what?"
"some democratic counties allowed people who made an error on their ballot to correct it. Yes, it's legal, but WHY is it legal?" 

Last I heard, Trump' s cases were lost a dozen to zero wins (okay, there was one instance of a handful votes added after the due date. That was ruled a technical error, so the 'massive fraud' was bullshit).
The irony is that this whole endeavor makes it pretty easy to distinguish who's a dumb Trump drone. Well... Easier. The election was a landslide... And that's Trump's own 2016 definition. Even more because nobody even bothers denying that millions more voted for Biden.

Meanwhile, I'm missing poll options that the senate races should be investigated. That circus did nothing but root for Trump, sometimes directly against their own rules or even the constitution. You're not telling me that people directly voted against Trump (which, let's face it, it's the main reason why Biden's win is so overwhelming) but are okay with senate blocking everything but their own agenda.


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## CORE (Nov 17, 2020)

I can see that this poll is also rigged like the Election unfortunately no evidence unlike the Election...Fraud.


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## VinsCool (Nov 17, 2020)

"I do not agree with the result, therefore, it must be rigged!"


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## Bladexdsl (Nov 17, 2020)

trump lost get over it murica. when the libs got re-elected here you didn't see us rioting through the streets. we just sucked it up and accepted higher taxes, more expensive petrol, amenities prices doubled, rent rated doubled and the country slowly going to shit as the rich get richer and the poor turn into peasants..


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## Xzi (Nov 17, 2020)

Bladexdsl said:


> when the libs got re-elected here you didn't see us rioting through the streets. we just sucked it up and accepted higher taxes, more expensive petrol, amenities prices doubled, rent rated doubled and the country slowly going to shit as the rich get richer and the poor turn into peasants..


You're just describing capitalism.  America doesn't have a leftist party, only a center-right party and a far-right party, so there is no escape from that particular black hole.  Seems like Australia is probably in a similar situation.


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## p1ngpong (Nov 17, 2020)

Trump won fair and square and there was mass fraud going on that any blind person could see.

I feel sick seeing so many limp wristed soy eaters giving in to Bidens war crimes. If you saw someone mugging an old lady I bet you would stand back and do nothing there too.

You will be the first going to the Russian owned FEMA camps to be raped by a Covid spitting Chinaman.

Pathetic....


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## IncredulousP (Nov 17, 2020)

p1ngpong said:


> Trump won fair and square and there was mass fraud going on that any blind person could see.
> 
> I feel sick seeing so many limp wristed soy eaters giving in to Bidens war crimes. If you saw someone mugging an old lady I bet you would stand back and do nothing there too.
> 
> ...


Is this satire?


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## plasma (Nov 17, 2020)

IncredulousP said:


> Is this satire?


Surely it has to be...


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## djpannda (Nov 17, 2020)

p1ngpong said:


> Trump won fair and square and there was mass fraud going on that any blind person could see.
> 
> I feel sick seeing so many limp wristed soy eaters giving in to Bidens war crimes. If you saw someone mugging an old lady I bet you would stand back and do nothing there too.
> 
> ...





IncredulousP said:


> Is this satire?





Plasma Shadow said:


> Surely it has to be...


HEY thats my job


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## x65943 (Nov 17, 2020)

Trump won. The election was rigged. I know this from these few pixels here and there and from having seen quite a few elections in my time.

Burisma and Benghazi alone should be enough to barr any Democrat from ever reaching the oval office despite the votes.


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## Hanafuda (Nov 17, 2020)

Do I think there might be something to the Dominion software "glitch" switching votes? Yes, there might.

Do I think there might be something to the instantaneous addition of ~100k votes to Biden overnight in both Michigan and Wisconsin (with no corresponding votes added for any other candidates down-ballot)? Yes, there might.

Do I think Republicans have a legit grievance that their observers were denied access to vote counting? Yes, they might.

Do I think Trump has the right to litigate all these complaints, demand recounts where law allows, challenge the results? Yes, he does.

Do I think Trump will prevail in any contested state or bring Biden's electoral count below 270 before December 14? No, I do not.


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## Xzi (Nov 17, 2020)

x65943 said:


> Burisma and Benghazi alone should be enough to barr any Democrat from ever reaching the oval office despite the votes.


Child's play compared to 9/11, Iraq/Afghanistan, and COVID-19.  Republicans have repeatedly and consistently failed to keep Americans safe, even on our own soil.  What was it?  Ten people that died in Benghazi?  Sad, yes, but these were men who knew what they were signing up for.  300K Americans are gonna be dead to Trump's incompetence by the end of the year, and not a single one of them signed up for that ride.

And Burisma is a big fat nothing burger.  Even if there were any proof, what's the story about really?  Nepotism?  And Republicans are gonna cry foul on that NOW, after four years of every single skill-less and talentless Trump spawn getting a free ride in a government position?  Hypocrisy at its finest.

I hold no reverence for Biden and I'm sure there will be plenty of things worth criticizing him for over these next four years, but that's precisely why you don't need to bother making shit up and clinging to debunked conspiracy theories.


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## Seliph (Nov 17, 2020)

p1ngpong said:


> Trump won fair and square and there was mass fraud going on that any blind person could see.
> 
> I feel sick seeing so many limp wristed soy eaters giving in to Bidens war crimes. If you saw someone mugging an old lady I bet you would stand back and do nothing there too.
> 
> ...


Sometimes I question whether or not I'll be on the 'right side' of history and then I see people like you and I think "yeah I'm good".

Like obviously I'm not correct on everything (no one is) but at least my ideology doesn't encourage vehement racism.

edit: I am a fool


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## notimp (Nov 17, 2020)

Seliph said:


> Sometimes I question whether or not I'll be on the 'right side' of history and then I see people like you and I think "yeah I'm good".
> 
> Like obviously I'm not correct on everything (no one is) but at least my ideology doesn't encourage vehement racism.


There obviously can only be two sides, yes? 

Like in Star Wars.  Also - dont worry, the winners are 'always' on the right side of history. Something about storytelling...


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## djpannda (Nov 17, 2020)

x65943 said:


> Trump won. The election was rigged. I know this from these few pixels here and there and from having seen quite a few elections in my time.
> 
> Burisma and Benghazi alone should be enough to barr any Democrat from ever reaching the oval office despite the votes.


yes thank you... it was triggered, TRUMP even mentioned it in the 2016 Republican primaries that it was rigged...
NEVERMIND the Fact that Trump is only claim rigged in states he is losing in  .. or the fact that He would of known it was rigged since 2016 and never did anything in 4 years. Or the fact He originally claimed it was rigged in a REPUBLICAN primaries (it was still the DEMS), or the fact Republican won offices in areas he lost... that does not matter.. When Trump cries WOLLLFFF.. I mean cries Rigged ...the town should listen does matter its the 10,000 tweet.


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## SG854 (Nov 17, 2020)

Seliph said:


> Sometimes I question whether or not I'll be on the 'right side' of history and then I see people like you and I think "yeah I'm good".
> 
> Like obviously I'm not correct on everything (no one is) but at least my ideology doesn't encourage vehement racism.


@p1ngpong is a troll . He lives under a bridge to scare you.


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## Seliph (Nov 17, 2020)

SG854 said:


> @p1ngpong is a troll . He lives under a bridge to scare you.


Ah I see


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## SG854 (Nov 17, 2020)

Seliph said:


> Ah I see


Look at any of his Nintendo Switch comments


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## deinonychus71 (Nov 17, 2020)

Polls are for opinions, not facts.
You can't have an opinion on facts.


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## Seliph (Nov 17, 2020)

SG854 said:


> Look at any of his Nintendo Switch comments


I suppose it would appear that *I* am the fool


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## SG854 (Nov 17, 2020)

deinonychus71 said:


> Polls are for opinions, not facts.
> You can't have an opinion on facts.


Facts are Facts & Opinions are Opinions. If you have a Opinion on a Fact then it's a Opinion on a Fact.


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## p1ngpong (Nov 17, 2020)

SG854 said:


> Look at any of his Nintendo Switch comments





Seliph said:


> I suppose it would appear that *I* am the fool



You can not devalue my political opinion by putting false labels on me. These are typical actions of a Bidenbot. If you continue to derail this thread with your false accusations and trumpshaming you will be warned and suspended.


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## SG854 (Nov 17, 2020)

p1ngpong said:


> You can not devalue my political opinion by putting false labels on me. These are typical actions of a Bidenbot. If you continue to derail this thread with your false accusations and trumpshaming you will be warned and suspended.


Oh Mighty One I would be blessed if you honor me enough to suspend me.


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## notimp (Nov 17, 2020)

p1ngpong said:


> You can not devalue my political opinion by putting false labels on me. These are typical actions of a Bidenbot. If you continue to derail this thread with your false accusations and trumpshaming you will be warned and suspended.



I'm shivering, I'm shivering. 

Revolution is the prerogative of the youth.  Nothing stays the same.


'Trumpshaming' - as well as all ideas that have people group together to oust someone of a different believe - not the best idea, ever.


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## Seliph (Nov 17, 2020)

p1ngpong said:


> You can not devalue my political opinion by putting false labels on me. These are typical actions of a Bidenbot. If you continue to derail this thread with your false accusations and trumpshaming you will be warned and suspended.


My dad works at Nintendo and he's gonna ban you for being Hitler


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## Hells Malice (Nov 17, 2020)

Biden definitely won


He has to, i'm slated to win $100 in bet money.


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## Seliph (Nov 17, 2020)

SG854 said:


> He's nothing but a washed up former staff


They said that about Hitler too


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## SG854 (Nov 17, 2020)

@p1ngpong 

lol 

you know what I'm talking about.


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## USUKDecks (Nov 17, 2020)

Trump supporters are beyond retarded....don't know what a more accurate word would be because they are beyond stupid, beyond dumb, beyond ignorant.

For all you trumpTARDS, you do realize that trump's name is on THE SAME  F*CKIN BALLOT as everybody else that was voted for on THAT ballot! Its IMPOSSIBLE to ONLY cheat just for trump! That would mean that other republicans on that ballot who actually won, should NOT have won either because apparently some how the ballot was ONLY changed for trump and not any other republican on the same ballot???

Give me a break! This guy CLEARLY hates democracy, he wants a d!cktatorship and his traitorous cult  who constantly scream "america" and adorn themselves with flags, are only using all that as a prop. Their care NOTHING about the true fundamentals of actual freedom and what is key to the foundation of the USA. These traitors think in their universe that
the fall of democracy would be soooooo much better. Yeah because we've seen time and time and time again throughout tens of thousands of years of history how well that has worked out for the "people"

spoiler alert.... it NEVER worked out for them, only for the rulers in charge and in some case not for them either.


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## tiamat999 (Nov 17, 2020)

HIS NAME WAS SETH RICH


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## omgcat (Nov 17, 2020)

people confuse complex with easy to manipulate. our election system is so complex, it is basically impossible to tamper with it. there's like 6 layers that you would need to manipulate per vote. you'd have to fake an identity, get it onto the rolls past human checks, then vote, passing hand count authenticity checks. you would then need your fake vote to not trip computer validation, and pass hand checked recounts. repeat all those steps millions of times. people get yelled at every election for misspelling their names, let alone trying to magic up new ones. one big hallmark of conspiracies is the simplification of extremely complex processes. most conspiracy theorists couldn't even explain how regular local government works, let alone how it could be manipulated. hundreds of millions of eyes are everywhere looking at everything, good luck trying to pull a sneaky.


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## x65943 (Nov 17, 2020)

omgcat said:


> people confuse complex with easy to manipulate. our election system is so complex, it is basically impossible to tamper with it. there's like 6 layers that you would need to manipulate per vote. you'd have to fake an identity, get it onto the rolls past human checks, then vote, passing hand count authenticity checks. you would then need your fake vote to not trip computer validation, and pass hand checked recounts. repeat all those steps millions of times. people get yelled at every election for misspelling their names, let alone trying to magic up new ones. one big hallmark of conspiracies is the simplification of extremely complex processes. most conspiracy theorists couldn't even explain how regular local government works, let alone how it could be manipulated. hundreds of millions of eyes are everywhere looking at everything, good luck trying to pull a sneaky.


The one thing I will say is with razor thin margins in some states, if anything thrown out mail in ballots due to simple errors or mismanagement at the postal service could have potentially thrown the election to Trump


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## KingVamp (Nov 17, 2020)

Taleweaver said:


> Meanwhile, I'm missing poll options that the senate races should be investigated.


You may very well be right. Link


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## Sicklyboy (Nov 17, 2020)

omgcat said:


> people confuse complex with easy to manipulate. our election system is so complex, it is basically impossible to tamper with it. there's like 6 layers that you would need to manipulate per vote. you'd have to fake an identity, get it onto the rolls past human checks, then vote, passing hand count authenticity checks. you would then need your fake vote to not trip computer validation, and pass hand checked recounts. repeat all those steps millions of times. people get yelled at every election for misspelling their names, let alone trying to magic up new ones. one big hallmark of conspiracies is the simplification of extremely complex processes. most conspiracy theorists couldn't even explain how regular local government works, let alone how it could be manipulated. hundreds of millions of eyes are everywhere looking at everything, good luck trying to pull a sneaky.



Adding additional votes, yes, likely challenging. Maliciously changing votes cast on the 20 year old voting systems used in many parts of the country, not always difficult. Doing so in a way that still evades detection? Probably challenging.

I'm not saying that anything DID happen, but I personally don't feel that the statement "it is basically impossible to tamper with" paints an accurate or complete picture when voting machines in many parts of the US provide NO paper trail whatsoever. The machines in my state, for example, use a laminated overlay on top of a multi-button control surface, like a giant version of the overlays for the Intellivision controllers. You press the "button" on the overlay and it registers that selection. You push the buttons you want, push "Cast Ballot", and walk away. I have ZERO way, whatsoever, of knowing that my button press for Joe Blow actually counted for Joe Blow, or if the software on the machine was tampered with beforehand or after, and my vote instead went to John Q Public against my wishes. With the mail-in ballots, I can 100% guarantee in the comfort of my own home that I selected the candidate I wanted to, and dropped my ballot in a county-provided secure drop box near the police station, with 24/7 camera coverage over the box and multiple pickups each day. Alternatively, I can bring it straight to the county clerk and drop it off in-person. From there, yes, I don't know what happens to it after that at the county board of elections, but I have more trust that my ballot will be tabulated properly from that process than from a magic black-box of a button machine.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/def-con-18-kids-young-challenged-hack-election/story?id=57122727
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation...ica-florida-state-website-in-under-10-minutes
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/04/7550...vulnerabilities-facing-2020-election-machines
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54378961
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-vulnerabilities-of-our-voting-machines/
https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...w-to-hack-an-election-in-seven-minutes-214144


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## Xzi (Nov 17, 2020)

x65943 said:


> The one thing I will say is with razor thin margins in some states, if anything thrown out mail in ballots due to simple errors or mismanagement at the postal service could have potentially thrown the election to Trump


And apples potentially could've been oranges if they had just wished hard enough.  Trump's margins in 2016 were even thinner (Clinton actually won the popular vote), and still there was minimal delay in concession (the next morning IIRC) and no delay in transition.  I'm not sure why the instinct for Republicans is always to reject democracy when confronted with evidence that their platform and and policies are unpopular, rather than simply adapting them to the 21st century.  Hell, even the 20th century would probably be an improvement for America's right-wing as it stands now.


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## omgcat (Nov 18, 2020)

Sicklyboy said:


> Adding additional votes, yes, likely challenging. Maliciously changing votes cast on the 20 year old voting systems used in many parts of the country, not always difficult. Doing so in a way that still evades detection? Probably challenging.
> 
> I'm not saying that anything DID happen, but I personally don't feel that the statement "it is basically impossible to tamper with" paints an accurate or complete picture when voting machines in many parts of the US provide NO paper trail whatsoever. The machines in my state, for example, use a laminated overlay on top of a multi-button control surface, like a giant version of the overlays for the Intellivision controllers. You press the "button" on the overlay and it registers that selection. You push the buttons you want, push "Cast Ballot", and walk away. I have ZERO way, whatsoever, of knowing that my button press for Joe Blow actually counted for Joe Blow, or if the software on the machine was tampered with beforehand or after, and my vote instead went to John Q Public against my wishes. With the mail-in ballots, I can 100% guarantee in the comfort of my own home that I selected the candidate I wanted to, and dropped my ballot in a county-provided secure drop box near the police station, with 24/7 camera coverage over the box and multiple pickups each day. Alternatively, I can bring it straight to the county clerk and drop it off in-person. From there, yes, I don't know what happens to it after that at the county board of elections, but I have more trust that my ballot will be tabulated properly from that process than from a magic black-box of a button machine.
> 
> ...



mail in ballots 100%, fuck electric voting machines. however the voting machines used in my local area print the ballot out behind glass so you can verify what was selected, and if need be redo your selection in which the old one is shredded in place. you get a receipt which can be verified later as well. you'll find most of the area's that used bullshit voting machines lean HEAVILY red.

but mostly i was tackling the myth of "millions of illegal immigrants voting". If an illegal alien actually tried voting in my area (Bay area, CA) they'd get obliterated by the state. CA doesn't fuck around with election security.

also i cannot get a straight answer about why the dems would cheat to put the president in place instead of packing the senate. like if we are capable of cheating in massive numbers in tens of states, why wouldn't we just pack a majority in the senate, then full impeach trump+pence and go for president pelosi?

like why go exclusively for the lower chamber, and the presidency, but not the most important of the 3?


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## DarkFlare69 (Nov 18, 2020)

I believe Biden won legitimately. I also believe there was some sort of fraud, but it was not widespread at all and not facilitated by Biden or any of his affiliates. Individual people may have done shady things here and there, such as voting in a dead family member's name or something similar, but these are individual cases. At the absolute very maximum, I would guess that there are maybe 1000 illegitimate votes from each state. Not nearly enough to shift the election in any way. There's no way Trump will get a 2nd term and if you think he will then you're delusional.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Everything depends on your definition of "cheating". The rules surrounding voting laws, and mail-in ballots specifically, were gradually changed over the course of 2019, culminating in the permission for late-arriving ballots, in some cases without a postmark. As far as I'm concerned, the framers of the constitution established an Election Day, not an Election Month, and they did so in a time when voters would travel by horse and buggy over treacherous terrain in order to vote - I don't think the current situation is even remotely on the same level as far as obstacles go. There is no constitutionally enshrined duty to vote in America - you vote on Election Day or you choose to vote by mail at an earlier date - early enough to account for delivery. If you didn't make it before the deadline, I don't see why the state should make any concessions to tabulate your vote - you were late, sorry. If the election was fair and by the book, it would've been done and dusted on the day.

That’s neither here nor there though - I think we saw a historic turnout and both candidates did exceptionally well within their respective camps. Trump may have lost as far as the current count is concerned, but I'm quite satisfied with the huge gains made in the house and senate, which leads me to believe that his mission of changing the direction and tenor of political discourse in America was a success, which is all I had ever hoped for. It was good to see the White House be a house of the people for four years, now it can be the house of the establishment politicians again, but you can't turn the cultural shift around anymore, which is a good thing. I suspect we will see similar gains in 2022, and if the GOP stumbles upon a good candidate, 2024 is going to be interesting.

In regards to fraud, I think it's childish to believe that no fraud at all has occurred - people cheat at parlor games where the stakes are almost nothing, anyone who thinks that no cheating takes place when the stakes are astronomical is a fool. Whether or not it was isolated instances by rogue actors or a co-ordinated effort is not for me to decide - any allegations of fraud should be investigated, even if only to maintain the public's trust in the system.

Do I think the election results can be overturned? I don't think so, at least not based on the current legal challenges. Trump's team would have to establish that the tabulation system was unreliable from a technical standpoint, and as such, its tabulation cannot be trusted, which would be a huge feat. Some of the "glitches" certainly point to that conclusion, but one would have to show that these problems occurred in multiple locations - I'm sure not all of the miscalculations were caught there and then.

In any case, it sure was a tight election season. Highly entertaining and full of twists and turns, that's for certain.


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## BlueFox gui (Nov 18, 2020)

i'm pretty sure that THERE WAS a fraud, because I should be the North United Tiranicamerican president, where are my votes??


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## gregory-samba (Nov 18, 2020)

I believe that Biden probably is going to get voted in by the Electoral College. For those of you unaware the Electoral College usually votes the same as their district did, which means Biden is probably going to be the next United States of America President. However, just like any other vote, it's not final until the actual voting takes place. We've had the population vote in the popular vote, but that doesn't decide who wins the election. The Electoral College is who votes for the actual next President and they don't start voting for another 3 or so weeks.


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## simsimsim (Nov 18, 2020)

Even if it's possible to cheat on a large scale, it would necessarily mean that both the left AND the right sides have voters who cheated, and since Biden still won by few million more votes, it's just pointless to debate this issue. 
Anyone who believes that only one side's voters will cheat when it's possible to do so are beyond delusional.


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## Smoker1 (Nov 18, 2020)

OK, for Trump Supporters - Please, do enlighten us, as to how someone can cast multiple Votes, or as Giuliani Claims, upward up to 50 potential Votes.


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## gregory-samba (Nov 18, 2020)

Smoker1 said:


> OK, for Trump Supporters - Please, do enlighten us, as to how someone can cast multiple Votes, or as Giuliani Claims, upward up to 50 potential Votes.



