One difference, of course, is that despite there being a significant number of ‘trusted’ sources claiming extensive election fraud - there has been near zero evidence presented by these same sources to defend the claims. That alone should be a red flag that the claims are mere assertions rather than statements of fact.
From my perspective, every article on Reuters included the phrase "claimed without evidence" in regards to election fraud. For me, trusting Reuters, that is sufficient information.
From a believer's perspective, articles mentioned affidavits, eye-witness testimony, court cases being filed, and important, trusted people saying something along the lines of "there is evidence the courts are not even considering!" Presumably if that same believer dug deep enough into individual court cases and affidavits and statements by the judges dismissing cases, they may have changed their mind.
But I don't dig that deep, and obviously neither do the believers. We are wired to our inclination of confirmation bias. When we are already programmed and motivated to find evidence of what we already believe, we do not tend to exhaust every option possible to validate it. We stop when we cross the smallest of hurdles of validation.
The utility of (and general lack of consequences for using) these dishonest rhetorical strategies is unlikely to go away as they are a culmination of the general obstructionist political environment of the DNC/RNC duopoly since (at least) the early 90’s.
I really don't trust Reuters, CNN, the NY Times, or whoever. I think people exaggerate and misidentify the source of their beliefs, but being honest about why you take a side is a better way to convince.
What I trust is that if Trump had serious allegations with evidence, that Republican election officials in Georgia would treat them seriously rather than debunking them in the midst of death threats. Or that some Republican judge, especially one of those nominated by Trump would have allowed a lawsuit to get traction.
Reading the transcript of the call to the SoS, and reading a couple of the legal opinions on one of the lawsuits, is worth more than a million news articles to me. Trump said there were thousands of dead people who voted; the SoS said there were two, in the face of people calling for his execution as a RINO. That's compelling.
I don't really spend any time on CNN, and NY Times requires me to jump through hoops sometimes to read articles, as I do not have a subscription. I'll take Reuters and AP News at face value unless there's something spectacular that needs investigating (which would not be the norm.) So unless there's a claim such as that all across the nation, poll workers, election officials, appointed judges, etc. are all coordinating a well-concealed attack on the integrity of an election... well conspiracy theories need considerable evidence. That is, I mean, they need evidence that is clear, falsifiable, verifiable. Then I have to dig deeper.
I also trust peers with a similar threshold. If none of my intelligent friends and family members with a history of digging deeply into fantastic claims believe the current fantastic claim, I don't tend to feel the need to do such digging myself. If one of them was suddenly making a grandiose claim, I would sit up and notice and have to investigate further.
I don't see any news source as having blanket credibility. In a wider context, I feel like the cycle of building and then strip mining a brand has been accelerated. As soon as there is credibility and trust, it's exploited. But also, I don't see all the different people who write for an organization as having much if anything in common. My favorite general news source at the moment is Bloomberg, but I remember one or more people who used to bring up a particular article as evidence Bloomberg was not to be trusted.
I choose things to read based on my perception of their average reliability, but I don't assume that something is true because it comes from a good source. If I did, how could I know the source was good in the first place? The causality goes from good articles -> good source, not the other way around.
I just don't think you can give anyone any benefit of the doubt. If you're not forming your opinions bottom-up, you risk getting drawn into a divergent reality like so many people these days.
I'm also reminded of how some people on HN like to mention the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect". You can't expect that smart people automatically know about any random thing, if it doesn't impact their life whether they are right or wrong.
I disagree. There's no way they would have changed their minds. It's just an excuse. A thin veneer of plausible deniability while they willingly keep their heads in the sand. The simple explanation is no one is that stupid, that fascist, but, maybe they are. Maybe this is the effect of a decades long campaign by conservative politicians & pundits to constantly gaslight America & try to keep the electorate uneducated.
Either way, people clinging to these obvious falsehoods are seditious at worst or useful idiots at best.
I don’t think most of them are fascist or extremely dumb.
People generally don’t like to change their minds on deeply held beliefs, and all the falsehoods Trump and Qanon are spreading have become deeply held beliefs for many of those people.
They end up supporting fascists but they won’t realise it until too late.
There's better ways to run an election with verification systems. Venezuela does it pretty well, probably because they know there's an invasion itchy trigger finger pointed at them.*
Poll workers for instance, get drafted from a lottery right near the election instead of a voluntary system so there's no way a team of confederates could scheme behind the scenes.
There's also multiple tabulating and verification steps. The ballots are both machine and hand counted. The people and machines are chosen at random and nobody could rig all the machines because nobody has access to all of them. Nobody can coordinate an effort for subordinates to rig them because again, the teams are formed via a random draft.
Test ballots get fed through the machines by teams of observers who get randomly assigned to polling stations for surprise inspections.
Furthermore the top 6 candidates independently verify the tally. They each get essentially an open book of the records. Statistical spot check surveys are done as a further confirmation etc. There's lots of international observers, etc
Every voter gets a copy of the ballot and a confirmation number that they can go and check the record of.
Maybe someone else can find a place where corruption in the tabulation could occur but it looks pretty airtight to me
* - It's worth noting I'm not saying anything about the outcome of the elections or the politics. Voter intimidation and disinformation could still happen, lots of objectionable things. But their tabulation of votes seems to be pretty clean. Dictators, if that's your opinion here, can stay in power without lying about the vote count by, say, deciding what makes it on the ballot in the first place. For an extreme example, this election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_German_parliamentary_elec... could have been exemplary - as clean as mathematically possible, and had the same outcome.
Strongly opposed as “fake democracy”, the proposal eventually did not go through (due to a very silly technical error from pro-Beijing side).
The rest is history.
After lots of subsequent development, just this week there was a mass arrest of pro-democracy lawmakers and activists [2], for otherwise the pro-democracy camp may have enough say in the election of the next Chief Executive, after the landslide victory in the district council election of 2019.
It's impossible to prove there was no fraud, however if there was fraud it's extremely likely someone would be able to find it, so the lack of evidence is reasonable enough test of the election's validity. Otherwise there can be no democracy other than direct public democracy.
I found the confirmation hearing on Wednesday to be very informative on this. There were countless objectors attempting to invalidate the Pensylvannia vote, all echoing each other on a variety of reasons including voter fraud. Republican house members made very convincing arguments on the floor that caused me to wonder what information I was missing.
The democratic house members who argued against the objections easily tore down their arguments. Their largest point with respect to voter fraud was that there were was actually _no_ legal action mentioning voter fraud brought up in the many many court cases launched by Trump's team. The reasoning being because lawyers can have their licenses revoked for intentionally lying about serious accusations and no lawyer was willing to put their career on the line for something they had no evidence for.
I respect everyone's views and consider myself to be somewhat moderate, but damn overall republican house lost a ton of respect from me that night.
If you want more details on the various court cases, I can recommend the "Legal Eagle" channel on Youtube, run by a trial lawyer from DC. This video is specifically on the minutiae of many election fraud court cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-nblE8ps2M (Not affiliated, just a fan.)
I might be convinced to be skeptical if judges say, woah this is damaging EVEN if those judges are Trump appointed, by the same token though, if a Trump appointed judge laughs Trump's team out of the court with a frivolous law suit, I'm doubly sure that there's absolutely no chance of fraud.
The RIGHT, people who supported/enabled Trump have said, nope - nothing to see, all's legit, got any better proof? Kemp for instance was a HUGE Trump supporter, Pence has no reason not to support Trump, yet now he's a "traitor" for doing his job. Seriously. I'd hate to play any board game with these people, you could never win, they'd throw a fit if they lost until you admit they won...