I'm not aware of anyone on this forum that personally knows Mr. Giuliani or can read minds so it would be a lie to claim you know what he's talking about. Why don't you email Mr. Giuliani and ask him?


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## seany1990 (Nov 18, 2020)

Bladexdsl said:


> trump lost get over it murica. when the libs got re-elected here you didn't see us rioting through the streets. we just sucked it up and accepted higher taxes, more expensive petrol, amenities prices doubled, rent rated doubled and the country slowly going to shit as the rich get richer and the poor turn into peasants..



You need to stop drinking the Murdoch coolaid, this is exactly what I would see from Fox News, The Daily Mail and the Australian


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## Smoker1 (Nov 18, 2020)

seany1990 said:


> You need to stop drinking the Murdoch coolaid, this is exactly what I would see from Fox News, The Daily Mail and the Australian


Hell, I could care less about either Trump, or Biden. But unless there is absolute actual Documented PROOF that there was Fraud, Trump Lost and is just whining like a baby.


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## x65943 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> And apples potentially could've been oranges if they had just wished hard enough.  Trump's margins in 2016 were even thinner (Clinton actually won the popular vote), and still there was minimal delay in concession (the next morning IIRC) and no delay in transition.  I'm not sure why the instinct for Republicans is always to reject democracy when confronted with evidence that their platform and and policies are unpopular, rather than simply adapting them to the 21st century.  Hell, even the 20th century would probably be an improvement for America's right-wing as it stands now.


I'm not sure if you read something into my post that wasn't there, but to be clear my whole point was basically that if fraud could tip the election either way it would have most likely been to Trump more than Biden


----------



## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

x65943 said:


> I'm not sure if you read something into my post that wasn't there, but to be clear my whole point was basically that if fraud could tip the election either way it would have most likely been to Trump more than Biden


That's incorrect though, there were like 10-20 confirmed cases of fraud.  Mostly Trump supporters too, but not enough to reverse the results no matter who had hit 270 electoral votes.


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## The Catboy (Nov 18, 2020)

If there was literally any kind of rigging, Mitch McConnell wouldn't have won another term.


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## Smoker1 (Nov 18, 2020)

Yeah, there was a Report where someone tried Voting more than once, and he got busted. Plus, it all get tallied in a System, and if there are multiples for 1 Person, it gets Flagged for Review.


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## x65943 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> That's incorrect though, there were like 10-20 confirmed cases of fraud.  Mostly Trump supporters too, but not enough to reverse the results no matter who had hit 270 electoral votes.


Go back to my original post where I said IF there had been more mail in ballots not delivered through incompetence or forms thrown out for silly reasons it would help Trump

I mean - if the USPS never delivered thousands of Biden ballots or something

This is the whole point of me saying fraud would have probably helped Trump


----------



## WiiHomebrew+Snes (Nov 18, 2020)

Threads like these make me wish folks like @NancyDS were still around.

So we could find out the answers to the big questions in life, like can we emulate the 2020 presidential election on wii u?


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## IncredulousP (Nov 18, 2020)

Found the voter fraud.


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## urherenow (Nov 18, 2020)

1) There WAS fraud and glitches. There always are. Numerous ways the numbers are jacked up for both sides, but I won't get into that, because of #2.

2) Biden is going to win. Notice the date I'm posting this, and the fact that I say "going to". Nobody gets any electoral college votes, until their votes are certified. This still hasn't happened. But... No amount of mistakes found will push Trump over the top.

3) This election shows how the electoral college clearly FAILS at the State level. The whole reason for the Electoral College? So that the elections aren't determined entirely by New York and California. WTF about Nevada then? Trump lost it. But he only lost 2 districts. The rest of that entire State, voted TRUMP. Herd mentality is clearly the rule of law here, and the Electoral college was supposed to mitigate that. It wasn't always like this. Many States used to "allocate"  electoral votes according to district. Now, there are only 2 States left that do this. If it was the case with all States, Trump would have won the election by a f#$%Ing landslide. Just look at the voting results broken down by district.

Whatever. Trump lost. We will ALL have to deal with it. Glad I actually live in Japan.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

x65943 said:


> Go back to my original post where I said IF there had been more mail in ballots not delivered through incompetence or forms thrown out for silly reasons it would help Trump
> 
> I mean - if the USPS never delivered thousands of Biden ballots or something
> 
> This is the whole point of me saying fraud would have probably helped Trump


Oh I gotcha.  Yeah he's still doing his best to overturn a legitimate and thoroughly-scrutinized election, but I too am surprised that Republicans didn't attempt more acts of blatant sabotage while the polls were still open.  Perhaps there truly wasn't a shred of doubt in their minds that Trump was going to win, and that's also the reason they still can't accept the results now.  They put themselves in an information bubble and an echo chamber to avoid confronting some harsh realities about themselves and the cult leader they've chosen.



urherenow said:


> The whole reason for the Electoral College? So that the elections aren't determined entirely by New York and California. WTF about Nevada then? Trump lost it. But he only lost 2 districts. The rest of that entire State, voted TRUMP.


I know this may come as a shock to you, but: sand can't vote.  Biden won the places in Nevada where all the people live.  Also: Nevada isn't pivotal to Biden's win anyway.  He got 2-3 states more than he needed, so it's largely a moot point.


----------



## notimp (Nov 18, 2020)

urherenow said:


> 1) There WAS fraud and glitches. There always are. Numerous ways the numbers are jacked up for both sides, but I won't get into that, because of #2.
> 
> 2) Biden is going to win. Notice the date I'm posting this, and the fact that I say "going to". Nobody gets any electoral college votes, until their votes are certified. This still hasn't happened. But... No amount of mistakes found will push Trump over the top.
> 
> ...


If only districts were the new people... Next step. If only streets could vote... So many streets voted for Trump.


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## mrgone (Nov 18, 2020)

Everything shouldn't have been a surprise.
Trump comes out of the industry
he is accustomed to be the boss and everyone following his orders.
democrycy is not his thing.
just look at his "friends", autocrats and despots.

as someone who has learned latin in school, i know what a dictator originally was:
someone who didn't want the job, but is only released, if he did the job well.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Smoker1 said:


> OK, for Trump Supporters - Please, do enlighten us, as to how someone can cast multiple Votes, or as Giuliani Claims, upward up to 50 potential Votes.


Make it 8000. It's called ballot harvesting - you collect ballots from people who "don't need them" and you "help them" fulfill their patriotic duty.

https://www.latimes.com/california/...l-ballots-for-nonexistent-or-deceased-persons

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/...cations-on-behalf-of-homeless-people/2464168/

It's extremely simple if you have good ground game and absentee ballots just happen to be sent out unsolicited, meaning there's a huge surplus of ballots nobody even asked for. You can register homeless people, you can dumpster dive, you can prey on the elderly - there's a bunch of things you can do to collect large quantities of ballots.

These two gentlemen didn't do it quite right - using their own address wasn't a very smart move. Perhaps using a phone book would've been wiser.


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## mammastuffing (Nov 18, 2020)

The US is looking more and more like North Korea to me. Trump is a clown and how he can have ANY supporters just baffles me. It's amazing how fast a nation can descend into decadence.


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## seany1990 (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> It's extremely simple.


I wonder who will play you in the inevitable biopic about the homebrew forum moderator who single-handedly exposed the entire democratic party - stolen election scandal


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## D34DL1N3R (Nov 18, 2020)

urherenow said:


> The whole reason for the Electoral College? So that the elections aren't determined entirely by New York and California.



Sure. Okay. If New York and California were the only two states allowed to vote. But they aren't.


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## ZeusX (Nov 18, 2020)

seany1990 said:


> I wonder who will play you in the inevitable biopic about the homebrew forum moderator who single-handedly exposed the entire democratic party - stolen election scandal


"Extremely simple..."


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

seany1990 said:


> I wonder who will play you in the inevitable biopic about the homebrew forum moderator who single-handedly exposed the entire democratic party - stolen election scandal





ZeusX said:


> "Extremely simple..."


I don't know what you two find difficult in walking door to door, or curbside to curbside, collecting personal details of living individuals and registering on their behalf. These two knuckleheads managed to do it 8000 times - they got caught, but for every fraudster who gets caught there are 10 who are smarter than that. If you believe the process is foolproof and all the votes were legitimate, you're the one living in fairy land - there are no elections like that. Election fraud is a question of scale, not whether or not it happens - we know it happens.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Election fraud is a question of scale, not whether or not it happens - we know it happens.


Yes voter fraud does happen, on the scale of about 10-20 cases in every election.  OTOH, election fraud can and has done far more damage in the last four years than voter fraud, not to mention that the people in power who commit election fraud are unlikely to receive anything more than a slap on the wrist even if they get caught.  Case in point: Lindsey Graham recently made private calls to Georgia officials, demanding that they throw out thousands of legally-cast ballots.  Behavior like that from a Senator should get him thrown in prison for life, but instead I'd be surprised if he's even forced into a week's paid vacation.

If there's one thing Republicans are good at, it's holding everybody else to a much higher standard of accountability than they hold themselves to.


----------



## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> Yes voter fraud does happen, on the scale of about 10-20 cases in every election.  OTOH, election fraud can and has done far more damage in the last four years than voter fraud, not to mention that the people in power who commit election fraud are unlikely to receive anything more than a slap on the wrist even if they get caught.  Case in point: Lindsey Graham recently made private calls to Georgia officials, demanding that they throw out thousands of legally-cast ballots.  Behavior like that from a Senator should get him thrown in prison for life, but instead I'd be surprised if he's even forced into a week's paid vacation.
> 
> If there's one thing Republicans are good at, it's holding everybody else to a much higher standard of accountability than they hold themselves to.


Smoker1 asked how it's done en masse and I answered - it's done by canvassing. That's not to say that canvassing should be illegal in and out of itself - I think it's great that local politicians are trying to meet their constituents face to face, or send representatives to do so. Problems arise when those politicians and representatives deploy illegal tactics to deprive the voter of their right to choose, which is what happened in this case, or assume the voter's identity by straight-up filling out the ballot for them. In regards to throwing out ballots, any ballot received after November 3rd should be thrown into the shredder. I am, and I always have been, against extending the deadline. It's Election Day, not Election Week or Election Month. You do it once and then you have to do it every year, this is not a precedent we should be happy about, and I've touched upon it in my earlier post. If the founders could ride on horse and buggy across the wilderness to their nearest voting location, the pandemic shouldn't be considered a legitimate excuse, especially with a robust system of voting by mail that's already in place. If you're late, you're late.


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## luigirockz (Nov 18, 2020)

I'm in the camp there was voter fraud but I don't know if it was enough to swing the election. Even if there was fraud, if you can't prove it then it doesn't matter. I expect Biden to officially win, but he hasn't just yet until the required states certify. Trump has the right to contest just like Gore did , but it probably won't change anything.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

luigirockz said:


> I'm in the camp there was voter fraud but I don't know if it was enough to swing the election. Even if there was fraud, if you can't prove it then it doesn't matter. I expect Biden to officially win, but he hasn't just yet until the required states certify. Trump has the right to contest just like Gore did , but it probably won't change anything.


This is a sensible take on the situation that is in-line with the law of the land.


----------



## notimp (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 is still half nested in fantasy land.

Part of the 'does it scale?' issue is the insanely big incentive not to resort to a certain kind of model like 'filling out ballots for other people'. The only scheme, I've ever heard of in my lifetime, that did that was requesting mail in ballots in old folks homes, and not relaying them to inmates, then 'voting for them in bulk', which probably was done for 'local elections' - cant quite remember.

If your 'statewide' elections regularely are decided by a 40k and more (like 10x more) vote difference - any scheme that involves 'personal pressure' 'on the individual level' - is devalued.

If the next year, voting difference is 10x more - you'd literally have a scheme going, where one year, you might be competitive, and the next year your entire operation is void.

Hence those models dont make sense. At all.

If you want to manipulate populations on the scale of 50k people, you dont go for individual tactics.

Lets say those net you 5x voting power per person, which means 50k manipulated people/ids, 10k fraudsters, 1000 handlers, 50 coorganizers, ... How would such a scheme stay secret?

Its impossible or at least highly improbable from about 10 angles.

Its NOT 'no, no - its going on, its just a matter of scale or not' - scale prohibits certain methods.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Smoker1 asked how it's done en masse and I answered - it's done by canvassing. That's not to say that canvassing should be illegal in and out of itself - I think it's great that local politicians are trying to meet their constituents face to face, or send representatives to do so. Problems arise when those politicians and representatives deploy illegal tactics to deprive the voter of their right to choose, which is what happened in this case, or assume the voter's identity by straight-up filling out the ballot for them. In regards to throwing out ballots, any ballot received after November 3rd should be thrown into the shredder. I am, and I always have been, against extending the deadline. It's Election Day, not Election Week or Election Month. You do it once and then you have to do it every year, this is not a precedent we should be happy about, and I've touched upon it in my earlier post. If the founders could ride on horse and buggy across the wilderness to their nearest voting location, the pandemic shouldn't be considered a legitimate excuse, especially with a robust system of voting by mail that's already in place. If you're late, you're late.


This can essentially be shortened to, "I want fewer people to vote and/or have access to voting."  I've touched on this subject before, and when your party needs to rely on voter suppression tactics to even have an outside shot at winning, that's a bad position to be in.  The only chance we might have of saving the Republican party from itself is abolishing the electoral college, so that they can finally come to grips with just how outdated and irrelevant their current platform is and make the necessary adjustments.


----------



## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> This can essentially be shortened to, "I want fewer people to vote and/or have access to voting."  I've touched on this subject before, and when your party needs to rely on voter suppression tactics to even have an outside shot at winning, that's a bad position to be in.  The only chance we might have of saving the Republican party from itself is abolishing the electoral college, so that they can finally come to grips with just how outdated and irrelevant their current platform is and make the necessary adjustments.


Oh, if that was your question then I would've answered it more directly - I absolutely want less people to vote. I'm not a huge fan of the democratic process - it's a shitty system, it just happens to be the best system we've come up with so far. I'm not ashamed that - I've held this opinion for as long as I can remember and wear it as a badge of honor. I find the fact that a successful individual who contributes to society both economically and socially has the same voting right as a bum smoking crack on a street corner unconscionable. There are voters all across the globe whose pattern of bad life decisions makes them ineligible to own a firearm or operate a motor vehicle, but they can pull the trigger on elections and steer the direction of the country - a cynic such as myself finds that curious, to say the least. It's not a particularly popular opinion, but I've never been bothered by that. Sadly it's not a problem we can fix easily. 

In regards to the EC, it is a quintessential institution that serves to balance the power of individual states. The United States of America are not homogenous - the country is divided into states with very different socio-economic structures and legislatures, and they all have to have a balanced say in how the country is ran on a federal level. Not only do I not want it gone - I hope against hope that similar mechanisms will be implemented in other countries where more populous urban areas dictate what kind of regulation should affect less populous rural areas in spite of the fact that the lives they live are very different.


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## tatripp (Nov 18, 2020)

I'm not sure who really won the election.
1) I do not trust the main stream media. They have proven many times that they are biased against Trump. They have compared him to Hitler many times. I believe that many people believe that Trump is just like Hitler and will be willing to cheat. Even now, they are ignoring what are voting irregularities  at the best and fraud at the worst.
2) There is definitely fraud- The Heritage Foundation has been documenting fraud for a long time, and you can even get specific information about the particulars of each case. There is definitely fraud on both sides of the aisle? Is there enough fraud to overturn what looks to be a Joe Biden win? I don't know.
3) There is a lot of fake news right now from the main stream media as well as from conservative outlets. There is a ton of selection bias on both sides. The right is pointing to everything as fraud even when they clearly aren't. The left is ignoring actual sketchy issues (fraud or irregularities) by pretending like they don't exist at all.
4) Trump's legal team is making big claims. If they don't provide better evidence than they already have, I am not buying that there is a lot of widespread fraud. At this point, they better have something huge (yuge?) or else they will lose all credibility.
5) Everyone is a stupid idiot. People aren't thinking clearly and are seeking evidence to substantiate their prior beliefs.
6) I will accept the Biden/Harris victory if the courts substantiate it.

If I had to guess (without much evidence), Joe Biden probably won the election. I wouldn't be surprised if there was substantial fraud which helped Joe Biden. I also wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of the fraud claims are just misunderstandings of the process and are not actually fraud.


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## gregory-samba (Nov 18, 2020)

I don't mind the electoral college because it prevents a bunch of perverted dope fiends from LA, NY or Denver from deciding who represents the rest of the country. Popular vote might work if there weren't 50 separate states.

I also love the anti-Conservative logic coming from the Liberals. It's the same logic used when attacking anything Trump does or says, regardless if the decision helped or didn't help citizens of our country. The Conservatives claim there is voter fraud so the Liberals auto-default to there was no voter fraud at all. What's even more hilarious is that we're discussing this on a site decided to finding and exploiting electronics. Remind me again, are the voting machines electronic? Heh.

I also want to remind everyone again that Biden has not officially won. The Electoral College still has to cast their vote. Biden being "projected" to win by the Liberal media isn't the same thing as Biden actually winning.


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## djpannda (Nov 18, 2020)

gregory-samba said:


> I don't mind the electoral college because it prevents a bunch of perverted dope fiends from LA, NY or Denver from deciding who represents the rest of the country. Popular vote might work if there weren't 50 separate states.
> 
> I also love the anti-Conservative logic coming from the Liberals. It's the same logic used when attacking anything Trump does or says, regardless if the decision helped or didn't help citizens of our country. The Conservatives claim there is voter fraud so the Liberals auto-default to there was no voter fraud at all. What's even more hilarious is that we're discussing this on a site decided to finding and exploiting electronics. Remind me again, are the voting machines electronic? Heh.
> 
> I also want to remind everyone again that Biden has not officially won. The Electoral College still has to cast their vote. Biden being "projected" to win by the Liberal media isn't the same thing as Biden actually winning.


yes because WE AMERICANS BELIEVE 25,000 voters from IADHO, are worth more then 16million in CA ..because you know  CA full of those COLOReds folks


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

djpannda said:


> yes because WE AMERICANS BELIEVE 25,000 voters from IADHO, are worth more then 16million in CA ..because you know  CA full of those COLOReds folks


It has less to do with the total numbers and more to do with Idaho having the same right to influence national policy as Colorado, as collectives and wholly different legal entities. Every state is different and should have equal footing in representing their interests on the national stage.

Also, a bit racist with the capitalisation there, but I'll let it slide - I assume you're making some kind of commentary on racism rather than disparaging different ethnicities.


----------



## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Oh, if that was your question then I would've answered it more directly - I absolutely want less people to vote. I'm not a huge fan of the democratic process - it's a shitty system, it just happens to be the best system we've come up with so far. I'm not ashamed that - I've held this opinion for as long as I can remember and wear it as a badge of honor. I find the fact that a successful individual who contributes to society both economically and socially has the same voting right as a bum smoking crack on a street corner unconscionable. There are voters all across the globe whose pattern of bad life decisions makes them ineligible to own a firearm or operate a motor vehicle, but they can pull the trigger on elections and steer the direction of the country - a cynic such as myself finds that curious, to say the least. It's not a particularly popular opinion, but I've never been bothered by that. Sadly it's not a problem we can fix easily.


I take far less issue with a crackhead voting than I do with a crackhead being elected president.  Nobody denies GWB's "extracurriculars" during his college years, and Trump's signature *SNIFF* is also unmistakable for someone who has destroyed the lining of their nostrils.  If Republicans can't even pick a president who isn't a total joke, I'm not sure why you'd have any faith in them to pick a dictator for life.  We'd probably end up nuking ourselves within a year of him taking power.



Foxi4 said:


> In regards to the EC, it is a quintessential institution that serves to balance the power of individual states. The United States of America are not homogenous - the country is divided into states with very different socio-economic structures and legislatures, and they all have to have a balanced say in how the country is ran on a federal level. Not only do I not want it gone - I hope against hope that similar mechanisms will be implemented in other countries where more populous urban areas dictate what kind of regulation should affect less populous rural areas in spite of the fact that the lives they live are very different.


The president doesn't micromanage every rural farm in America, that's what state and local government is there for.  That's also why majority rule is the only thing that makes sense on the federal level.  Should the nightmare scenario come to pass where a candidate wins with only around 30% of the popular vote, that's a recipe for instant civil war.  Abolishing the electoral college would be the easiest and most correct thing to do, but short of that, at the very least we need to update the EC value for each state to better reflect their current populations.


----------



## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> The president doesn't micromanage every rural farm in America, that's what state and local government is there for.  That's also why majority rule is the only thing that makes sense on the federal level.  Should the nightmare scenario come to pass where a candidate wins with only around 30% of the popular vote, that's a recipe for instant civil war.  Abolishing the electoral college would be the easiest and most correct thing to do, but short of that, at the very least we need to update the EC value for each state to better reflect their current populations.


The president presides over the country as chief executive and the commander-in-chief. A popular vote makes sense on a state level where state representatives are selected to represent their individual constituents - on a national level the president represents *all* of the states and as such each individual state has the exact same vested interest in making the right choice. The level or scope of power is irrelevant here, it's a unique position when compared to other positions in the federal government. The EC is necessary for electing the president for the same reason why it would be unacceptable when electing a congressman - a congressman represents *their* state and other states should have no say in the selection process, the president represents all states and all states should have an equal, weighted say. I would treat any other setup as inherently unfair to less populous states that would instantly lose their say in the selection process.


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## gregory-samba (Nov 18, 2020)

What I find amusing about the Liberals disdain for the Electoral College is the fact they were and are fine with it when their candidate wins. Most Liberals online now are claiming Biden got the most Electoral College votes so he won. That would be true if the Electoral College voted already, but they haven't. However, the overall mood from the Left has changed once again because after all - it's their candidate who is most likely going to win.


----------



## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I would treat any other setup as inherently unfair to less populous states that would instantly lose their say in the selection process.


One person = one vote is as fair as it gets.  As things stand now with FPTP, votes from the minority party in any given state are essentially thrown out.  Meaning that if you're a Democrat in a solid red state or a Republican in a solid blue state, you never had a say in the selection process to begin with.


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Why does the poll only have the option for not supporting Trump but thinking Biden won?

What about people who hate Trump but believe what he's saying about voter fraud???



gregory-samba said:


> What I find amusing about the Liberals disdain for the Electoral College is the fact they were and are fine with it when their candidate wins.



I find this amusing.

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012


....just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. Smaller States & the entire Midwest would end up losing all power - & we can’t let that happen. I used to like the idea of the Popular Vote, but now realize the Electoral College is far better for the U.S.A.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2019


Although Donald Trump does seem to have missed that the larger states do have more control with the electoral college. Which makes me think he defended it because he won electoral college last time while losing the popular vote.


----------



## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

smf said:


> What about people who hate Trump but believe what he's saying about voter fraud???


Lol, all five of 'em around the globe?


----------



## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> One person = one vote is as fair as it gets.  As things stand now with FPTP, votes from the minority party in any given state are essentially thrown out.  Meaning that if you're a Democrat in a solid red state or a Republican in a solid blue state, you never had a say in the selection process to begin with.


All the more reason to keep it around - if a solid red state automatically gets a blue representative because the blue state on the other side of the country has a higher population, that's inherently unfair. Things would be different if the United States were a homogenous country, but they're not - the plural isn't just there for laughs, it is a union of states. Moreover, you're saying this during an election season where Georgia selected a Democratic candidate for the first time since 1992 - *clearly* voting trends change over time and things work out in the end.

I tend to use the apartment analogy in arguments like this. If you own a flat in a building of 10 flats, each flat should have 1 vote in terms of decisions that affect all residents. Even if you live by yourself and the family in flat 8 has 10 kids and the grandparents still living there, they do not and should not have an outsized influence on whether or not the roof gets repaired - there are 10 apartments and 10 votes on the matter.


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## djpannda (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> All the more reason to keep it around - if a solid red state automatically gets a blue representative because the blue state on the other side of the country has a higher population, that's inherently unfair. Things would be different if the United States were a homogenous country, but they're not - the plural isn't just there for laughs, it is a union of states. Moreover, you're saying this during an election season where Georgia selected a Democratic candidate for the first time since 1992 - *clearly* voting trends change over time and things work out in the end.
> 
> I tend to use the apartment analogy in arguments like this. If you own a flat in a building of 10 flats, each flat should have one vote in terms of decisions that affect all residents. Even if you live by yourself and the family in flat 8 has ten kids and the grandparents still living there, they do not and should not have an outsized influence on whether or not the roof gets repaired - there are 10 apartments and 10 votes on the matter.


yes.. but some of those Liberals would say at what limit do we allow a 3 states with 2-3% of the population hinder the country?
I guess  they don't realized that the only voters that matter are the 2-3% of real Americans


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> Lol, all five of 'em around the globe?



are you trying to disenfranchise them????
#stopthesteal


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

djpannda said:


> yes.. but some of those Liberals would say at what limit do we allow a 3 states with 2-3% of the population hinder the country?
> I guess  they don't realized that the only voters that matter are the 2-3% of real Americans


Does that matter? A state is a legal entity of 1. It is the state that picks electors, the popular vote in the state is entirely advisory. You're not choosing the president, the state does based on its election-related legislation. It is entirely possible for a state to choose electors independently of the popular vote if their legislation permits doing so, it's also permissible for electors to override the popular vote if they are empowered to do so. This is covered under Article II of the Constitution.


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## Naxster (Nov 18, 2020)

Short answer: No, no he didn't...


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Does that matter? A state is a legal entity of 1. It is the state that picks electors, the popular vote in the state is entirely advisory. You're not choosing the president, the state does based on its election-related legislation.



Make all the voters the electors. You only need to count the popular vote.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

smf said:


> Can you explain what you mean? In the president election, why is it unfair if they use the popular vote? What does it have to do with the population of each state?


I just explained it. Twice, in fact.


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I just explained it. Twice, in fact.



Not in any coherent way. So you get rid of the electoral college & use popular vote. Now explain why the relative population of the state makes anything unfair. Go...

The electoral college is a relic left over from a time before fast communications. You only need to send one person with one piece of information. It's just overhead now.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> All the more reason to keep it around - if a solid red state automatically gets a blue representative because the blue state on the other side of the country has a higher population, that's inherently unfair.


If there's one thing to be learned from the last four years and this election, it's that Republicans will find a way to play the victim no matter what.  They might see it as unfair, but frankly that's simply because they're too stupid to think outside the box and be able to recognize how the current system is suppressing or altogether disregarding their vote.



Foxi4 said:


> Moreover, you're saying this during an election season where Georgia selected a Democratic candidate for the first time since 1992 - *clearly* voting trends change over time and things work out in the end.


My views on this subject are consistent regardless of who won where.  Georgia flipping blue doesn't mean fewer votes get ignored, it just means a different set of votes gets ignored in that state.



Foxi4 said:


> I tend to use the apartment analogy in arguments like this. If you own a flat in a building of 10 flats, each flat should have one vote in terms of decisions that affect all residents. Even if you live by yourself and the family in flat 8 has ten kids and the grandparents still living there, they do not and should not have an outsized influence on whether or not the roof gets repaired - there are 10 apartments and 10 votes on the matter.


Well, perhaps we'll call to consult you if we're ever looking to be oppressed by a monarchy or dictatorship, which is all minority rule amounts to in the end.  For the moment at least, democracy did its job by ousting a hateful and divisive dullard.  Just because we barely staved off the apocalypse for another four years doesn't mean we should simply sit on our hands now, though.  There are plenty of improvements to be made to the electoral college, assuming we're going to keep it at all.  We're getting awfully close to 270 EC votes already in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.


----------



## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> If there's one thing to be learned from the last four years and this election, it's that Republicans will find a way to play the victim no matter what.  They might see it as unfair, but frankly that's simply because they're too stupid to think outside the box and be able to recognize how the current system is suppressing or altogether disregarding their vote.
> 
> My views on this subject are consistent regardless of who won where.  Georgia flipping blue doesn't mean fewer votes get ignored, it just means a different set of votes gets ignored in that state.
> 
> Well, perhaps we'll call to consult you if we're ever looking to be oppressed by a monarchy or dictatorship, which is all minority rule amounts to in the end.  For the moment at least, democracy did its job by ousting a hateful and divisive dullard.  Just because we barely staved off the apocalypse for another four years doesn't mean we should simply sit on our hands now, though.  There are plenty of improvements to be made to the electoral college, assuming we're going to keep it at all.  We're getting awfully close to 270 EC votes already in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.


That movement does sadden me, I'm not going to lie. The EC is an excellent institution that should be emulated by other countries, not rejected. It makes perfect sense in the context of multiple states, each with their own diverse legislatures, coming together to federate under one federal government. It's a step backwards, not forwards, and will result in mob rule over middle America, the antithesis of democracy as it was practiced in Greek city states.


smf said:


> Not in any coherent way. So you get rid of the electoral college & use popular vote. Now explain why the relative population of the state makes anything unfair. Go...
> 
> The electoral college is a relic left over from a time before fast communications. You only need to send one person with one piece of information. It's just overhead now.


The interests of rural states like Alabama do not align with the interests of heavily urbanised ones like New York. I've explored this already and feel no need to elaborate on that concept - if you think that day to day life looks the same in California as it does in Alaska, you're the one who should substantiate that because it's ridiculous. All those diverse populations with vastly different living conditions, social structures and local legislation have very different interests and should have an equal right in terms of choosing the one person who represents the entire nation. If you find that "incoherent", that's fine - I'm under no obligation to walk you through it, you can just read the constitution in your spare time. The apartment argument perfectly illustrates why a household with 10 residents shouldn't have an outsized influence compared to a household with only 1, the same applies to states. Each apartment operates as a legal institution of 1 and pays 1 rent - they get 1 vote regardless of the number of residents. The same principle applies directly to states. Should the Electoral College ever be overruled by states that wish to exert outsized influence on the rest of the republic, I will be the first to advocate for secession as the EC is the only institution that keeps the balance of power in check in terms of selecting the president. I always find it funny that Democrats accuse Trump of undermining the country when they're the ones openly attacking the country's constitutionally enshrined institutions.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> mob rule


AKA majority rule.  AKA democracy.  Again, if you're in the position of fearing that democracy might ultimately be the downfall of your political party in a DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC, ya dun fucked up more than a few hundred times along the way. 

I can't fix the Republican party for them, and Republicans seem to have no interest in fixing the party for themselves, either.  If their only candidates from here on out are D-list celebrities utilizing a brute force version of the Southern Strategy, good luck to them ever winning another presidential election, electoral college or no.  That's a big part of why I'd prefer we abolish it ASAP, though: you can't have only one fully-functioning, policy-based political party of adults in a democracy.  Switching to popular vote might be the only thing we can do to try to jar them out of this haze of stupidity.  Well, that or start forming some new political parties to strip away Republican support from here on out little by little, but that seems far less likely given how much both Ds and Rs continue to benefit from a two-party system.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> AKA majority rule.  AKA democracy.  Again, if you're in the position of fearing that democracy might ultimately be the downfall of your political party in a DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC, ya dun fucked up more than a few hundred times along the way.
> 
> I can't fix the Republican party for them, and Republicans seem to have no interest in fixing the party for themselves, either.  If their only candidates from here on out are D-list celebrities utilizing a brute force version of the Southern Strategy, good luck to them ever winning another presidential election, electoral college or no.  That's a big part of why I'd prefer we abolish it ASAP, though: you can't have only one fully-functioning, policy-based political party of adults in a democracy.  Switching to popular vote might be the only thing we can do to try to jar them out of this haze of stupidity.  Well, that or start forming some new political parties to strip away Republican support from here on out little by little, but that seems far less likely given how much both Ds and Rs continue to benefit from a two-party system.


Uhh... I'm not a Republican. In fact, I'm not even an American. It just so happens that a Republican candidate represented my interests this time around - I was a big fan of Bill Clinton and the policy under his watch, and I wasn't interested in how many times he was blown in the oval office. To be fair though, if Clinton ran today he's be considered a moderate Republican, but that's another subject entirely. I'm not at all worried about the GOP - their substantial wins in the House and Senate in spite of projections that the Democrats will sweep both houses show that the rest of your country doesn't resonate with the radical policy that's being put forward and on show by contemporary Democrats. This election was a referendum on Trump, "Trump hating" won against "Trump loving", but the remainder of the votes down the ballot are evidence that the country is still on its way to normalcy, and that course isn't going to change even in the absence of the EC, should the Democrats somehow manage to amend the constitution or circumvent it. I think it's hilarious that you support a compact that, by design, is meant to overrule the voice of a given state's constituents in favour of the national popular vote, directly overriding what the constituents have voted for. I hope the state legislatures that sign onto it will have their feet put to the fire for betraying the trust of the people they were elected to represent.


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## Taleweaver (Nov 18, 2020)

KingVamp said:


> You may very well be right. Link


(didn't have time to properly reply earlier)

Okay...there's only so much bullshit I tend to believe. It's very similar with republicans: if there is voter fraud, the general idea of the fraudeurs is to _AT LEAST TRY AND HIDE IT!  _I already made fun of that anonymous poll worker that claimed to see voter ballots being ripped up in a van DIRECTLY NEXT TO THE POLLING STATION, clearly labeled BIDEN-HARRIS. Life isn't some sixties batman episode where you can instantly recognize bank robbers because they are the only one within a state radius wearing skimasks on a sunny day and carrying bags with dollar signs on their back.

So my bullshit radar went through the roof with that link. I hear all this credo's of "safest elections ever", "everyone was allowed to check everything" and "look...you could even watch our webcam stream of election day!" that thoroughly erode all the fanclub claims of corruption(1). I mean...what's the count now? 17 lost Trump cases to zero? 19? Yeah...if it wasn't the closest watched election day in history then, it is certainly on it's way now.


...but somehow this independent English site wants me to believe that in the next-door US election, some yahoo just planted a fake name on the ballot with the intention to mislead voters because he had the same name as the democratic nominee? Yeah...must be British humor.  I already envision their news studio:

"I'd say, Owen. With all these US stories of ballots getting both "found" and "mysteriously lost", wouldn't it be easy to cheat in an unforeseen way that's so obvious that nobody thought of it?"
"Why what do you mean, dear Harry? Like telling people to vote for Donald _G_. Trump Donald J. Trump ?"
"Why yes, that's an even better idea! That way, it would create confusion to those not too familiar, and thus would effectively lose votes!"
"Well...but it would be absolutely ridiculous, right?"
"exactly! I'll make an article for it for our april fool's joke issue."
"Wouldn't that be too late?"
"Not the way they're dragging things along, mate. Those blokes'll be going 'at it for some time more, I tell ya."
"Well...okay. Write ahead. But make sure to mark it not for publishing."
"Why certainly, luv."

<*two days later*>

"...how come my joke article was printed as real news? "



...but I totally digress. The thing is: I didn't believe that article for a second. So the race is THIRTYONE votes different between the major candidates, but a plant that literally HAS NOT CAMPAIGNED, doesn't reply and (from the looks of it) DOESN'T EVEN EXIST got 6'300 votes? Yeah...it doesn't take a genius that at least half (and I'm VERY generous here) wanted to vote for Rodriguez but weren't sure of his first name. But really: why would this guy be on the fucking ballot in the first place? I mean...can I really just register as Mitch Connell in Kentucky and steal exercise American freedom to just leech off people's popularity(2)?

You can probably guess why I'm ranting here, can you? It's because oh, yeah...once you dig in local newspapers, the article's reported all right.

So congratulations, USA. Just when foreigners thought things couldn't get any dumber, you put down your beer and dug somewhat deeper.



(1): okay, I'm not really honest with that insult there. I've heard that story of the Texan ambassador promising a million dollars to anyone who can prove election fraud. Fuck...if I was a poll worker on election day, I'd fabricate bullshit as well. It may be against my best interest, any form of ethics I have and would make me a huge hypocrite...but with one million dollars I don't mind trying to disprove reality. So those that are trying might not like Trump any more than the average American...but at least I can't blame 'em.
(2): admitted: I have no idea WHY Mitch is popular. The guy makes Jaba The Hutt look energized and understandable


----------



## Gedi223 (Nov 18, 2020)

Your survey is flawed.  There should be an option "I am not a Trump supporter, but believe there is enough doubt that the election results need an independent review."


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Uhh... I'm not a Republican. In fact, I'm not even an American.  It just so happens that a Republican candidate represented my interests this time around - I was a big fan of Bill Clinton and the policy under his watch, and I wasn't interested in how many times he was blown in the oval office.


I know you aren't, you're more of a libertarian in the global sense (calling you an American libertarian would be an insult since most of them just want to diddle kids).  A number of your talking points do align closely with American Republicans nonetheless.



Foxi4 said:


> I'm not at all worried about the GOP - their substantial wins in the House and Senate in spite of projections that the Democrats will sweep both houses show that the rest of your country doesn't resonate with the radical policy that's being put forward and on show by contemporary Democrats.


Only one problem: Biden is center-right.  Which means Trump lost this election by being outflanked from all directions, and the small number of actual American leftists was barely a factor at all.  The closest thing to "radical" in the Democratic party is Medicare-for-all, and every single proponent of that won reelection, even those running in deep red areas of the country.

Regardless, my point stands: we need at LEAST two parties putting up a worthwhile platform every election cycle for democracy to continue functioning.  If a Republican somehow manages to get elected while the party is still acting like a toddler born in the 1890s, that can only do even more damage and accelerate the collapse of this country as a whole.  One of two major political parties huffing paint 24/7 quickly becomes a problem for _everybody_ in the country, even when they're the minority party.


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> The interests of rural states like Alabama do not align with the interests of heavily urbanised ones like New York.



Electoral college is worse for your argument.

Alabama have 9 electoral college votes for a population of 4.903 million
New York has 29 electoral college votes for a population of 19.45 million

If 51% of New York (9.9195 million) vote democrat they have 3.2 times the representation in the electoral college than even if 100% of Alabama (4.903 million) vote republican. While the new york republicans (9.5305 million) don't get any representation in the college at all.

I agree with 2012 Trump, it's anti democratic.

And your argument is incoherent because what you're suggesting doesn't meet the objectives you want. Using the popular vote does achieve the objectives. You either need to stop supporting the electoral college or change the argument why you say the US should continue using the electoral college.

Some arguments for the electoral college:
1. last time we won the presidency even though we lost the popular vote and maybe we can do that again.
2. it's how we've always done it and I don't like change.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

smf said:


> Electoral college is worse for your argument.
> 
> Alabama have 9 electoral college votes for a population of 4.903 million
> New York has 29 electoral college votes for a population of 19.45 million
> ...


Nobody said the states should have the exact same amount of votes, influence in this sense is weighted, based on the rules outlined in the constitution.


Xzi said:


> I know you aren't, you're more of a libertarian in the global sense (calling you an American libertarian would be an insult since most of them just want to diddle kids).  A number of your talking points do align closely with American Republicans nonetheless.
> 
> 
> Only one problem: Biden is center-right.  Which means Trump lost this election by being outflanked from all directions, and the small number of actual American leftists was barely a factor at all.  The closest thing to "radical" in the Democratic party is Medicare-for-all, and every single proponent of that won reelection, even those running in deep red areas of the country.
> ...


I am all for both parties putting forward worthwhile platforms, competition is always good. Where we differ is in the evaluation of those platforms - the Democratic party spent the last four years throwing screeching tantrums and undermining the country's institutions. Both the Democratic party and the Republican party are awful, they just happen to be the biggest. It's always a choice between two evils, balancing which one seems lesser, when in a healthy democracy the voter should be focused on the platforms offered to them. I also disagree with the assertion that the Libertarian Party wants to overwhelmingly diddle kids - put kids in indentured servitude rolling American cigars, or in canneries, maybe, but not necessarily molest. They are a laughing stock though, McAfee 2024.


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Nobody said the states should have the exact same amount of votes, influence in this sense is weighted, based on the rules outlined in the constitution.



I see you went for my option "it's how we've always done it and I don't like change....."

because earlier you said....

"All those diverse populations with vastly different living conditions, social structures and local legislation have very different interests and should have an *equal right in terms of choosing the one person who represents the entire nation.*"

So you're taking that back? Do you see now why your argument is incoherent?

How are weighted votes democratic?

And how is 51% of the voters in a state getting all of the electoral votes democratic?

Republicans are obsessed with mail in ballots nullifying their votes, but it's the electoral college that disenfranchises them.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

smf said:


> I see you went for my option "it's how we've always done it and I don't like change....."
> 
> because earlier you said....
> 
> ...


Because it was democratically negotiated at the time of writing and ratified. You do make a valid point, I wouldn't necessarily be against giving each state one electoral vote, but I have a feeling Democrats wouldn't want that as they may as well disband entirely if that was the case.


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## notimp (Nov 18, 2020)

smf said:


> Now explain why the relative population of the state makes anything unfair. Go...


I can do that.

There is a huge difference in how people live in cities, compared to rural populations. In many countries of the western world, living outside cities, and outside an industrial belt, has to be subsidized. Because lets say major source of income is farming, farming products arent competitive with world market prices - but if farmers would 'die out', so would the entire rural economy. Farmers just picked as one example, not 'the example'.

Lawmakers have almost no connection to that world. If they'd make laws going by what they experience as reference - there would be a bias towards structural investment in large cities and industry - feedback loops would be about large city life and industry. People in rural areas would be overlooked.

As they have a tendency to be overlooked in any case - and as 'not being connected to any major driver of economic activity' they actually can serve as a good 'early indicator' of aspects in your economy that might be wrongly weighted, without spiking into one direction because of direct involvement.

They are 'a better subset to gage peoples satisfaction levels on'.than people in large cities. (If you are optimizing for best 'average'.)

Also - if those people are upset enough that they revolt, they take the cities down with them. (US depends on their belts.)

If you get out of your head, that this is a fight between two camps (dems, reps), you might find, that it has benefits.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



Foxi4 said:


> Because it was democratically negotiated at the time of writing and ratified.


PR.

You dont even know how laws are argued at that level. You think that its pathos. How cute.

Its because 'american people' and history, and chance.. No its not.


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Because it was democratically negotiated at the time of writing and ratified.



Why do you keep holding elections then? If democracy is decided the first time you make a choice then you don't need to keep doing it. You should scrap all amendments too, because the constitution was ratified.

If you had a vote to deny votes from a minority and it passed, then the result wouldn't be democratic even though a majority voted for it. By definition it's undemocratic.

I am still waiting for a coherent argument for why the electoral college should continue rather than using the popular vote. You can't just say that they need to be weighted, you need to provide an argument for why they need to be weighted. Why a person in one state should have more of a say than a person in another state. The past is not an argument for it, I've proved that the status quo is undemocratic with maths.

Only with a coherent argument can you actually persuade me, because I don't have a mad man on twitter telling me what to think.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Where we differ is in the evaluation of those platforms - the Democratic party spent the last four years throwing screeching tantrums and undermining the country's institutions


Where we differ then is in our observation of reality, because forget undermining them, Trump literally dismantled every government and government-adjacent institution he possibly could.  State department, CDC, intelligence agencies, take your pick.  "Shrink government down to the size you can drown in it in a bathtub," remember?  I'm sure you know that's their goal as well as I, Republicans want total corporate rule over the US.  And if someone like Putin or Xinnie the Pooh wants to then step in to fill that leadership gap: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



Foxi4 said:


> I also disagree with the assertion that the Libertarian Party wants to overwhelmingly diddle kids


Functionally there is no libertarian party in the US any more, at least not one that holds any real positions of power.  Rand Paul was the last congressman to claim to be libertarian, and he's the biggest neocon of all.  The scattered few who do still identify as libertarian only care about two issues, or one of the two: lowering age of consent and/or legalizing various drugs.  At least, that's the running joke...seems pretty accurate in my experience.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

smf said:


> Why do you keep holding elections then? If democracy is decided the first time you make a choice then you don't need to keep doing it.
> 
> You should scrap all amendments too, because the constitution was written and decided on.


Your arguments are so surface level they're exhausting to reply to. The constitution has built-in mechanisms that allow amending it, and those amendments also need to be ratified by states until a consensus is reached. There are four paths to amending the constitution:

Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state conventions
Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state legislatures
Proposal by Congress, ratification by state conventions
Proposal by Congress, ratification by state legislatures
With the last path being used most commonly. If you believe that it should be modernised or adjusted, all you need is support. If you can't find this support, perhaps your amendment isn't as popular as you think it is. It's not rocket science, the framers have accounted for this when they wrote the document.


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## notimp (Nov 18, 2020)

Better versions:


(Conservative leaning.)


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> Where we differ then is in our observation of reality, because forget undermining them, Trump literally dismantled every government and government-adjacent institution he possibly could.  State department, CDC, intelligence agencies, take your pick.  *"Shrink government down to the size you can drown in it in a bathtub,"* remember?


That's the dream. We should be so lucky.


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## notimp (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Your arguments are so surface level they're exhausting to reply to. The constitution has built-in mechanisms that allow amending it, and those amendments also need to be ratified by states until a consensus is reached. There are four paths to amending the constitution:
> 
> Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state conventions
> Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state legislatures
> ...


But by glorifying the 'historical quality' of the system in fact seeing it as perfect as is, you purposefully neglect the changes in electorate, and voting districts that got through, over time.

F.e. It was never expected for the US to have a two party system only (afair - could be wrong). And it was never expected to have elections that are this completely  void of any policy proposals.

(Current election was won on - "I will not kill you - as your president")

Also it was never expected that that much money has to flow to hold elections.

As a result, america turned from a democracy to an oligopoly.

So by focusing on the great balancing act all those hundreds of years ago - you hide, what might have gone wrong in the meantime.

Thats probably the reason, why you focus so many people on 'the constitution'. Because in the current political system - the constitution doesnt matter (as in almost never will get changed or ratified without a decades long consensus of both parties, of two...)


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> That's the dream. We should be so lucky.


Yes, everybody should be so lucky as to have Wal-Mart plan out every waking minute of their day.  /s

It's a libertarian FANTASY for a reason.  Having no federal government might have been workable before corporations were allowed to outgrow government, now they'd simply become government.  And an invasive, dictatorial government at that.


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## Deleted User (Nov 18, 2020)

no.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> Yes, everybody should be so lucky as to have Wal-Mart plan out every waking minute of their day.  /s
> 
> It's a libertarian FANTASY for a reason.  Having no federal government might have been workable before corporations were allowed to outgrow government, now they'd simply become government.  And an invasive, dictatorial government at that.


Nobody's advocating for *no* federal government, just decreasing its size and scope, as well as its influence on the individual states. As far as I'm concerned, the fed has three primary functions - national defense (from internal and external threats), creating an environment which facilitates commerce (interstate and international) and representing the states in international diplomatic relations. Nearly all other functions should he fulfilled by state governments. The federal government was designed as a hammer, and attempting to expand it into areas where it has no business being is taking that hammer and starting to hit things with it. Sometimes you hit a nail, sometimes you hit a child.


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## notimp (Nov 18, 2020)

Lets make the US oligopoly? Part more palpable. 

Who of you thinks, that Pete Buttigieg got into his position because of 'best ideas' filtered through an 'educated populous'?

Who of you thinks that Pete Buttigieg got to meet Scarlett Johanson, because of 'political importance' and political accolades?


Who of you thinks, that Pete Buttigieg will make a great UN ambassador, because he speaks 'multiple languages'?

Who of you thinks, that dropping out coordinatedly against Sanders, after fundraising meetups with 35 billionairs ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/michel...acking-pete-buttigiegs-presidential-campaign/) was coincidental?

Who of you thinks, that fundraising 14 billion USD for an election campaign is democratic?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/28/2020-election-spending-to-hit-nearly-14-billion-a-record.html

Nothing about this is 'like the founders imagined it'. Founders fled the empire. US became the empire. Between those two outlooks, the entire system changed. Only thing that connects you to the principals of your founding fathers by now is storytelling.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



Foxi4 said:


> Nobody's advocating for *no* federal government, just decreasing its size and scope, as well as its influence on the individual states.


Foxi4 has a killer story about the great darwinian selection benefits of choosing your own health care plan - and the savings you can get because of that to tell. Go tell them. 

edit: Fixed forbes link.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Nobody's advocating for *no* federal government, just decreasing its size and scope, as well as its influence on the individual states. As far as I'm concerned, the fed has three primary functions - national defense (from internal and external threats), creating an environment which facilitates commerce (interstate and international) and representing the states in international diplomatic relations. Nearly all other functions should he fulfilled by stare governments.


The result ends up the same because you're suggesting we task state government with oversight of corporations that are bigger than the federal government.  Obviously they'll fail in that task, and corporations then oppress and exploit their workers to any degree they want.

Federal government should provide oversight for corporations, and voters should provide oversight for federal government.  That's the way it's meant to work.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> The result ends up the same because you're suggesting we task state government with oversight of corporations that are bigger than the federal government.  Obviously they'll fail in that task, and corporations then oppress and exploit their workers to any degree they want.
> 
> Federal government should provide oversight for corporations, and people should provide oversight for federal government.  That's the way it's meant to work.


Corporations have no power to legislate. If you believe that your representatives are corrupt and vote for hand-outs from Big Wal-Mart, I have a fool-proof solution - hang them. It's been working fine for centuries, but the 20th century made politics far more polite than they need to be.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Corporations have no power to legislate.


No _direct_ power, but they do have armies of _very_ persuasive lobbyists.



Foxi4 said:


> If you believe that your representatives are corrupt and vote for hand-outs from Big Wal-Mart - hang them.


We know this is the case for Republicans, the 2017 tax bill they passed helped corporations exponentially more than any individual, and it has a provision in it set to cause taxes to go up for anyone making less than 100k in 2021.  Unfortunately, the secret service wouldn't let me bring my guillotine on my tour of the White House last year, even though I knew you'd approve and I told them as much.


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## notimp (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Corporations have no power to legislate. If you believe that your representatives are corrupt and vote for hand-outs from Big Wal-Mart, I have a fool-proof solution - hang them. It's been working fine for centuries, but the 20th century made politics far more polite than they need to be.


How about reduce (limit) the amounts of election spending and allow more than two parties to compete?

To check viability you could then have a central auditing authority check their programs for 'feasability' - before they are able to run.

You know on policy - not on fundraising?

Also how about forbidding attack ads, and actually starting to educate your public?

Ohoo... I kid of course... As US is the empire, most US gains (public and private) are produced outside of country. So for inside the US, you just need a population that says nothing on perpetual war, and never gets any choice on foreign policy.


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> If you believe that it should be modernised or adjusted, all you need is support.



I'm not talking about support, I'm arguing here for the change and you're arguing that it wouldn't be as fair. Nothing that happens on this board will change anything.

I am still waiting for a coherent argument for why the current system is fairer than using the popular vote, if you don't have one then please stop posting your misinformation.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

Xzi said:


> No _direct_ power, but they do have armies of _very_ persuasive lobbyists.
> 
> We know this is the case for Republicans, the 2017 tax bill they passed helped corporations exponentially more than any individual, and it has a provision in it set to cause taxes to go up for anyone making less than 100k in 2021.  Unfortunately, the secret service wouldn't let me bring my guillotine on my tour of the White House last year, even though I knew you'd approve and I told them as much.


If I understand correctly, you're upset that the tax cuts allowed you to save money, but save slightly less than somebody else. That's great, I agree - taxation is theft.


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## Xzi (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> If I understand correctly, you're upset that the tax cuts allowed you to save money, but save slightly less than somebody else. That's great, I agree - taxation is theft.


Nah dawg, anybody making less than 100k is gonna be paying back more than what little they made from the temporary tax cut.  Basically it was a trap, and if anyone spent that money, even on essentials, they're gonna be hurting next year.  Just another scam to take from the poor and give to the rich, like trickle-down economics.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

smf said:


> That would be easier if it wasn't for you making incoherent statements about why the electoral college is fairer.
> 
> I am still waiting for a coherent argument for why the current system is fairer, if you don't have one then please stop posting your misinformation.


I invited you to read the constitution, but you didn't, so instead I'll just explain how it works. The number of electors is directly tied to the size of the state in the overall union. States receive two electoral votes based on their two senators, plus one vote per representative in the House of Representatives, which in turn is relative to the state's population. In the apartment analogy that's your "rent" - each household gets two votes because it's part of the apartment building, and additional votes based on size because rent is not equal, and neither is their financial contribution to any repairs that need to be made. That's the "popular" element of the vote, in case this is unclear. It's rather fairly balanced.


----------



## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Corporations have no power to legislate. If you believe that your representatives are corrupt and vote for hand-outs from Big Wal-Mart, I have a fool-proof solution - hang them. It's been working fine for centuries, but the 20th century made politics far more polite than they need to be.



That is why they voted against Trump as president, but he is good at lying and is still pretending that he won.



Foxi4 said:


> I invited you to just read the constitution, but you didn't, so instead I'll just explain how it works. The number of electors is directly tied to the size of the state in the overall union. States receive two electoral votes based on their two senators, plus one vote per representative in the House of Representatives, which in turn is relative to the state's population. In the apartment analogy that's your "rent" - each household gets two votes because it's part of the apartment building, and additional votes based on size because rent is not equal, and neither is their financial contribution to any repairs that need to be made. That's the "popular" element of the vote, in case this is unclear. It's rather fairly balanced.



Confirmation bias, you think it's clear because you agree with it. The electoral college votes don't appear to be fairly balanced. Your rent analogy is just hand waiving.

It would be better to just count votes. Please give a coherent argument for why that shouldn't happen. Why is popular vote unfair? What are the benefits of the electoral college?

I find it easy to explain why electoral college is unfair and popular vote is fair, if it's hard for you then maybe it's because you're wrong. You wouldn't keep going off on tangents and avoiding the question if you could answer it.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 18, 2020)

smf said:


> That is why they voted against Trump as president, but he is good at lying and is still pretending that he won.
> 
> Confirmation bias, you think it's clear because you agree with it. The electoral college votes don't appear to be fairly balanced. Your rent analogy is just hand waiving.
> 
> ...


I've already explained, in an exhaustive manner, why a federation of independently governed states has agreed to pick the head of the federal government in this way - to balance their interest in the union. You just refuse to accept that explanation and pretend that one wasn't given when it was. Removing the electoral college from the equation nullifies any influence less populous states have in the process and deepens the division between middle America and coastal states. The dissonance occurs because you treat the United States as a whole whereas I treat it as what it is - a union of states. If said states do not have the representation in accordance to the rules they negotiated and ratified when the electoral college was put in place, they should immediately secede from the union.


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## smf (Nov 18, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I've already explained, in an exhaustive manner, why a federation of independently governed states has agreed to pick the head of the federal government in this way - to balance their interest in the union.



You haven't explained why



Foxi4 said:


> You just refuse to accept that explanation and pretend that one wasn't given when it was.



I am not pretending.



Foxi4 said:


> Removing the electoral college from the equation nullifies any influence less populous states have in the process and deepens the division between middle America and coastal states.



Removing the electoral college gives every person in every state an equal influence. Why would that deepen division? Are you saying there will be people who be unhappy if they don't have more of a say?

Just under half the voters in a state and just under half the electoral votes will have no influence in the choosing of the president as you can't have half a president. The way the numbers work out doesn't even meet the objective, because in the example you gave it was the more populated state that had more influence. The less populated state had much less influence than it would with the popular vote.

The individual states influence is in the senate and congress.



Foxi4 said:


> The dissonance occurs because you treat the United States as a whole whereas I treat it as what it is - a union of states. If said states do not have the representation in accordance to the rules they negotiated and ratified when the electoral college was put in place, they should immediately secede from the union.



Why can't you have state senators and congressmen elected as they are now and have the federal president elected by a popular vote of everyone in the country? Why should you immediately secede the union? Surely they can just ratify new rules.


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## notimp (Nov 19, 2020)

Better source on the 14bn US election spending:
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-election-14billion-update/


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## Foxi4 (Nov 19, 2020)

smf said:


> You haven't explained why
> 
> I am not pretending.
> 
> ...


To be honest, I don't even know where to start with this comment because it exposes a complete lack of understanding how the U.S. government structures work. Should I start with explaining what representative democracy is? Should I explain how every vote in every state counts exactly the same, just not in the way you think it does? Or how the U.S. is divided into individual states and is not a uniform construct, nor was it ever intended to be besides very specific purposes? I really don't know, this is all covered in the constitution - you don't even need to read the whole thing, you can just read Article 2, that's enough to grasp the concept.

Contrary to what people with no understanding of how the federal republic works, the "popular vote" is a completely useless metric that we only started paying attention to in fairly recent history. The way the U.S. was set up, a Texan is first and foremost a Texan, and an American second. People vote for their representatives within their state, the vote for the President is entirely advisory - the President is selected by the state legislatures by the proxy of electors. This is by design - the ruling body over a citizen is the local state government, not the federal government. The fed was designed to fulfil an oversight function over the states, so in a way, your state representatives represent *you* and the states are represented by the federal government. Every vote has the value of 1 in the state it was cast in - the legislatures then interpret the result of the vote via a prism of their election procedures and send electors accordingly to represent the interests of their constituents.

The U.S. is a fairly unique construct in this sense, the closest analogues would be the European Union, where each member state has their own governments and local elections. They also select their representatives in the Europarliment, but the *President of the European Parliament* is not chosen by popular vote in member states, they're selected by the members of the Parliament. Similarly, in the United Kingdom each individual state, Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland, have their own local assemblies, however the Prime Minister is not selected by popular vote, nor is there any reason for them to be elected in that manner.

The people elect those who legislate in the U.S. - they do not elect the chief executive. The role of chief executive is to execute the legislation that the state representatives have passed. There's a good reason why it's set up in this way - people are meant to elect representatives that will forward the interests of the state as a whole. States then convene and elect a President that oversees the operation of the federal government. Some states have higher stakes than others, and as such they hold different sway, but the system is set in place to calculate exactly how much - it's not set in stone and can change fluidly over time.

I hope that resolves the confusion a bit, because I'm not going to draw a graph. I understand that people are increasingly forgetting about state rights in favour of identifying with an "American Hodgepodge", but in this case the President works on behalf of states as collectives, not on behalf of *you*, that's not their job, and never has been.

What I mean by division is the fact that costal states, that are very few, but large in terms of population, would end up nullifying the voting power of all the states in-between should the popular vote replace the Electoral College. You would end up in a situation where a handful of states can select a candidate they want while the rest have no say at all in the matter. Since the President is selected on behalf of states, that setup makes very little sense.

Take it or leave it, but read the actual constitution before querying me about the basics - if you're not really familiar with the system, no amount of "explaining" will help. If you don't know how the system works, it's pointless trying to explain why it is the way it is. Once again, the United States are not a uniform state in and out of itself, it's a union of federated states. It's a prime example of representative democracy, not a direct democracy. "Why not make it more direct" is an argument with no defined boundaries to it. Why elect anyone at all, why can't we all just vote on policy 24/7 with no government at all, thus directly representing the interests of the smallest autonomous unit - an individual? We have the Internet, after all - it's not like it can't be done. Congress as a whole is a "relict of the past", politicians are obsolete, we can run polls on anything and everything 24/7, right? I'm sure that'll be more efficient.


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## smf (Nov 19, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Should I explain how every vote in every state counts exactly the same, just not in the way you think it does?



You don't seem able to do that, because clearly every citizens vote doesn't count the same & you think that is a good idea.



Foxi4 said:


> This is by design - the ruling body over a citizen is the local state government, not the federal government.



The president does things that affect the citizen, therefore he rules over them.
If he doesn't then why do you care who the president is?



Foxi4 said:


> There's a good reason why it's set up in this way - people are meant to elect representatives that will forward the interests of the state as a whole.



But the only interest the electoral college forwards is the count of the vote & they do it in an undemocratic way (some states are worse than others). So why is that a good reason?

You've repeatedly failed to give a justification for it other than it's how it's always been done and hand waving.


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## SG854 (Nov 19, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> To be honest, I don't even know where to start with this comment because it exposes a complete lack of understanding how the U.S. government structures work. Should I start with explaining what representative democracy is? Should I explain how every vote in every state counts exactly the same, just not in the way you think it does? Or how the U.S. is divided into individual states and is not a uniform construct, nor was it ever intended to be besides very specific purposes? I really don't know, this is all covered in the constitution - you don't even need to read the whole thing, you can just read Article 2, that's enough to grasp the concept.
> 
> Contrary to what people with no understanding of how the federal republic works, the "popular vote" is a completely useless metric that we only started paying attention to in fairly recent history. The way the U.S. was set up, a Texan is first and foremost a Texan, and an American second. People vote for their representatives within their state, the vote for the President is entirely advisory - the President is selected by the state legislatures by the proxy of electors. This is by design - the ruling body over a citizen is the local state government, not the federal government. The fed was designed to fulfil an oversight function over the states, so in a way, your state representatives represent *you* and the states are represented by the federal government. Every vote has the value of 1 in the state it was cast in - the legislatures then interpret the result of the vote via a prism of their election procedures and send electors accordingly to represent the interests of their constituents.
> 
> ...


Basically people are looking to federal government when they should look at state gov instead to take care of their specific state need.

Each state has different needs. And electoral college stops giving too much power to bigger urban areas which have different needs then smaller rural areas,  and stops creating legislation/laws that will benefit bigger areas but screw over smaller areas.

Electoral college gives those smaller areas a bigger voice to be heard, so that their specific needs aren't overlooked and ignored. People that live in bigger urban areas don't think about what its like to live in a smaller rural area and don't care to learn. They only think about their own needs. But electoral college let's those smaller voices be heard.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 19, 2020)

smf said:


> You don't seem able to do that, because clearly every citizens vote doesn't count the same & you think that is a good idea.


This is incorrect based on the parameters laid out in the constitution. The popular vote doesn't decide who becomes President - state legislatures do via their electors. The population in individual states choose their legislatures based on their interests, and those legislatures in turn choose electors to cast a vote on behalf of the population. In the same way, an EU country elects representatives to the European Parliament who then elect the President who, as the name implies, presides over the government.


> The president does things that affect the citizen, therefore he rules over them.
> If he doesn't then why do you care who the president is?


We should rectify that mistake by reducing the size and scope of the federal government, as it was always the intention, from the inception of the country. The gradual creep of power does not excuse itself - it must be corrected. I laid down why already - the president is beholden to the states and as such should be elected based on the support of a majority of the states, or rather, their weighted say in the matter.


> But the only interest the electoral college forwards is the count of the vote & they do it in an undemocratic way (some states are worse than others). So why is that a good reason?


False.


> You've repeatedly failed to give a justification for it other than it's how it's always been done and hand waving.


Your failure to grasp unfamiliar political concepts is not a failure of the system put in place in the United States, it is yours and yours only. The U.S. is one of the most stable republics on the planet - besides the Civil War it has been peaceful and operated without interruption for well over a century. The U.S. grew in influence and power while European states were squabbling over scraps of land in not one, but two world wars which eventually initiated a United States response. It is foolish to assume that the United States should emulate them in any way instead of the opposite. You're also equating "democratic" with "good" - I don't, democracy is the tyranny of the stupid. Not only that, it's a graduated scale, not a binary definition. By the standard of Athenian democracy there are no democratic states on the planet, and even Athenian democracy didn't include *everyone* in decision-making processes - au contraire, it was rather restrictive.



SG854 said:


> Basically people are looking to federal government when they should look at state gov instead to take care of their specific state need.
> 
> Each state has different needs. And electoral college stops giving too much power to bigger urban areas which have different needs then smaller rural areas,  and stops creating legislation/laws that will benefit bigger areas but screw over smaller areas.
> 
> Electoral college gives those smaller areas a bigger voice to be heard, so that their specific needs aren't overlooked and ignored. People that live in bigger urban areas don't think about what its like to live in a smaller rural area and don't care to learn. They only think about their own needs. But electoral college let's those smaller voices be heard.


See? It's not that hard. He gets it.


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## smf (Nov 19, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> This is incorrect based on the parameters laid out in the constitution. The popular vote doesn't decide who becomes President - state legislatures do via their electors.



Obviously getting rid of the electoral college would require changing the constitution.

What is written in there now is irrelevant.

You seem to have completely misunderstood what this discussion is about.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 19, 2020)

smf said:


> Obviously getting rid of the electoral college would require changing the constitution.
> 
> What is written in there now is irrelevant.
> 
> You seem to have completely misunderstood what this discussion is about.


You on the other hand completely misunderstand what the Electoral College is for, so I will give you an example from your own home turf. In the mid-1980's Margaret Thatcher dismantled the Welsh mining industry during her fight against trade unions, in spite of large scale protest. This was in the interest of England, but not in the interest of Wales, eventually leading to wide-spread poverty in the region that lasted for decades and in many ways can still be felt today. In 1983 there were 174 active pits in Britain - by the end of 2015 they were all closed as a result of policies enacted in that period. This is what we call "an outsized influence of Westminster on Welsh business". The Electoral College enables less populous areas to have a bigger influence on national policy, which is in part executed by the chief executive. The U.S. President has the power of veto as well as the option to enact executive orders - handy in times when the interests of some states don't necessarily align with the interests of others. It's one extra road block that can prevent an unintentional capsizing.

As I said, you have to educate yourself a bit on how the system works, why it works the way it does and what are the historical reasons for it. Without that framework this conversation is a fruitless waste of time. You continue to apply the metric of a singular state voting as one for their leader when that is not at all what a U.S. president is and not at all what U.S. elections are about. I might indulge you some more once you do your homework, otherwise you're arguing points that are inapplicable to the political system in question, in any shape or form.


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## jimbo13 (Nov 19, 2020)

This poll is as rigged as the election, you don't condense all of the Biden support in to one option with a leading declaration then split the Trump support 3 ways.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> The Electoral College enables less populous areas to have a bigger influence on national policy



You keep repeating this, but when I looked at the figures for the example you gave then it was the other way round, the less populated area had a smaller influence.

Margaret Thatcher didn't decide to close any mines, there were some mines that were scheduled to be closed as they had become unprofitable due to how much coal had been removed. This had happened before she came into power, the miners then all decided to shut down the mines themselves & there was nothing she could do. By the time the miners returned to work there were no customers for their coal any more.

Her only input was that she'd built up a reserve of coal in case there was a strike. The previous prime minister had been caught without a plan and that bought down his government. The government privatized the remaining mines in the 90's and they've all closed now.

There is even a disparity between north and south wales, the north mostly didn't support the strike while the south mostly did.

When you give a disproportionate amount of power to one group then it causes problems. It was in the miners interest to not go on strike.

The only winner was the union leader, who the union has had to sue because of he basically stole from them.


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## Esjay131 (Nov 20, 2020)

jimbo13 said:


> This poll is as rigged as the election, you don't condense all of the Biden support in to one option with a leading declaration then split the Trump support 3 ways.


Just do some basic math and add the votes up.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> You keep repeating this, but when I looked at the figures for the example you gave then it was the other way round, the less populated area had a smaller influence.
> 
> Margaret Thatcher didn't decide to close any mines, there were some mines that were scheduled to be closed as they had become unprofitable due to how much coal had been removed. This had happened before she came into power, the miners then all decided to shut down the mines themselves & there was nothing she could do. By the time the miners returned to work there were no customers for their coal any more.
> 
> ...


Ahistoric nonsense and further evidence that talking to you is a waste of time. You're uninformed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25549596

I won't be wasting more breath on you.


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## elk1007 (Nov 20, 2020)

The truth is that there is widespread voter fraud. Who knows if its enough to flip the electoral college, though.

Biden voters should want an honest election also.
I fear that, in reality, nobody has faith or respect for our countries election process; they'll complain if their candidate loses, legitimate or not.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Ahistoric nonsense and further evidence that talking to you is a waste of time. You're uninformed.



You can't read and yet I'm uninformed. Margaret Thatcher didn't decide to close any mines.

*The new chairman of the board, Ian MacGregor, now meant to go further.

"Mr MacGregor had it in mind over the three years 1983-85 that a further 75 pits would be closed... There should be no closure list, but a pit-by-pit procedure.*

Meanwhile they were developing new mines.

*The 1974 Plan of Coal produced in the aftermath of the 1972 miners' strike envisaged that the coal industry would replace 40 million tons of obsolete capacity and ageing pits while maintaining its output.[12] By 1983, the NCB would invest £3,000 million on developing new collieries.[13]*

Which doesn't fit your simplistic narrative of a prime minister who closed the mines to crush the unions at all.

I'm beginning to understand how you come to so many incorrect conclusions.


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> Which doesn't fit your simplistic narrative of a prime minister who closed the mines to crush the unions at all.


Em - you close down all mines (say because they are old), then you wait until unions are defunded and become derelict. Then you found new mining ventures?

Seems like a pretty good way to get rid of union influence to me..

Just as a hypothetical - I dont know the case.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

notimp said:


> Em - you close down all mines (say because they are old), then you wait until unions are defunded and become derelict. Then you found new mining ventures?
> 
> Seems like a pretty good way to get rid of union influence to me..
> 
> Just as a hypothetical - I dont know the case.



Arthur Scargill was very much like Trump, a crook who is good at whipping up a crowd.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ion-pay-for-london-flat-for-life-8428774.html

I'm sure the miners thought that was the plan, but from the numbers it doesn't seem plausible.

There were 174 mines, even with 75 closed they still had a lot of mines and miners.

https://www.ncm.org.uk/downloads/104/The_1984-5_Miners__Strike_Resource__hi_res_.pdf

*Ian MacGregor closed factories and made redundancies. By 1983, British Steel had become more profitable. His next role, in 1983, was head of the National Coal Board (NCB). To make the coal industry profitable, he cut jobs and closed pits. This ultimately led to the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, for which no agreement was ever reached. Ian MacGregor retired from the NCB in 1986.*

*On 3 March 1985 NUM delegates voted ninety-eight to ninety-one to call off the Strike. By 17 March 1985, the strike was over and the miners returned to work without a settlement. The NCB closed twenty five pits
*
Closing profitable mines only to re-open them later doesn't make financial sense. It's not that easy from a practical point of view and all your customers go elsewhere.


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

Didnt look into it, but thanks for posting the src.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

elk1007 said:


> The truth is that there is widespread voter fraud. Who knows if its enough to flip the electoral college, though.



What do you class as wide spread?
My understanding is that widespread fraud would be enough to flip the electoral college.

Would you class 1 vote in every state as widespread?

How have you determined that it is the "truth"?



elk1007 said:


> I fear that, in reality, nobody has faith or respect for our countries election process; they'll complain if their candidate loses, legitimate or not.



This is the first time that the incumbent president had used months of drumming into people that there would be voter fraud to try to derail the process. Without him doing that then there would be far more respect for the result. It's no surprise that loads of people believe there is fraud, he deliberately undermined faith in the process so that he could cling onto power.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> You can't read and yet I'm uninformed. Margaret Thatcher didn't decide to close any mines.
> 
> *The new chairman of the board, Ian MacGregor, now meant to go further.
> 
> ...


Trade unions of miners and steel workers, among other unions in the heavy industry sector, were considered a radical threat to the government at the time. This is clear if you read John Redwood's memo addressed to Thatcher, describing the protests as a "radical strategy" of the "far-left" aimed at challenging the government. They were afraid of getting ousted.

https://www.channel4.com/news/by/pa...cial-papers-confirm-strikers-worst-suspicions

The aim was always to make union workers destitute, maximise closures, gradually shift to cheaper, imported coal and steel and remove said threats from the picture.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/03/thatcher-labour-miners-enemy-within-brighton-bomb

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...s-strike-thatcher-real-enemy-within-extremism

Nice Wikipedia copy-paste though, it's a good thing Tories are so diligent that they even file documents they're not supposed to file - that way they end up in the National Archive and we can all read what they were actually up to, albeit 30 years later.

Let's collect all the facts here - the government, under Thatcher's leadership, openly lied to the public about plans to close 20 pits when they always aimed at 70-odd, and presumably more in the future. They were also considering the use of the British army to disperse the strikes by force should they refuse to concede.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23518589

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/03/margaret-thatcher-secret-plan-army-miners-strike

Thatcher deliberately mislead the Parliament and the public by claiming that NUM was exaggerating the extent of planned closures when in actuality they were not - she was at those meetings, fully aware of the plans and had rubber-stamped them at the time. In other words, she lied.

I don't even disagree with the notion that economically unviable pits should've been closed and the industry needed to be privatised and restructured, but certainly not like this. I'm also not a fan of trade unions, or socialists in general - as far as I'm concerned, you can seal them inside the pit that's being closed and you won't hear complaints from me.

With that said, British heavy industry was cudgeled to death, leading to a decreased energy security, mass lay-off and a diminished standard of living, not just in Wales, but also in Scotland and Ireland. This is an undisputed fact. Big England has decided that small Wales, Scotland and Ireland needed a little "push" to change their economic landscape and the plan didn't quite work out as intended, or maybe it did - I maintain the latter is the case. It's hilarious to me that you're slurping the Tory Kool-aid this hard, the handling of the situation by Thatcher's government is universally panned as an unmitigated disaster that smothered large swathes of British heavy industry that will *never* return.

It's a real shame all the good conservatives climbed aboard boats in the 18th century and left for greener pastures, perhaps if some stayed behind the UK wouldn't be so horrifically mismanaged under the watchful eyes of clowns. Have fun with them.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> https://www.channel4.com/news/by/pa...cial-papers-confirm-strikers-worst-suspicions
> 
> The aim was always to make union workers destitute, maximise closures, gradually shift to cheaper, imported coal and steel and remove said threats from the picture.



You've probably not checked the date on your evidence, that was during the strike.

She put pressure on the miners to end the strike so they would go back to work. If she wanted all the mines closed, then letting the miners stay on strike would have been a much simpler alternative.

But buying coal from abroad when your own miners are striking is not evidence that she closed mines to destroy the unions.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> You've probably not checked the date on your evidence, that was during the strike.
> 
> She put pressure on the miners to end the strike so they would go back to work. If she wanted all the mines closed, then letting the miners stay on strike would have been a much simpler alternative.
> 
> But buying coal from abroad when your own miners are striking is not evidence that she closed mines to destroy the unions.


Of course it was during the strike, she wanted to get past the picket line and get the coal required to maintain energy security. The *whole point* of having that picket was to prevent that from happening. This is like, Baby's First Protest, Volume 1. Redwood is very clear in the interview - the prevailing belief in the cabinet was that the strikes were a strategy to undermine the government, which is also why plans were drafted to brand Labour as enemies of the state. This is not rocket science, the whole thing was political to a huge extent.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Of course it was during the strike, she wanted to get past the picket line and get the coal required to maintain energy security. The *whole point* of having that picket was to prevent that from happening. This is like, Baby's First Protest, Volume 1.



Your argument was she closed mines to break the unions.
Here she is trying to open them.


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## elk1007 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> What do you class as wide spread?
> My understanding is that widespread fraud would be enough to flip the electoral college.
> 
> Would you class 1 vote in every state as widespread?
> ...



A single fraudulent ballot does not indicate widespread voter fraud. Also, a single fraudulent ballot won't turn a non-fraudulent election into a fraudulent one. Therefore, there is no widespread voter fraud.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> Your argument was she closed mines to break the unions.
> Here she is trying to open them.


Under conditions unacceptable by the miners, see edit above. This was less about the miners staying at work and more about access to a commodity.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

elk1007 said:


> A single fraudulent ballot does not indicate widespread voter fraud. Also, a single fraudulent ballot won't turn a non-fraudulent election into a fraudulent one. Therefore, there is no widespread voter fraud.



Well I wondered if the term "wide spread" was being used to mean "it happens in every state" rather than "it happens a lot in one state".



Foxi4 said:


> This was less about the miners staying at work and more about access to a commodity.



Is that unreasonable? If you phone your boss and refuse to work and refuse to let anyone else do the work then they are going to try to work round you.

That doesn't justify your original point "In the mid-1980's Margaret Thatcher dismantled the Welsh mining industry during her fight against trade unions,".

She can't be dismantling it and trying to get the mines open at the same time, all while investing money into creating new mines.

You could say she was trying to transform the industry and the miners ultimately caused their own demise by resisting the plans. If it hadn't been for Arthur Scargill then we'd have a coal industry to close down due to climate change.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> Is that unreasonable? If you phone your boss and refuse to work and refuse to let anyone else do the work then they are going to try to work round you.
> 
> That doesn't justify your original point "In the mid-1980's Margaret Thatcher dismantled the Welsh mining industry during her fight against trade unions,". She can't be dismantling it and trying to get the mines open a the same time.


One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. The objective of eliminating trade unions or diminishing the threat they posed to the Tory government is wholy separate from the long-term objective of closing down the mining sector. There's a big difference between coping with a planned closure over a course of many years, a scenario which gives you time to secure other sources of a given resource, and being suddenly cut off from all supply without notice, which leaves you with your pants all the way down at your ankles. Also, the right to peaceably assemble and redress grievances with the government is paramount and integral to a Democratic society - I thought you'd be a fan of that. A man of many contradictions, it seems.


> You could say she was trying to transform the industry and the miners ultimately caused their own demise by resisting the plans. If it hadn't been for Arthur Scargill then we'd have a coal industry to close down due to climate change.


I very much doubt that Margaret Thatcher went on a date with The Doctor and used the Tardis to figure that one out, but in the hypothetical scenario that the mines would've survived (they wouldn't, that was never the goal), coal and other fossil fuels are still necessary and irreplaceable resources in all sorts of manufacturing, not just in the energy sector. In order to be independent, any sovereign country should endeavour to have a local stockpile and/or mining operation on the back burner for a rainy day. You can't replace oil with a solar panel when you're making conventional plastics, you can't add wind to iron to make steel. That's neither here nor there though.


----------



## TomSwitch (Nov 20, 2020)

Maybe Trump cheated but didn't managed to cheat more powerfully?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



djpannda said:


> yes thank you... it was triggered, TRUMP even mentioned it in the 2016 Republican primaries that it was rigged...
> NEVERMIND the Fact that Trump is only claim rigged in states he is losing in  .. or the fact that He would of known it was rigged since 2016 and never did anything in 4 years. Or the fact He originally claimed it was rigged in a REPUBLICAN primaries (it was still the DEMS), or the fact Republican won offices in areas he lost... that does not matter.. When Trump cries WOLLLFFF.. I mean cries Rigged ...the town should listen does matter its the 10,000 tweet.


Definitely rigged otherwise Trump's cheat would have worked. It is after all the most powerful cheat in the world.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. The objective of eliminating trade unions or diminishing the threat they posed to the Tory government is wholy separate from the long-term objective of closing down the mining sector.



Of course she wanted rid of the unions, because in the 1970's the unions had destroyed the UK. We were selling substandard goods which the workers wanted to be paid over the odds for. The problem was caused by a power inbalance (like the one you favor in the electoral college)

You haven't proved there was a long term plan to close all 174 mines.



Foxi4 said:


> There's a big difference between coping with a planned closure over a course of many years, a scenario which gives you time to secure other sources of a given resource, and being suddenly cut off from all supply without notice, which leaves you with your pants all the way down at your ankles.



Are you talking about the miners who closed the mines or the governments plans to close the mines?
The government coped with the miners who closed the mines as they had other opportunities available, albeit at a higher cost.

If they had been able to close the unprofitable mines without the strikes then the pace would be dictated by the ability to increase production at other mines and develop new ones.



Foxi4 said:


> Also, the right to peaceably assemble and redress grievances with the government is paramount and integral to a Democratic society - I thought you'd be a fan of that. A man of many contradictions, it seems.



Tell the people who continued working that the strikers were peaceably assembling.

Their right to protest does not override anyone elses right to not protest.


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## TomSwitch (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Everything depends on your definition of "cheating". The rules surrounding voting laws, and mail-in ballots specifically, were gradually changed over the course of 2019, culminating in the permission for late-arriving ballots, in some cases without a postmark. As far as I'm concerned, the framers of the constitution established an Election Day, not an Election Month, and they did so in a time when voters would travel by horse and buggy over treacherous terrain in order to vote - I don't think the current situation is even remotely on the same level as far as obstacles go. There is no constitutionally enshrined duty to vote in America - you vote on Election Day or you choose to vote by mail at an earlier date - early enough to account for delivery. If you didn't make it before the deadline, I don't see why the state should make any concessions to tabulate your vote - you were late, sorry. If the election was fair and by the book, it would've been done and dusted on the day.
> 
> That’s neither here nor there though - I think we saw a historic turnout and both candidates did exceptionally well within their respective camps. Trump may have lost as far as the current count is concerned, but I'm quite satisfied with the huge gains made in the house and senate, which leads me to believe that his mission of changing the direction and tenor of political discourse in America was a success, which is all I had ever hoped for. It was good to see the White House be a house of the people for four years, now it can be the house of the establishment politicians again, but you can't turn the cultural shift around anymore, which is a good thing. I suspect we will see similar gains in 2022, and if the GOP stumbles upon a good candidate, 2024 is going to be interesting.
> 
> ...


Trump's last resort. Admit that Trump has cheated and therefore the election result is not valid. Let's redo the election with his more powerful cheat 2.0


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## Foxi4 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> Of course she wanted rid of the unions, because in the 1970's the unions had destroyed the UK. We were selling substandard goods which the workers wanted to be paid over the odds for.
> 
> You haven't proved there was a long term plan to close all 174 mines.
> 
> ...


I will as soon as I get past the militarised police blocking the way. 

Honestly, have fun in the Tory fantasy. I understand that a blemish on the Iron Lady's legacy is hard for you to handle, but this is first-grade cope. The Ridley Plan grouped British industries by likelyhood of a winning strike specifically because of Heath's government getting the boot after a coal strike. British conservatives knew what was going to happen and acted in self-preservation, nothing more, nothing less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridley_Plan


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I will as soon as I get past the militarised police blocking the way.



The police weren't blocking the way, the protesters were fully able to block access to the mines and attack people trying to go to work.



Foxi4 said:


> I understand that a blemish on the Iron Lady's legacy is hard for you to handle, but this is first-grade cope.



I don't agree with everything she did, but it doesn't do me any good to perceive someone as an enemy and then distort my own views to always be the opposite. The other way round is not helpful either. I prefer to make up my own mind.

I assume that you don't like her, but you like Trump?



Foxi4 said:


> British conservatives knew what was going to happen and acted in self-preservation, nothing more, nothing less.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridley_Plan



Planning for eventualities is what you do in power, rather than just tweet that someone looks funny and hope that they back down. Is it bad to be prepared for the worst? "It's unfair, they cheated by being ready!"


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## Foxi4 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> The police weren't blocking the way, the protesters were fully able to block access to the mines and attack people trying to go to work.
> 
> I don't agree with everything she did, but it doesn't do me any good to perceive someone as an enemy and then distort my own views to always be the opposite. The other way round is not helpful either. I prefer to make up my own mind.
> 
> ...


They were most definitely preparing for something - more specifically, preparing to dismantle British heavy industry, which is what they did, and did so poorly that there was nothing left after they were done. I was simply pointing out that it was systemic, which it was.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> preparing to dismantle British heavy industry, which is what they did, and did so poorly that there was nothing left after they were done. I was simply pointing out that it was systemic, which it was.



Surely if there is nothing left then they did a great job dismantling it??? You seem so conflicted you can't even keep your views straight within one sentence.

None of your evidence shows that they wanted to dismantle industry, systematically or not.

They wanted to improve heavy industry so it could survive long term, but the unions got in the way. I'm not sure that a better outcome was possible. Conservatives never cope well with state owned and government run companies because they are ideologically opposed to it. Republicans share the same view.

I'm much more open to it. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/29/what-the-right-gets-wrong-about-socialism/

I do accept that the Conservatives hated the unions and their ideology dictated how they responded. The unions equally hated the Conservatives and their ideology dictated how they responded.

The Conservatives were however democratically elected. The strikes in Ted Heaths government had reduced the working week to three days due to power cuts, inflation was rampant and the miners kept pushing for more money while everyone else had to suffer with losing 2/5ths of their wages. The James Callaghan government faired little better. The will of the people probably was to end the trade unions stranglehold of the country.


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## elk1007 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> Well I wondered if the term "wide spread" was being used to mean "it happens in every state" rather than "it happens a lot in one state".



If the ballot manipulation is prolific enough to affect the election results.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

elk1007 said:


> If the ballot manipulation is prolific enough to affect the election results.



Well that would be my interpretation, but where is the proof of that?

How can it be the truth without any evidence?
You can claim there is fraud and people might believe it, but that doesn't make it the truth.

I'm sure there are irregularities on both sides, i.e. a Trump supporter who wants to "level the playing field" because they are convinced there will be wide spread fraud and so apply for a mail in ballot for a recently deceased relative etc. I don't think there is enough of that to make a difference.

If there is wide scale fraud and it hasn't come to light by now then it's likely so well hidden that you'll never find it anyway and that could be for Biden or Trump.


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## elk1007 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> Well that would be my interpretation, but where is the proof of that?
> 
> How can it be the truth without any evidence?
> You can claim there is fraud and people might believe it, but that doesn't make it the truth.
> ...



If there is no voter fraud, investigations will only confirm it. 
If it's too hidden to be found, an investigation won't hurt.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

elk1007 said:


> If there is no voter fraud, investigations will only confirm it.



No, you can't ever prove a negative & Trump will continue to claim there is fraud despite what the investigations come back with.



elk1007 said:


> If it's too hidden to be found, an investigation won't hurt.



Trump calling fraud before the election took place without evidence has already hurt.

I do agree that all the legitimate votes should be counted no matter whether they were Trump or Biden, but shouldn't they have already been doing that?

It would be much easier to achieve that without Trump tweeting his deranged ideas.


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## spotanjo3 (Nov 20, 2020)

I don't vote no one. For all are the corruption. DONT TRUST ANYBODY! They are the liars! and the fakers!


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## Deleted User (Nov 20, 2020)

_I'm NOT a Trump supporter - I accept the general consensus that Biden won the 2020 election fairly_

The poll should have also had: _I'm NOT a Trump supporter although it's possible he won.
_
Just do everything legal, verify it and get done with it. The media doesn't get to decide who wins.


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

Boesy said:


> _I'm NOT a Trump supporter - I accept the general consensus that Biden won the 2020 election fairly_
> 
> The poll should have also had: _I'm NOT a Trump supporter although it's possible he won.
> _
> Just do everything legal, verify it and get done with it. The media doesn't get to decide who wins.


Yeah, NYT made that faux pas recently (in a twitter post)..  Media gets the tabulated results first and announces. 

The issue with 'let it go through the legal system' is 'several instances'. So if they'd get 4 cases not thrown out, and not dismissed from being able to retry to make their case at a higher court level - you might not have a president when its time to call it.

At that point, US law says heads of states have the option to simply pick electoral college votes themselves, based on whose face they like.

Which is an option to steal the election. Of course it would ruin democracy while we are at it - and of course Trump aids have begun easing him into the possibility to 'resign' by now but hey, who knows...

Letting the fate of democracy ultimately rest on the shoulders of four random judges in four different states... What gives. Worth a try, ey?

Or here is a better option, just file your best claims five days before the end of the deadline. Then blame courts for sadly having ruined democracy, because they havent been fast enough. Also a great option. (Trump Team is still filing new legal suits.)


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

Holy mandril, mother of god, this is convoluted.... (I'll better post it in here, rather than the Venezuela thread..  )



> Sidney Powell: (38:02)
> Thank you Rudy. What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States. The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here in as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out. We have one very strong witness who has explained how it all works. His affidavit is attached to the pleadings of Lin Wood in the lawsuit he filed in Georgia. It is a stunning, detailed affidavit because he was with Hugo Chavez while … He was being briefed on how it worked, he was with Hugo Chavez when he saw it operate to make sure the election came out his way. That was the express purpose for creating this software. He has seen it operate and as soon as he saw the multiple states shut down the voting on the night of the election, he knew the same thing was happening here, that that was what had gone on.





> Sidney Powell: (39:40)
> Now the software itself was created with so many variables and so many back doors that can be hooked up to the internet or a thumbdrive stuck in it or whatever, but one of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden which we might never have uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in so many of these states that it broke the algorithm that had been plugged into the system and that’s what caused them to have to shut down in the states they shut down in. That’s when they came in the backdoor with all the mail-in ballots, many of which they had actually fabricated, some were on pristine paper with identically matching perfect circle dots for Mr. Biden. Others were shoved in in batches, they’re always put in in a certain number of batches and people would rerun the same batch. This corresponds to our statistical evidence that shows incredible spikes in the vote counts at particular times and that corresponds to eyewitness testimony of numerous people who have come forward and said they saw the ballots come in the backdoor at that time.





> Sidney Powell: (41:06)
> Notably the Dominion executives are nowhere to be found now. They are moving their offices overnight to different places. Their office in Toronto was shared with one of the Soros entities, one of the leaders of the Dominion Project overall is Lord Malloch-Brown, Mr. Soros’ number two person in the U.K., and part of his organization. There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country. Just to give you a brief description of how this worked, I’m going to quote from a letter that was written and I will read that to make sure I get the quotes right. This person was objecting to the United States acquisition of Sequoia Voting Systems by Smartmatic, a foreign-owned company. I believe this transaction raises exactly the sort of foreign ownership issues that [Siphius 00:42:10] is best positioned to examine for national security purposes. It’s undisputed that Smartmatic is foreign-owned and it has acquired Sequoia, they keep changing the names as they go along. Different times when a problem comes up, they just create another corporation and call it a different name, but it was a voting machine company doing business in the United States.





> Sidney Powell: (42:30)
> Sequoia voting machines were used to record over 125,000,000 votes during the 2004 presidential election in the United States. Smartmatic now acknowledges that Antonio Mugica, a Venezuelan businessman, has controlling interest in Smartmatic but the company has not revealed who all the Smartmatic owners are. According to the press, Smartmatic’s owners are hidden through a web of offshore private entities and that is in fact true. Smartmatic has been associated with the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez which is openly hostile to the United States and of course as we all communistic and really brutalizing its own people. The system has been continued there by Mr. Maduro and ensured his election. Smartmatic’s possible connection to the Venezuelan government poses a potential national security concern in the context of its acquisition of Sequoia because electronic voting machines are susceptible to tampering and insiders are in the best position to engage in such tampering. This letter expresses concerns of the Chicago 2006 primary election and it ends by saying the products and services that are of Venezuelan origin and evaluate Smartmatic’s ownership to determine who could have influence and control over these and other Sequoia products and services are important to the national security of the United States.


Entire transcript:
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcript...-transcript-november-19-election-fraud-claims

Trump administration just found out that electronic voting is problematic (thats why you have manual spot count checks - that, if they vary significantly from the electronically counted result, trigger a manual recount). They just found out that businesses are sometimes owned by shell companies. They just found out, that you count votes, when they come in.

(What an over night backdoor vote influx has to do with voting mashine manipulation - i havent got the slightest idea. Criminals must be criminally stupid to stack the vote at 4am in the morning, when they can manipulate the algo.

Or - as is alleged, they must be criminally stupid, because they cant tell the algo to stop in case more people than expected vote for one side. At which point, it is alleged, that people had to 'manually' shut down voting (in selected states), and then trigger an operation where you refeed 'certain badges of votes' into the vote counters, to fake the outcome, which then could be clearly seen by spikes in the amounts of votes counted at that time. (Alleged ballot stuffing.) But not only that, parts of those ballots were forged, because they had perfect dots/cycles on the name Biden!)

All this 'found out' by people looking at (vote counting rate) data! Wow!

NYT: Counterstance:
https://web.archive.org/web/2020112...11/19/technology/sidney-powell-venezuela.html

Also - this part is just grand:


> Now the software itself was created with so many variables and so many back doors that can be hooked up to the internet or a thumbdrive stuck in it or whatever, but one of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden which we might never have uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in so many of these states that it broke the algorithm that had been plugged into the system and that’s what caused them to have to shut down in the states they shut down in.


My firewall had a backdoor with variables, for thumbdrives, that ran an algorithm that probably ran all over the country, and that broke, because so many people voted Trump, so they had to shut down voting.

Why isnt the FBI getting into this? (Quote: Rudolph Giuliani)

(Also, as usual, please dont ban me for double posting. This is a separate news item. Thats current. And deserves a separate post.)


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## erikas (Nov 20, 2020)

I am a trump supporter. The simple fact is that with the ongoing lawsuits, claiming that biden won is simply wrong. I recognize that currently Trump winning does not seem likely, but it's also not impossible. Trump has not conceded, the electoral college vote has not happened, news about vote impropriety keep coming out, some of them might not be legitimate. I'm not gonna make claims before the actual results of everything are out.


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

erikas said:


> I am a trump supporter. The simple fact is that with the ongoing lawsuits, claiming that biden won is simply wrong. I recognize that currently Trump winning does not seem likely, but it's also not impossible.


Please dont ignore this posting, two postings above yours.


notimp said:


> The issue with 'let it go through the legal system' is 'several instances'. So if they'd get 4 cases not thrown out, and not dismissed from being able to retry to make their case at a higher court level - you might not have a president when its time to call it.
> 
> At that point, US law says heads of states have the option to simply pick electoral college votes themselves, based on whose face they like.
> 
> ...


The concerned citizen gambit gets really old, really fast - if people can point out, that you cant read.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

erikas said:


> the electoral college vote has not happened



Right, Kanye is still in with a chance when the electoral college meets.
All the counts are done though, so apart from Trumps shenanigans then Biden will likely be inaugurated.

https://www.waynedupree.com/2020/11/alan-dershowitz-scotus-trump-election/

_For those of you that don't think Trump has a strategy, or that he's just flinging stuff at the wall in hopes it'll stick, you're in for a big surprise. _

Well I'm not surprised, we know he has a strategy. What we don't know is if he's going to get away with stealing the election.

For a country with a proclivity to remove presidents with a bullet, it would be unwise to overstay his welcome.
Although his other option is going to jail for his crimes and he might not like that either. It's a high stakes game for Mr Trump.


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

Also, news source used for first hit for 'transcript' for that press conference on google?

rev.com featuring the Breitbart broadcast

Original video embedded on rev.com:
https://cf-www.rev.com/docs2/b5e5e0...mHpIt7wqVA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAITKMBCX3DV5275WQ

Just in case the other media networks cut transmission again, probably.. 


edit: First clear misrepresentation in the Giuliani video: "We were warned by president Jimmy Carter, that mail ballots are especially susceptible to voter fraud, about a dozen years ago."

1. We - in that case probably is "the american people" not the Trump administration.
2. The way mail ballots are especially susceptible to voter fraud is - that you cant guarantee that they have been 'anonymously' cast. So you cant guarantee, that a husband isnt looking over his wifes shoulder, when she is voting. This theoretically allows for 'work place voter fraud' schemes, where your employer demands to see how you voted, because - they can. This becomes a problem once voting culture 'changes' (voting anonymously isnt the norm anymore).

3. None of those issues, are then used to make the case for voter fraud in the cases subsequently layed out by Team Rudy. If you've got alleged ballot stuffing going on - it doesnt really matter, if those votes came in per mail or not. If you then allege, that some of those votes where 'printed' with 'perfect circles next to Biden', it REALLY doesnt matter if those votes came in per mail or not.

So why the heck do you open your press conference, with the deep concern, that you are fearful of that going on?

edit: Also, it is alleged, that those ballots were basically 'one batch' that was repeatedly fed into vote scanners to be counted multiple times (vote counting rate spikes). If thats the case, why do you then also forge mail ballots with printed 'perfect' circles next to the name Biden? Do you dont have an intern that can make 1000 dots per hand? Cant you forge ballots with variations before print? Cant you separate a 'heavily democrats favoring bunch of real votes' to then repeatedly feed to document scanners? Which would be the case if they really came in through the back door from other precincts at 4 am in the morning - as also was alleged by rumors the press conference is referring to.

So lets get this straight. You forged voting ballots. With perfect circles next to Biden. That then where wheeled in at 4am in the night at certain locals (and not stored there prior), which you then repeatedly fed to vote scanners, to multiply their numbers by several times, which then showed up in vote counting reporting spikes -- and this was only possible because of 'vote per mail' being very susceptible to voter fraud.

Not because Jim had a batch of freshly printed votes standing by - and the backdoor unlocked.

And that was the backup, for the case, that your vote manipulation algorithm failed, because it couldnt deal with 'that many Trump votes' so voting centers had to be shut down manually (for statistical manipulation checks not to trigger). You caught that at the night of the vote - just in time. And had the ballots ready that Jim printed, but werent able to tell the algo, to just stop after a set amount of votes, when you programmed it?

Because for that you actually had to manually shut down those specific voting places?

Hell of a story, HELL of a story.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

notimp said:


> So why the heck do you open your press conference, with the deep concern, that you are fearful of that going on?



Manipulating people. Everything he says is about manipulating people. If I was a Trump supporter I would gladly be manipulated by him as it would fit my narrative.

His claim of a 200% over vote on the wayne county election doesn't seem to tie up with the figures available online. But I guess lying on TV isn't illegal. The woman seems to be scared about communism.

We need to take a stand, My Cousin Vinny is ours.


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

Second clear misrepresentation is around minute 25, when Giuliani talks about "we have 100 affidavits - that show 'just that' (tripple counting votes that came in at 4 am in the night, when all republican vote checkers but two had gone) - in four other states -- or that they were forced to not check ballots integrity, or that were forced to not ceck signatures, or that were instructed to count votes, without the inner envelope - or....

This is a manipulation method called 'grouping'. You dont have 100 affidavits that report on the most heinous of crimes, the one including the "Dominion" voting machine company (writing a cheating algorithm). So you group them with other affidavits you've got, and make them sound like they all support the same ("we've got 100 affidavits supporting this -- and other alleged schemes (at the end of the third nested sentence following the original statement)".
--

edit:

Short summery about half into the press conference.

All instances, where Giuliani alleges schemes, where voting inspectors were prevented from checking mail in ballots at the time of separating them from the outer envelopes, or told that they would not have to be present at that time, all cases where voting inspectors were instructed to not check signatures, or backdate, or not invalidate invalid votes -- are reasons for a repeat election in that precinct.

If you can make that case - good. But none of that is necessarily structural. As with all instances of 'stupid people' in the process.

And please, let me emphasize on 'stupid people', because if you are a vote inspector, and you are instructed to not follow the voting process - this means, that you have no idea of the voting process, and could potentially be hoodwinked into doing something fraudulent by an authority figure as unimportant as your supervisor.

If thats the case - close down all democracies. Now. Or just the one in the US specifically, because people there are premo stupid. And this INCLUDES getting talked out of being present at the time, when outer mail in envelopes are signature checked and opened.


All cases where voter participation has reached 150-200+% of registered voters - are immediately suspect and have to be suspect to an investigation as well.
-

That said

- the claim that 'voting inspectors were not allowed in certain states' is manipulative. What is meant is independent (trigger word - foreign) voting inspectors from the UN. Why the US does that - I have no clue, but that didnt start with Trump. That also doesnt mean, that _no_ vote inspectors were allowed to look at procedures. A democratic vote without inspectors from both sides - doesnt work.

- all structural voting fraud claims (where one scheme would have been used to turn the election in several places at once) - are completely stupid - the way they are explained by Rudy (and Sidney Powell) they follow no inherent process logic, and seem to be cobbled together with a bunch of different claims, not making any sense if you add them up. This means, that argument - likely - is constructed.

Also - if you really litigate every precinct after every election in every county (not just the 'close' ones, but also ones which largely favored dems over reps in counties of every state you want the vote to flip in), and you only do this for 'possible statistical anomalies' favoring one party, but not the other one - you end up with a biased outcome as well. And months of time spent on legal litigation after every election. Doing this basically disables democracy - and lets a winner be decided by heads of states, while the cases are stranded in the courts.

Its very important - for democracy to work - that people counting the votes, and inspecting the count - KNOW that they cant forge them, or 'not only follow some rules', or be molded in their action to the point they become illegal - by 'their supervisors'.

If that happens in any democracy - democracy is over, and americans have to be pronounced 'too stupid, to be allowed to have it'.

If thats the problem (most probable accusations Giuliani made), good luck, and good night.
--

edit:



> I mean, it really happens in two ways. There’s an algorithm that runs that automatically flips all the votes, and then each operator has the ability to go in override settings. They can ignore a signature, they could ignore the top line of the ballot. They can go down ballot and select who they want to change the results for. The gentleman who founded Smartmatic, there’s video of him on the internet, explaining that, yes, in at least one occasion, he admits, they changed a million votes with no problem. Many of the jurisdictions that have had this problem might not have known of the issues, but many did. I think a full-scale criminal investigation needs to be undertaken immediately by the Department of Justice and by every state’s equivalent, Attorney General’s Office or State Investigatory Unit, because there’s evidence of different benefits being provided to the people who spent 100 million dollars of taxpayer money at the last minute for their state to get the Dominion voting systems put in, in time for this election in different ways.



Isnt it wonderful - when a 60 year old women discovers how computers work for the first time in front of national TV cameras?

(Because this is an inherent problem with all voting software/computers. One that cant be designed away.)

They found that out, by finding and reading the manual of those machines online on google - btw. Now. Just so you know.

While these issues have been discussed in the senate as early as 2006. Then nobody did anything about it, because fixing it cost money. And acknowledging, that this is an inherent problem with voting machines, and that paper was better (because the process is transparent and not subject to be only understood by the high priest that wrote the 'hardware security module' - i.e. the guy/gal that doesnt need a 'drag and drop interface'.)

So what do you say? Lets end democracy, because of them - why dont we? I mean - as long as there is a possibility still not debunked, that could have impacted outcome...
--


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

Sorry: But this really needs to be put in a separate thread, otherwise its confusing.

New angle:

CISA is making factually wrong claims. Thats fun.



> Every state has voting system safeguards to ensure each ballot cast in the election can be correctly counted. State procedures often include testing and certification of voting systems, required auditable logs, and software checks, such as logic and accuracy tests, to ensure ballots are properly counted before election results are made official. With these security measures, election officials can check to determine that devices are running the certified software and functioning properly.


src: https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol



> State procedures often include testing and certification of voting systems.


They usually dont mandate software to be provided as open source. They cant really test. And 'certifying' machines makes them inherently unsafe and hackable - because you dont allow for security updates to be administered. You basically seal them 'as is', without knowing what 'as is' means. (No source code audits.)

Then you dont protect them from many attack vectors. (No security updates.)

In fact the ecosystems of those companies are layed out to cobble together the cheapest Win 95 machines, and then not caring about anything (no patches), other than 'system brake down within the warranty period'.



> required auditable logs, and software checks


Logs can be forged, software checks can be overrun. Hey, if you are admin, you are admin.



> such as logic and accuracy tests, to ensure ballots are properly counted before election results are made official.


Spot checks and statistical sanity checks are done - but again, if you know them, you could work around them (Stay within a certain parameter of probability).



> With these security measures, election officials can check to determine that devices are running the certified software and functioning properly.


Absolutely not. What they can say is. 'Computer says no' and thats about all of it.

The actual response to those claims is - "we have not found any indication of those attack vectors being widely used, ever". And thats all.

Some of it you can mitigate, by a certain update regime (signature checks, only allow one 'certified' person to roll out updates), but some of those mitigations are null and void by the fact that those machines are 'certified' (as is) and therefore never updated. Of course NEVER connect an unpatched machine to the internet, especially not for updates, stuff like that.

But the explaination that 'all is good, because of logs, and statistical spot checks' is absolutely false.

Fun.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

notimp said:


> All cases where voter participation has reached 150-200+% of registered voters - are immediately suspect and have to be suspect to an investigation as well.



I tried to find a news article and all I could find was around 200 suspect ballots which led to an over count of 40.

It's like a bait and switch.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 20, 2020)

smf said:


> Surely if there is nothing left then they did a great job dismantling it??? You seem so conflicted you can't even keep your views straight within one sentence.
> 
> None of your evidence shows that they wanted to dismantle industry, systematically or not.
> 
> ...


When you dismantle something, you tend to end up with base elements. I doubt the intention was to completely and utterly shut down heavy industry over the course of the next 30 years, but that ended up being the result. Neither here nor there though, it has little to do with Trump.


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## smf (Nov 20, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I doubt the intention was to completely and utterly shut down heavy industry over the course of the next 30 years, but that ended up being the result.



It was always going to happen, if you want low inflation then you need to make things cheaper and rightly or wrongly you do that by finding a poor country with lower working standards and wages and paying them to do it (or importing illegal immigrants from a poor country and paying them barely nothing).

The US did that too but Trump wants to reverse it, which sounds great on the surface but it's likely going to bankrupt the US if he actually achieves it.

It needs someone who can handle nuance, not someone like Trump


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## notimp (Nov 20, 2020)

Here is a potentially foolproof way to forge the next election outcome.

There are some forms of epaper, that could be inductively charged, and maybe even programmed to change the ballot number in a set time interval.

If those numbers dont get checked against a register (as Team Giuliani suggests), but are only spot checked for a 'freak' bunching up of one number, have your guy at the voting booth, feed that into a vote scanner every 10 minutes.

Have an emergency switch that deletes the content of the epaper, and let it auto destroy after 12 hours.

And the only problem left to be solved in hardware is, how to get the chip and the transistors on the epaper small enough for them to fit through the document scanner.

Also, why isnt the document scanner one way, with a lock and a bag attached at the bottom?

Hm... Some of those schemes could be juicy, if you just add a little creative thinking..  I mean with all the vote checkers in the US not knowing what they are supposed to do or not...

(Does it scale though...?  Lets say one person does that every 10 minutes for 12 hours = 72 votes. Yeah, not bad.  edit: But doesnt scale enough. (Made a slight calculation error the first time around.  ))

edit -Ideally have the entire sheet made of paper and only the number part replaced by eInk. Would probably look better. And it doesnt need to look totally convincing to the machine if they are storing OCR data only.  (They probably also store an image..  )

And you are still up against statistical sanity checks.

edit: Here - proof of concept for your next voter fraud scheme  :

---

Did some more theory crafting on that. 

Problem laid out by Team Giuliani was, that in some districts, the same voting ballot numbers would show up 'ten minutes after the first time - they showed up' in logs, which to them indicated, that ballots might have been fed in loops - multiple times. Which according to them also lined up with them recording 'voting precessing spikes' around 4 am in the morning.  (At least in some cases..  )

Why ten minutes though? This might be connected to the second conspiracy they spun up, which was, that 'entire batches' were recycled.

So scanners probably are one way - with a bag and a lock attached at the bottom - but it was alleged, that they were 're-fed' after 10 minutes.

But that would lead to the entire batches ballot numbers at least showing up twice - which would be highly suspect, and immediately point at the issue.

If only 'some' ballots 'showed up for a second time' according to their numbers, its probably an OCR error, that propagated down to the logs? 

Hey - when they dont give any specifics, its actually fun, to puzzle together the rest in your mind...

*hint**hint* 
----------------



smf said:


> I tried to find a news article and all I could find was around 200 suspect ballots which led to an over count of 40. It's like a bait and switch.



Only fact check with details I've found is this: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/11/19/fact-checking-the-trump-campaigns-wild-press-conference/

Which is highly suspect. Basically says not to worry - its a clerical issue. And doesnt differentiate between undercount and overcount. If you have overcount vales of 40-200% (and 40% apparently happened in some districts before) - I'd like to know the reason for it. But as Giuliani only dropped it as a byline - amongst 50 other more easily debunkable statements... Couldnt have been that important, ey?

I mean if their best bet was to go in on 'Venezuelan communists manipulated our voting machines', god have mercy....

edit:

Found the source for the 300+% overvote. As you indicated, its debunked.


> But as the Powerline blog first reported, the affidavit made a major mistake. Its data wasn’t actually from Michigan; it was from Minnesota. What’s more, its conclusions about over-votes even in those Minnesota locations aren’t backed up data from the Minnesota secretary of state or from previous elections.


https://web.archive.org/web/2020112...h-hyped-affidavit-features-big-glaring-error/

-----------


Haha, this is flipping great!

Smartmatic story (in the so far unreleased affidavit) includes results being fed into a 'national monitoring room' in Venzuela, brought to you by Smartmatic - which allowed the president to monitor and change district outcomes in realtime.

src:
h**ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_p1sonhp-k

"Stark similarities" to the situation in the US were alleged by Powell - so the followup question is -- how many of Dominions voting machines were connected to the internet?...  (0? Well great, that takes care of 'stark similarities')

Also according to Powell Smartmatic had to take the entire internet down in Venezuela to make the voting machines 'change over'. (What? Even in regimes like that - internet is only taken down to suppress news propagation and organizing.)

Arguably allegedly (?) when that military official heard of 'glitches' in several Dominion voting machines that 'stopped the voting' for a certain time - he was reminded of his time in Venezuela when the President had to 'take down the internet - to change smartmatic voting results'? That the stark 'similarities' connection? 

Also according to Powell Smartmagic built an elaborate system that allows you to disassociate identity verification data (thumbprint) from voting data, and manipulate one independent of the other. Yes, thats called a computer.... Also, thats by design (id gets discarded, vote is kept, so voting is thereby anonymized). Gotta love people speaking with authority on things they dont understand, not being questioned on it by the journalists interviewing, because they also dont understand a thing about those things... *sigh*


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## omgcat (Nov 21, 2020)

jimbo13 said:


> This poll is as rigged as the election, you don't condense all of the Biden support in to one option with a leading declaration then split the Trump support 3 ways.



just add up the votes man. 157 vs 24+14+10 = 157 vs 48. or another way to look at it is 48/(157+48)= 23.41% for trump and 76.59% for biden.

if we add the "don't care votes" those percentages drop a little for both candidates.

however this is also an interesting topic. in a few senate races across America, there were shadow candidates that shared extremely close names with the democratic candidate thus splitting their vote.

for example:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/20/florida-election-trump-senator-rodriguez/


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## Foxi4 (Nov 21, 2020)

omgcat said:


> just add up the votes man. 157 vs 24+14+10 = 157 vs 48. or another way to look at it is 48/(157+48)= 23.41% for trump and 76.59% for biden.
> 
> if we add the "don't care votes" those percentages drop a little for both candidates.
> 
> ...


I mean, the last name here is "Rodriguez" , it's not exactly uncommon for a Latino. It's on the level of "Smith". Sounds a little conspiratorial, if you ask me. This is not evidence of a shadow candidate, it's evidence of sour grapes. If +/- 2% of voters voted "for the wrong candidate" based on the last name alone, I would question whether they should be voting at all. If you confuse "Jose Javier" with "Alex", maybe staying home is a better choice.


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## smf (Nov 21, 2020)

notimp said:


> Problem laid out by Team Giuliani was, that in some districts, the same voting ballot numbers would show up 'ten minutes after the first time - they showed up' in logs, which to them indicated, that ballots might have been fed in loops - multiple times. Which according to them also lined up with them recording 'voting precessing spikes' around 4 am in the morning.  (At least in some cases..  )



Unless you know what the logs are supposed to contain, you can't really tell what it is going on.

Maybe they get logged at multiple stages, so all numbers are in there multiple times.
Maybe there were errors and they had to be retried committing to the data base.
Maybe they were holding the piece of paper with their thumb over part of the number.
Maybe the number they are seeing in the logs is not a ballot number.
Maybe Rudy can't read.
Maybe Rudy just made it up.

I worked on software that did real time data analysis, it went through QA and went live without anyone noticing that the data volumes involved meant that if the system failed for any reason (power/network outage/etc) it would not catch up. I figured out a way to make it quicker, but in the mean time there was lots of records being processed at odd times of the day when nothing should have been happening.


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## stanleyopar2000 (Nov 21, 2020)

"I Love Democracy."


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## omgcat (Nov 22, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I mean, the last name here is "Rodriguez" , it's not exactly uncommon for a Latino. It's on the level of "Smith". Sounds a little conspiratorial, if you ask me. This is not evidence of a shadow candidate, it's evidence of sour grapes. If +/- 2% of voters voted "for the wrong candidate" based on the last name alone, I would question whether they should be voting at all. If you confuse "Jose Javier" with "Alex", maybe staying home is a better choice.



an investigation is happening, the potential shadow candidate used an address in palmetto that he doesn't live at, which is a 3rd degree felony in Florida. The guy is a ghost, did no campaigning or anything.

in fact, he doesn't even live in the district he was running for.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article247288694.html

Alex got 6k votes when the difference between José and Ileana was 34 votes. if even 50 out of the 6000+ people confused the candidates names it swung the election.


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## urherenow (Nov 24, 2020)

D34DL1N3R said:


> Sure. Okay. If New York and California were the only two states allowed to vote. But they aren't.


do you understand what you're talking about? Obviously not. The number of democratic voters in those two states combined  outnumber the number of republican voters in more than 30 other states COMBINED. Without the electoral college, the other state's votes wouldn't matter a damn bit.


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## D34DL1N3R (Nov 24, 2020)

urherenow said:


> do you understand what you're talking about? Obviously not. The number of democratic voters in those two states combined  outnumber the number of republican voters in more than 30 other states COMBINED. Without the electoral college, the other state's votes wouldn't matter a damn bit.



Okay. Let's put it another way for your simple mind. If there are more people in the United States that would vote for a Democrat President, then there should be a Democrat President as the people have spoken. It doesn't matter where the people are located, as long as all people are heard. Do people in those two states not have the freedom to take the side they wish, just like the residents of any other state? Why does location matter? Take the residents of those two states and spread them out anywhere in the US you'd like. Close those two states down, and relocate everyone to red states. Does that change their votes? Lmao. C'mon. Stop playing idiot for arguments sake. Why would the votes for any other states not matter without the electoral? That is complete nonsense. Like I said, relocate all those people and the vote does not change. Period. Fact.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

D34DL1N3R said:


> Okay. Let's put it another way for your simple mind. If there are more people in the United States that would vote for a Democrat President, then there should be a Democrat President as the people have spoken. It doesn't matter where the people are located, as long as all people are heard. Do people in those two states not have the freedom to take the side they wish, just like the residents of any other state? Why does location matter? Take the residents of those two states and spread them out anywhere in the US you'd like. Close those two states down, and relocate everyone to red states. Does that change their votes? Lmao. C'mon. Stop playing idiot for arguments sake. Why would the votes for any other states not matter without the electoral? That is complete nonsense. Like I said, relocate all those people and the vote does not change. Period. Fact.


The vote would absolutely change. The popular vote is irrelevant in the context of U.S. elections, what matters is the ratio of votes in individual states, since that's the basis for choosing electors.


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## 0x3000027E (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> The vote would absolutely change. The popular vote is irrelevant in the context of U.S. elections, what matters is the ratio of votes in individual states, since that's the basis for choosing electors.


Yes, this is correct, I am not sure what the other gentleman is going on about.
Please not another "The electoral college is a system of Apartheid" debate; _surely _we are past this?


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

0x3000027E said:


> Yes, this is correct, I am not sure what the other gentleman is going on about.
> Please not another "The electoral college is a system of Apartheid" debate; _surely _we are past this?


People have a hard time understanding that the United States are a federal republic - as the name implies, the country consists of individual states united under one federal government. Each state votes on an individual basis. Putting all the votes in one basket automatically nullifies state rights and institutes mob rule - the large states would dictate policy encompassing smaller states from now until the end of time. The system works perfectly fine as it is and keeps a delicate balance of power in the union.


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## Xzi (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> People have a hard time with understanding that the United States are a federal republic - as the name implies, it consists of individual states united under one federal government. Each state votes on an individual basis, putting all the votes in one basket automatically nullifies state rights and institutes mob rule - the large states would dictate policy encompassing smaller states from now until the end of time. The system works perfectly fine as it is and keeps a delicate balance of power in the union.


*IF* electoral college votes had kept pace with population as they were meant to, then the system would be working perfectly fine.  The EC was essentially meant to be a representative form of what you call "mob rule" all the same.  Aside from that, it was meant as a safeguard to prevent a person with neither the temperament nor the intelligence for the position from becoming president.  Obviously it failed in that duty in 2016, so the entire institution has proven itself to be vestigial at best.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

Xzi said:


> *IF* electoral college votes had kept pace with population as they were meant to, then the system would be working perfectly fine.  The EC was essentially meant to be a representative form of what you call "mob rule" all the same.  Aside from that, it was meant as a safeguard to prevent a person with neither the temperament nor the intelligence for the position from becoming president.  Obviously it failed in that duty in 2016, so the entire institution has proven itself to be vestigial at best.


Considering the fact that Donald Trump is a billionaire (I don't know too many rich fools) and the first president in decades who hasn't started any long-term international conflicts, and in fact did his earnest to withdrawal forces from the Middle East (like his predecessor had promised over a decade ago), I'll have to disagree with both statements, but I suppose these things are in the eye of the beholder.


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## Xzi (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Considering the fact that Donald Trump is a billionaire


Oh are we still in fantasy land?  Or did you really not see his taxes that got leaked a while back?  He's several hundred million in debt, or at least he was before he started profiting from the presidency.  Probably made up about 100mil of it so far, at best.  I'd say he's just a shitty grifter, but he got you hook, line, and sinker even though you aren't American.  So I guess he's a half-decent grifter.  



Foxi4 said:


> the first president in decades who hasn't started any long-term international conflicts


Obama did start (or aid) in an international conflict, but it certainly wasn't long-term by any definition.  And Trump did make moves abroad, such as abandoning our decades-long allies to death, or worse, rule by Putin.



Foxi4 said:


> in fact did his earnest to withdrawal forces from the Middle East


Bullshit.  There are just as many troops out there, they simply moved from Iraq/Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia and the like to guard oil fields.  GWB would be proud.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

Xzi said:


> Oh are we still in fantasy land?  Or did you really not see his taxes that got leaked a while back?  He's several hundred million in debt, or at least he was before he started profiting from the presidency.  Probably made up about 100mil of it so far, at best.  I'd say he's just a shitty grifter, but he got you hook, line, and sinker even though you aren't American.  So I guess he's a half-decent grifter.
> 
> Obama did start (or aid) in an international conflict, but it certainly wasn't long-term by any definition.  And Trump did make moves abroad, such as abandoning our decades-long allies to death, or worse, rule by Putin.
> 
> Bullshit.  There are just as many troops out there, they simply moved from Iraq/Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia and the like to guard oil fields.  GWB would be proud.


I'm sure I'll see Donald Trump in the queue to pick up his unemployment check in the near future if you are correct, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm the one who's right, and I'd be willing to bet on it - it's a fairly safe bet on my part. As for President Obama, my memory is not hazy in regards to his military record - he ran on the "get our troops home" platform and yet authorised sustained troop deployment in Syria, with clear intentions of regime change. His "peace keeping" mission in Libya quickly turned into a regime change one as well. His administration approved a grand total of 506 drone strikes in seven different countries (that we know of) - under Bush that number was 50. I have no idea what metrics the Nobel Peace Prize Comission factors in their decisions, but Donald Trump is infinitely more deserving of it then Obama ever was. The divisions Obama created in the Middle East can only be rivaled by the divisions he created at home.

EDIT: To explain the President financial situation a little bit better, his businesses generate a lot of operating income, it just happens to be non-taxable income as he's been offsetting losses made decades ago against his current filings, as he's done for many years. He also has a sizable stock portfolio and a large number of assets, valued at around $3.6 billion. Even if you were to offset all of his "debt" against his wealth, he'd be sitting comfortably at anywhere between $2.6 billion and $1.1 billion. He's not losing his shirt, he simply hires clever accountants.


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## D34DL1N3R (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> The vote would absolutely change. The popular vote is irrelevant in the context of U.S. elections, what matters is the ratio of votes in individual states, since that's the basis for choosing electors.



Except the conversation was about what would happen if there was no electoral. Next time please read the context of things before posting. K? Thanks. So no. The popular vote, which is what was being referred to, would absolutely not change.


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## gregory-samba (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I'm sure I'll see Donald Trump in the queue to pick up his unemployment check in the near future if you are correct, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm the one who's right, and I'd be willing to bet on it - it's a fairly safe bet on my part. As for President Obama, my memory is not hazy in regards to his military record - he ran on the "get our troops home" platform and yet authorised sustained troop deployment in Syria, with clear intentions of regime change. His "peace keeping" mission in Libya quickly turned into a regime change one as well. His administration approved a grand total of 506 drone strikes in seven different countries (that we know of) - under Bush that number was 50. I have no idea what metrics the Nobel Peace Prize Comission factors in their decisions, but Donald Trump is infinitely more deserving of it then Obama ever was. The divisions Obama created in the Middle East can only be rivaled by the divisions he created at home.
> 
> EDIT: To explain the President financial situation a little bit better, his businesses generate a lot of operating income, it just happens to be non-taxable income as he's been offsetting losses made decades ago against his current filings, as he's done for many years. He also has a sizable stock portfolio and a large number of assets, valued at around $3.6 billion. Even if you were to offset all of his "debt" against his wealth, he'd be sitting comfortably at anywhere between $2.6 billion and $1.1 billion. He's not losing his shirt, he simply hires clever accountants.



The Trump tax leak is probably simply fabricated as it did come from the leftist media.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



D34DL1N3R said:


> Except the conversation was about what would happen if there was no electoral. Next time please read the context of things before posting. K? Thanks. So no. The popular vote, which is what was being referred to, would absolutely not change.



Each State gets representation under the Electoral College. If we voted with the popular vote certain states wouldn't be fairly represented and contrary to popular belief we do not live under a democracy, but a constitutional republic made up of 50 states and some outlying territories.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

D34DL1N3R said:


> Except the conversation was about what would happen if there was no electoral. Next time please read the context of things before posting. K? Thanks. So no. The popular vote, which is what was being referred to, would absolutely not change.


Even in the absence of an electoral college, states reserve the right to "vote" one way or the other - the votes of individual citizens play no part in the selection process on a federal level, they only matter on the state level. Choosing the president by means of a national popular vote would require amending the constitution, and "red states" will never approve such a change since it goes directly against their interests. Any changes to the constitution require approval of 2/3rds of the states, so your hypothetical question is a thought experiment and not a plausible scenario.


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## Xzi (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I'm sure I'll see Donald Trump in the queue to pick up his unemployment check in the near future if you are correct


No, but you will possibly see him try to flee the country to avoid criminal charges, and you will definitely see him in court regardless.  Even if nothing at all comes from the federal level, New York alone is ready to stick a pineapple up his ass, metaphorically speaking.



Foxi4 said:


> His administration approved a grand total of 506 drone strikes in seven different countries (that we know of)


And I'm guessing Trump approved more, or you would have cited his numbers too. 



Foxi4 said:


> The divisions Obama created in the Middle East can only be rivaled by the divisions he created at home.


The only people who continue to insist Obama was divisive are racists.  The dude was possibly the most moderate, centrist president in history.  He walked on eggshells the entire time as the first black guy in the White House.  Not to mention: all these nitpicky things you've cited were what conservatives liked most about Obama at the time.  I can't say for certain if Obama did all of it to appease them, but I can say for certain that is the reason he did some of it.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

Xzi said:


> No, but you will possibly see him try to flee the country to avoid criminal charges, and you will definitely see him in court regardless.  Even if nothing at all comes from the federal level, New York alone is ready to stick a pineapple up his ass, metaphorically speaking.


That's a bizarre fantasy, not to mention an unlikely one.


> And I'm guessing Trump approved more, or you would have cited his numbers too.


He did, a lot more in fact, but he never ran on the "peace" platform - quite the opposite. The difference here is that he didn't go on military holidays across the Middle East with the intention to topple governments - he was finishing what his predecessor started, decisively.


> The only people who continue to insist Obama was divisive are racists.  The dude was possibly the most moderate, centrist president in history.  He walked on eggshells the entire time as the first black guy in the White House.  Not to mention: all these nitpicky things you've cited were what conservatives liked most about Obama at the time.  I can't say for certain if Obama did all of it to appease them, but I can say for certain that is the reason he did some of it.


Obama was the race-baiter-in-chief and one of the most divisive presidents in recent history. Societal divisions only deepened under his watch - America was far more unified before he came into office than when he left it. Trump inherited this problem, he didn't cause it.


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## Xzi (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> He did, a lot more in fact, but he never ran on the "peace" platform - quite the opposite.


Exactly, and that's how we can easily predict he would've started another long-term war in his second term.  Well, that...and the fact that he asked about his authority to start bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, AFTER he had already lost the election.  Dude is just another neocon like GWB, but he needed his first term to grift as much money from taxpayers as possible.



Foxi4 said:


> Obama was the race-baiter-in-chief


By...being black?  I don't remember him once mentioning race, outside of perhaps black history month or events like Trayvon Martin.



Foxi4 said:


> Trump inherited this problem, he didn't cause it.


You sure do have a selective memory.  How exactly was birtherism not divisive?  How exactly is racism not the problem here, and at what turn did Trump fail to tap into that racism?


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

Xzi said:


> Exactly, and that's how we can easily predict he would've started another long-term war in his second term.  Well, that...and the fact that he asked about his authority to start bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, AFTER he had already lost the election.  Dude is just another neocon like GWB, but he needed his first term to grift as much money from taxpayers as possible.


You have no evidence of that, it's a maybe at best.


> By...being black?  I don't remember him once mentioning race, outside of perhaps black history month or events like Trayvon Martin.


Oh, there are so many examples of Obama and his administration leveraging race to achieve political objectives. I seem to remember his Justice Department dropping cases of voter intimidation when the New Black Panther Party was involved. Obama has always maintained that the country was divided along racial lines, and the policies of his administration reflect that.

Obama's warm relations with Cuba led to large-scale repression of Cuban dissidents, resulting in over 9000 (ha!) arrests in Castro's regime. Legitimising the regime must've been very popular with Cuban Americans, I'm sure - that explains why they started siding with Trump all of a sudden when Biden entered the race this year. Obama even upgraded their interest sections to full-blown embassies - how nice. If Trump is "best buddies" with Putin, Obama was BFF's with Castro.

At the same time, he refused, or made it as difficult as humanly possible, to enforce immigration policy when it comes to the border with Mexico, culminating in DACA. The result is a giant mess at the border - Joe knows who built the cages, and so does Obama.

You're also correct about cases of alleged persecution of black suspects by the police. Obama was always first in line to shed a tear on television whenever a tragic incident had occurred, even before all facts were known. He created an illusion of the police ganging up against black people when statistics don't support the existence of any substantial bias in encounters with officers.

He was partisan, not a moderate - it was his way or the highway. If his ideas couldn't get support, he famously said that he had a phone and a pen, and was happy to use both. Trump isn't innocent in this regard, but it was Obama who normalised the practice of the executive overstepping its bounds.

The notions of "systemic racism" or "unconscious bias" gained prominence under his watch, not Trump's, and there's little evidence to support either. According to surveys around 60% of Americans agree that race relations have suffered, not improved under Obama, and I tend to agree, but that's a large subject better-suited for another thread. With that said, a Biden presidency looming over the horizon forecasts a return to the same failed policies of pandering and race-baiting.


> You sure do have a selective memory.  How exactly was birtherism not divisive?  How exactly is racism not the problem here, and at what turn did Trump fail to tap into that racism?


Birtherism was always about the eligibility to run for office and never about Obama being black. According to Biden, he was a "good black" anyway - I quote, "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man" - truly a wordsmith-elect. The DNC absolutely used race as a cudgel during Obama's presidency, any criticism of the President was always met with the lazy excuse of "well, you're saying that because you're a racist". As far as I'm concerned, Obama could've been a purple unicorn, that wouldn't change my opinion of his presidency, which was poor.


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## gregory-samba (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> You have no evidence of that, it's a maybe at best.
> Oh, there are so many examples of Obama and his administration leveraging race to achieve political objectives. I seem to remember his Justice Department dropping cases of voter intimidation when the New Black Panther Party was involved. Obama has always maintained that the country was divided along racial lines, and the policies of his administration reflect that.
> 
> Obama's warm relations with Cuba led to large-scale repression of Cuban dissidents, resulting in over 9000 (ha!) arrests in Castro's regime. Legitimising the regime must've been very popular with Cuban Americans, I'm sure - that explains why they started siding with Trump all of a sudden when Biden entered the race this year. Obama even upgraded their interest sections to full-blown embassies - how nice. If Trump is "best buddies" with Putin, Obama was BFF's with Castro.
> ...



Obama treated blacks like they were inferior and basically told them they were entitled to other peoples things. It's about the same as the Liberals claiming minorities couldn't figure out how to obtain an ID, register to vote and show up to the polls to vote. That's racist as fuck. Obama just treated minorities like they were owed something and couldn't possibly fend for themselves without Government assistance.


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## Xzi (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Obama has always maintained that the country was divided along racial lines, and the policies of his administration reflect that.


Oh of course, everybody remembers Obama's famously all-black cabinet and black vice president! 



Foxi4 said:


> If Trump is "best buddies" with Putin, Obama was BFF's with Castro.


Fundamentally different nations with fundamentally different circumstances.  The US had been sabotaging Cuba for decades, it was long past time to normalize relations with the country, and Castro was on his death bed.  Putin only wants the collapse of the USA.



Foxi4 said:


> At the same time, he refused, or made it as difficult as humanly possible, to enforce immigration policy when it comes to the border with Mexico, culminating in DACA.


Oh how horrible, you mean he didn't immediately separate and deport every family that tried to cross the border for any reason?



Foxi4 said:


> Trump isn't innocent in this regard, but it was Obama who normalised the practice of the executive overstepping its bounds.


Incorrect, Republicans started pushing the unitary executive theory hard during the GWB years, both Obama and Trump simply ran with the power they were given.  The difference was in the way they used it.  Most of Trump's executive orders were objectively malicious, things like allowing the hunting of endangered species or the drilling of oil on national parks land.  All he ever did was destroy what others had built, and he was most envious of the things Obama had done in particular.



Foxi4 said:


> Birtherism was always about the eligibility to run for office and never about Obama being black.


It never would have gained the slightest bit of traction if Obama wasn't black, and you know it.  Matter of fact, Trump tried it on Ted Cruz during the primary and everybody just laughed it off, though he did of course eventually still lose (because he's Ted Cruz).


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

Xzi said:


> It never would have gained the slightest bit of traction if Obama wasn't black, and you know it.  Matter of fact, Trump tried it on Ted Cruz during the primary and everybody just laughed it off, though he did of course eventually still lose (because he's Ted Cruz).


Why would you undercut your own argument? You've just said that Trump briefly showing birther sentiment in regards to Obama was racist and immediately followed it up by saying that Trump was asking the same questions in regards to Cruz, who's very clearly white. I don't care about "traction", that's not what we were talking about.


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## Xzi (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Why would you undercut your own argument? You've just said that Trump briefly showing birther sentiment in regards to Obama was racist and immediately followed it up by saying that Trump was asking the same questions in regards to Cruz, who's very clearly white. I don't care about "traction", that's not what we were talking about.


It was used on Obama first because he knew he'd find an audience willing to accept the claim as fact, even with no evidence.  He didn't care if it worked on Cruz or not, there's practically no fear of the "other" when it comes to Canadians.

Coupled with the whole "Mexican caravan" thing, it was all just the Southern Strategy reborn once again.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

Xzi said:


> It was used on Obama first because he knew he'd find an audience willing to accept the claim as fact, even with no evidence.  He didn't care if it worked on Cruz or not, there's practically no fear of the "other" when it comes to Canadians.
> 
> Coupled with the whole "Mexican caravan" thing, it was all just the Southern Strategy reborn once again.


Not a very good save IMO, but you do you. Seems to me like race didn't play a role at all, but people see what they want to see in allegations like this.


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## smf (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Why would you undercut your own argument?



Reasonable people do that. Treating things as fake news because they don't support your argument is a sign of weakness. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really affect the argument.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

smf said:


> Reasonable people do that. Treating things as fake news because they don't support your argument is a sign of weakness. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really affect the argument.


It does, actually. In fact, it dismantles it completely.


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## smf (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> It does, actually. In fact, it dismantles it completely.



Not especially, only if you don't understand human behavior. Racists don't always act racist & they can do the same things towards other people for other reasons.


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## Xzi (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Not a very good save IMO, but you do you. Seems to me like race didn't play a role at all, but people see what they want to see in allegations like this.


And how many white presidents did Trump have the opportunity to accuse of being born outside of the US?  It's not like he had any less evidence to base those accusations on than he did for Obama.  Your assertion seems to be that it's, "just coincidence," and that's a massive stretch at best.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

smf said:


> Not especially, only if you don't understand racist behavior. Racists don't always act racist & they can do the same things towards other people for other reasons.





Xzi said:


> And how many white presidents did Trump have the opportunity to accuse of being born outside of the US?  It's not like he had any less evidence to base those accusations on than he did for Obama.  Your assertion seems to be that it's, "just coincidence," and that's a massive stretch at best.


I prefer to use the term "politically expedient". You keep cutting the branch you're sitting on - you just said that you have a sample size of 1, which makes it completely non-representative. That's neither here nor there though, your explanation simply doesn't seem convincing to me.


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## smf (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I prefer to use the term "politically expedient". You keep cutting the branch you're sitting on - you just said that you have a sample size of 1, which makes it completely non-representative. That's neither here nor there though, your explanation simply doesn't seem convincing to me.



How many white supremacist groups does Trump need to support before you accept it?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...tral-park-five-us-election-2020-b1426977.html


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## Foxi4 (Nov 24, 2020)

smf said:


> How many white supremacist groups does Trump need to support before you accept it?


One would be a good start. Throughout his presidency he's repeatedly denounced racism of any kind, as well as violence. I also don't seem to remember him endorsing any particular organisations by name, not even his most vehement supporters like the Proud Boys. I do remember both Obama and Biden endorsing black supremacists though, including the New Black Panthers and the race hustlers from the Nation of Islam who have very little to do with actual Islam - Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton, to name two controversial figures.


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## Xzi (Nov 24, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I prefer to use the term "politically expedient". You keep cutting the branch you're sitting on - you just said that you have a sample size of 1, which makes it completely non-representative. That's neither here nor there though, your explanation simply doesn't seem convincing to me.


You're right, it's a moot point.  Firstly, because Trump was already soundly defeated as a result of his divisiveness, and secondly, because it feels like trying to convince you that water is wet.  By now, you've seen Trump supporters' three favorite flags on proud display nearly as many times as I have, I'm sure.  There might've been some sliver of ambiguity about their views on race in 2016, but by the time this year rolled around they had been full mask off for a while (spreading hatred, stupidity, and a virus all at once).


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## Deleted member 397813 (Nov 25, 2020)

i believe kanye won, yall are just mean


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## Foxi4 (Nov 25, 2020)

CPG said:


> i believe kanye won, yall are just mean


Ye 2024, we'll get'em next time.


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## smf (Nov 25, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> Throughout his presidency he's repeatedly denounced racism of any kind, as well as violence.



Trump has said lots of contradictory things, it's part of his strategy to make everyone think he stands what what they want. It's why he ends up going to church once a year for a photo opportunity.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 25, 2020)

smf said:


> Trump has said lots of contradictory things, it's part of his strategy to make everyone think he stands what what they want. It's why he ends up going to church once a year for a photo opportunity.


At the end of the day, Trump didn't invite David Duke for a photo op, but Obama did invite Sharpton, and interacted with Farrakhan in the past. I don't remember him denouncing either, despite both having big blemishes on their records in regards to anti-semitism and homophobia. If we're going to use the bigotry measuring stick then be sure to use the same one for both.


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## D34DL1N3R (Nov 25, 2020)

gregory-samba said:


> Each State gets representation under the Electoral College. If we voted with the popular vote certain states wouldn't be fairly represented and contrary to popular belief we do not live under a democracy, but a constitutional republic made up of 50 states and some outlying territories.





Foxi4 said:


> Even in the absence of an electoral college, states reserve the right to "vote" one way or the other - the votes of individual citizens play no part in the selection process on a federal level, they only on the state level. Choosing the president by means of a national popular vote would require amending the constitution, and "red states" will never approve such a change since it goes directly against their interests. Any changes to the constitution require approval of 2/3rds of the states, so your hypothetical question is a thought experiment and not a plausible scenario.



When quoting, perhaps try to stay on topic of the conversation the person you quoted was in. The point is obviously way over both of your heads. Purposefully or not is another matter altogether. Reading COMPREHENSION also plays a pretty big part in things. The both of you are twisting the conversation to fit your own prerogatives. Go back. Read. Slowly. Then get back to me.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 25, 2020)

D34DL1N3R said:


> When quoting, perhaps try to stay on topic of the conversation the person you quoted was in. The point is obviously way over both of your heads. Purposefully or not is another matter altogether. Reading COMPREHENSION also plays a pretty big part in things. The both of you are twisting the conversation to fit your own prerogatives. Go back. Read. Slowly. Then get back to me.


I don't need to. I fully understand your point, your point just happens to be a silly thought experiment that is inapplicable to the United States federal government. You are correct in saying that the total number of voters, or the popular vote tally, does not change if you move voters from one state to the other. You are incorrect in saying that it wouldn't change the outcome - EC or no EC. The state legislatures are elected directly in individual states, the chief executive is not - they're elected by means of representative democracy. Removing the EC from the equation doesn't change that, the burden of choosing the president still lies on state legislatures, not the citizens. You'd have to rewrite significant portions of the constitution to change that, and there's no support for that, so we're discussing an imaginary hypothetical. You're focusing on a number that has no bearing on the final result, not because of the EC, but because of how the United States operate.


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## smf (Nov 25, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> At the end of the day, Trump didn't invite David Duke for a photo op, but Obama did invite Sharpton, and interacted with Farrakhan in the past. I don't remember him denouncing either, despite both having big blemishes on their records in regards to anti-semitism and homophobia.



If you exclude everyone who has ever done anything bad from politics then you're going to have zero politicians.

How they handle themselves now is more important. Can you give an example of homphobia and anti-semitism for Sharpton?

Trump doesn't appear to have changed.



Foxi4 said:


> If we're going to use the bigotry measuring stick then be sure to use the same one for both.



Why is it relevant? Are you saying that if Obama condemns someone for something, then it would change how you feel about Trump? That is rather twisted logic. It would be like saying it's unfair to try someone for murder, because not all the other murders have been solved.

I'm not sure why Obama is relevant either?



Foxi4 said:


> Removing the EC from the equation doesn't change that, the burden of choosing the president still lies on state legislatures, not the citizens.



I think it's safe to assume that if someone is talking about removing the EC then they are talking about removing the burden from the state too, not just getting rid of the EC and replacing it with something practically identical.

So I disagree that you fully understand his point.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 25, 2020)

smf said:


> If you exclude everyone who has ever done anything bad from politics then you're going to have zero politicians.


Don't tempt me with a good time.


> How they handle themselves now is more important. Can you give an example of homphobia and anti-semitism for Sharpton?


It'll be my pleasure.


Spoiler






> “*White folks was in the caves* while we (blacks) was building empires. (...) We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was. (...) We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics *before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it*. (...) So [if] some *cracker* come and tell you 'Well, my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,' you better hold your pocket. That ain't nothing to be proud of. That means their forefathers was crooks” - Al Sharpton, 1994





> "Brother Sikhulu -- stand up, brother -- on 125th Street. I want to make it clear to the radio audience -- and do you hear -- that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother, so that some *white interloper* can expand his business on 125th Street. And we're asking the Buy Black Committee to go down there, and I'm gonna go down there, and do what is necessary to let them know that *we are not turnin' 125th Street back over to outsiders* as it was done in the early part of this century." - Al Sharpton Rally, 1995





> “If the Jews want to *get it on*, tell them to *pin their yarmulkes back* and *come over to my house* (...) All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, *you got to pay for it* (...) No compromise, no meetings, no coffee klatch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’.” Al Sharpton, 1991


In addition to calling Jews *"white interlopers"* he's also on record calling them *"diamond merchants"*, *"bloodsucking Jews"* and *"Jewish bastards"*. There are so many more examples, both from past and present, that you're spoiled for choice - I simply picked nice, juicy ones where he's using slurs. He has some kind of obsession with Zionism and he's confident that it's a movement engineered to "put the black man down" or somesuch nonsense. He's a radical, and always has been - he's on record calling moderate black Democrats "*cocktail sip Negr*es*" or "*yellow n*ggers*", so it's clear that "moderate" is not his style.

In terms of notable actions, 1991 Sharpton led a protest in Crown Heights, marching right next to a protester holding a sign saying *"White man is the Devil"*, all the while chanting *"Kill the Jews"*. The protest turned into a race riot, 152 police officers and 38 civilians were injured. Two murders had occurred during the event, one of a Jewish student and one of an Italian who just happened to be dressed up in dark colours, so he "looked" like an orthodox jew. Three days of pogrom, all over a car accident.


> "The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. (…) It’s an accident to allow an *apartheid ambulance service* in the middle of Crown Heights. (…) Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the *diamond merchants* right here in Crown Heights.” - Al Sharpton



There was even a resolution in Congress aiming at his condemnation, but sadly it was never voted on:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/106/hconres270/text


I've spoilered Sharpton's words and actions since I consider them unacceptable on this forum, we have slightly higher standards than American public life, it seems. In all fairness, Sharpton occasionally apologises for this kind of rhetoric, which is nice, but he's not a very good salesman, because I'm not buying it.


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## 0x3000027E (Nov 25, 2020)

Xzi said:


> He's several hundred million in debt


We really need to do a better job at teaching Economics. It seems concepts such as wealth, equity, and debt are not well understood (perhaps this is why there remains such hostility towards capitalism).
Debt is not a sound metric for determining net worth, you need to factor in equity and investment into the equation, as well as other factors not within the scope of this discussion.
(I have not read beyond this comment, so if these concepts were already discussed, please forgive me).


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## Xzi (Nov 25, 2020)

0x3000027E said:


> We really need to do a better job at teaching Economics. It seems concepts such as wealth, equity, and debt are not well understood (perhaps this is why there remains such hostility towards capitalism).
> Debt is not a sound metric for determining net worth, you need to factor in equity and investment into the equation, as well as other factors not within the scope of this discussion.
> (I have not read beyond this comment, so if these concepts were already discussed, please forgive me).


His assets and equity are negligible according to the same tax returns I referenced.  If not for the constant stream of dark money flowing from Deutche Bank to his pockets over the last couple decades, he'd probably be over a billion in the red.


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## Deleted User (Nov 25, 2020)

personally i lean more towards supporting trump than supporting biden (though if i was american i would have voted jo jorgensen), and i would like to see it actually get investigated in depth before coming to any conclussion


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## Xzi (Nov 25, 2020)

Azerus_Kun said:


> personally i lean more towards supporting trump than supporting biden (though if i was american i would have voted jo jorgensen), and i would like to see it actually get investigated in depth before coming to any conclussion


The investigative period is over, they had two weeks and found nothing.  The votes are practically all certified and the transition has begun.

Shocking I know, since it's so difficult to tell the two apart when you put Sherlock Holmes and Rudy "Drips" Giuliani in the same room together. /s


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## smf (Nov 25, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I've spoilered Sharpton's words and actions since I consider them unacceptable on this forum, we have slightly higher standards than American public life, it seems.



A link would have been better, but then you wouldn't want someone checking your sources..


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## Foxi4 (Nov 25, 2020)

smf said:


> A link would have been better, but then you wouldn't want someone checking your sources..


All of those statements are easily googlable and well-known. Some are literally on his Wikipedia page. God forbid you perform a basic Internet search in the age of right-clicking on anything to do so instantly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Sharpton

Not only that, I *have* provided a link - a link to the condemnation by Congress which mentions them. He's retracted many of those statements since, but the way I see it, he's a grifter like all race hustlers and merely adjusted his public statements to the current social justice trends. He is, and always has been, a bigoted individual.


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## smf (Nov 25, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> He's retracted many of those statements since, but the way I see it, he's a grifter like all race hustlers and merely adjusted his public statements to the current social justice trends.



But to be clear, you still support Trump as president even though he has said bad things and the fact that someone else with no political power has said bad things that justifies your support?


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## Foxi4 (Nov 25, 2020)

smf said:


> But to be clear, you still support Trump as president even though he has said bad things and the fact that someone else with no political power has said bad things that justifies your support?


You're changing the subject. My statement was very simple - Obama deepened social divides in America, one of the reasons why they deepened were his not-infrequent meetings (I believe Sharpton visited the White House 74 times, perhaps more) with race hustlers. I then provided evidence of Sharpton being a grifter and race hustler, since that was questioned despite a sizable public record of inflammatory and racially charged rhetoric. With that, my argument is complete and closed. If you honestly want more detailed sources for each and every individual statement then I can do that too, but honestly, with Sharpton's record you're asking me to prove that water is in fact wet. This isn't a weird revelation I'm dropping here, the calls for both parties to distance themselves from him were loud and clear in the early 2000's. Now he's being embraced again with his new, softened tone, but I don't have the memory of a goldfish and I don't believe in his sudden, magical transformation. I also have a good idea why battle cries like "pigs in blankets, fry'em like bacon" have resurfaced recently. "No justice, no peace" is another Sharpton slogan from two decades ago, IIRC, and we're hearing it again now.


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## smf (Nov 25, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> You're changing the subject.



No, I'm not. I'm taking it back to the subject about Trump.

I was only going to bother reading up on him if it would make a difference to the discussion on Trump and it clearly won't because you are only bringing him up to change the subject away from Trump & not because you want everyone to be judged the same.


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## Foxi4 (Nov 25, 2020)

smf said:


> No, I'm not. I'm taking it back to the subject about Trump.
> 
> You are trying to change the subject by talking about someone who you don't like who isn't a politician.
> 
> I just wanted to make sure that you are doing it in bad faith & you confirmed it.


Maybe you should follow the conversation then, perhaps you'd know how we ended up here if you did. As a reminder, we were talking about the racial divide in America, which in my opinion Trump has inherited from Obama rather than created himself - something he's often accused of. You, on the other hand, were (unsuccessfuly) trying to divert attention to me instead, or more specifically, my support of Trump. Personal attack, fairly standard strategy when people don't have a come-back, but that's alright. I'm done talking about Sharpton anyway, there's only so much you can say about him.


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## D34DL1N3R (Nov 25, 2020)

Foxi4 said:


> I don't need to. I fully understand your point, your point just happens to be a silly thought experiment that is inapplicable to the United States federal government. You are correct in saying that the total number of voters, or the popular vote tally, does not change if you move voters from one state to the other. You are incorrect in saying that it wouldn't change the outcome - EC or no EC. The state legislatures are elected directly in individual states, the chief executive is not - they're elected by means of representative democracy. Removing the EC from the equation doesn't change that, the burden of choosing the president still lies on state legislatures, not the citizens. You'd have to rewrite significant portions of the constitution to change that, and there's no support for that, so we're discussing an imaginary hypothetical. You're focusing on a number that has no bearing on the final result, not because of the EC, but because of how the United States operate.



Still missing the entire thing and off topic from what the discussion was. One more try perhaps?


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## urherenow (Nov 26, 2020)

D34DL1N3R said:


> Okay. Let's put it another way for your simple mind. If there are more people in the United States that would vote for a Democrat President, then there should be a Democrat President as the people have spoken. It doesn't matter where the people are located, as long as all people are heard. Do people in those two states not have the freedom to take the side they wish, just like the residents of any other state? Why does location matter? Take the residents of those two states and spread them out anywhere in the US you'd like. Close those two states down, and relocate everyone to red states. Does that change their votes? Lmao. C'mon. Stop playing idiot for arguments sake. Why would the votes for any other states not matter without the electoral? That is complete nonsense. Like I said, relocate all those people and the vote does not change. Period. Fact.


Talk about a simple mind. This was already discussed at great length, by people a lot smarter than you. They created the electoral college. Herd mentality is a thing...


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## D34DL1N3R (Nov 26, 2020)

urherenow said:


> Talk about a simple mind. This was already discussed at great length, by people a lot smarter than you. They created the electoral college. Herd mentality is a thing...



I see things are still flying way, way, WAY over your head. I'm not going to hold your hand. My purpose/meaning is seriously NOT very difficult to understand.


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## smf (Nov 26, 2020)

urherenow said:


> Talk about a simple mind. This was already discussed at great length, by people a lot smarter than you. They created the electoral college. Herd mentality is a thing...



The Electoral college was basically inherited from United Kingdom, where the elected representatives both serve the people and vote for the leader while the US split those roles. It solved some problems that are no longer relevant.

Anyone that supports it now is guilty of group think.


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## 0x3000027E (Nov 27, 2020)

Xzi said:


> His assets and equity are negligible according to the same tax returns I referenced.  If not for the constant stream of dark money flowing from Deutche Bank to his pockets over the last couple decades, he'd probably be over a billion in the red.


No sir, and I'm not in the mood to discuss such mundane matters, my apologies.


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