Facebook Can't Seem To Do Anything About 'Stop the Steal' Groups (vice.com) 399
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE: On Thursday night, Facebook announced it had activated "break glass" measures to try to quell the spread of disinformation, which has been supercharged by the lies being spread by President Donald Trump and his allies. The unprecedented move may have been triggered by Facebook's decision hours earlier to shut down a viral group called "Stop the Steal" that had racked up 360,000 in the space of 24 hours. The group was spreading disinformation, advocating for gun violence, and organizing real-world protests. But the impact of Facebook's moves has been negligible.
A VICE News investigation, using the Facebook-owned analytics tool CrowdTangle, found at least three active groups on Facebook using variations of the Stop the Steal name, all of which have tens of thousands of followers and all of which are sharing the same disinformation as the original group. The biggest group identified is called "StoptheSteal" which has almost 70,000 members. The next biggest is called "Stop the Steal 2.0" with 40,000 followers. Finally, a group with an identical name -- "Stop the Steal" -- has 25,800 members. By allowing the original group to grow so quickly, and to such a scale before removing it, Facebook could have inadvertently made the situation even worse, Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VICE News. "The challenge in managing copycat groups is that there is additional potential for voter fraud disinformation and threats of violence among communities who may be motivated for further action given the removal of the original group, particularly around possible mobilization at election centers." "We are continuing to review additional content and activity and will take action accordingly," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told VICE News.
A VICE News investigation, using the Facebook-owned analytics tool CrowdTangle, found at least three active groups on Facebook using variations of the Stop the Steal name, all of which have tens of thousands of followers and all of which are sharing the same disinformation as the original group. The biggest group identified is called "StoptheSteal" which has almost 70,000 members. The next biggest is called "Stop the Steal 2.0" with 40,000 followers. Finally, a group with an identical name -- "Stop the Steal" -- has 25,800 members. By allowing the original group to grow so quickly, and to such a scale before removing it, Facebook could have inadvertently made the situation even worse, Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VICE News. "The challenge in managing copycat groups is that there is additional potential for voter fraud disinformation and threats of violence among communities who may be motivated for further action given the removal of the original group, particularly around possible mobilization at election centers." "We are continuing to review additional content and activity and will take action accordingly," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told VICE News.
Partial truths satiate the starving (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's the thing, really, that anyone with two licks of sense ought to be able to realize... the American people are fairly equally split fifty-fifty, as evidenced by the electoral results, into politically right and left camps.
With just a hint of situational awareness, it should be clear on the order of crystal that both sides are comprised of flawed and subjective humans, therefore likely to skew advantage to their rooting interest.
Put another way, does anyone reflectively suspect fraud is definitively o
Re: Partial truths satiate the starving (Score:4, Insightful)
To date, there had been a balance: Republicans were tugging toward more security, Democrats tugging back in roughly equal force. Then the dems had to go fuck another goat and simultaneously push for mass mail voting, arguing against signature matching in Pennsylvania on the grounds that the high rate of mismatches would deprive too many of their votes this year, and for good measure, keep Republican monitors back at a physical distance while workers in a heavily Democratic city opened ballot envelopes.
Let me be very clear: it is possible to conduct a fair election under these circumstances. But the goal is not *only* to conduct a fair election; it is to conduct it in a manner that eliminates any reasonable doubt about its fairness. Doing all three of the above in rapid succession while the Democratic officials running Pennsylvania preened and pranced and bragged and pranced about getting Trump out, that fails the latter.
When you do your damnedest to make it look like you're making it easier to cheat, and make a show of how you have motive to cheat...even if you don't intend to cheat and even if those actions have innocent explanations that are quite plausible...yeah don't be surprised when people start to think you're cheating.
And once again: Facebook shuts this down lickety split, but lets leftists organize all sorts of violent protests because racism. Fuck you. We Republicans have been the straight men to the leftists' clowns for decades. Being all buttoned up and boring and pearl clutching about the need to respect the system and follow process while lefties just "occupy" places, protest in front of people's homes, chain themselves across highways, and call it "direct action." Now Trump got the right riled up and doing the same thing.
We (the sane righties) were warning you people for years that this direct action and street mayhem was a bad idea because it was normalizing lawlessness (as opposed to respect for process). You didn't listen. Y'all just kept acting up and trashing shit and fucking up people. And now you're afraid when the less stable elements on our side figure, in for a penny in for a pound. Ok. We fucking warned you.
At this point, the only offramp is mutual disarmament. I won't egg on the lunies on my side, but you need to stop egging on yours. But in order to convince you of why, I need you to understand why our guys are out on the street to a better level than "Orange man bad orange man voters bigots."
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"The answer to this problem has always been the same: transparency wedded tightly to reasonable security measures wedded once again to transparency for good measure."
Agreed
"To date, there had been a balance: Republicans were tugging toward more security, Democrats tugging back in roughly equal force. Then the dems had to go fuck another goat and simultaneously push for mass mail voting, arguing against signature matching in Pennsylvania on the grounds that the high rate of mismatches would deprive too many
Re: Partial truths satiate the starving (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, one side's candidate is egging the loonies on and the other is urging calm and letting the system work.
Re: Partial truths satiate the starving (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, one side's candidate is egging the loonies on and the other is urging calm and letting the system work.
This seems to be the Republican playbook: if you're doing something wrong shout REALLY LOUD about how the other guys are doing it even if they're not.
Re: Partial truths satiate the starving (Score:5, Insightful)
To date there had been a balance. Republicans tugged more towards making sure people they don't like couldn't vote, Democrats tugging back to make sure everyone who could legally vote did. Republicans had to go fuck another goat (what does that even mean) by fucking around with the postal system 3 months before a national election during A FUCKING PANDEMIC. A time when you would WANT people to vote by mail.
When you do your damnedest to make it look like your trying to suppress the vote, then you have to demonstrate that what you are really after is more secure voting. Even though you may want to actually make voting more secure, it's still going to look like you're trying to prevent people from voting.
Rightist drive down the highways in trucks toting guns. Fuck you. They send people to polling stations to intimidate voters. Fuck you again. Everytime a cop killed an unarmed person, you said, "they deserved it". Fuck you again.
We (the sane lefties) know that voter suppression, gerrymandering and all sorts of other rat-fucking is a way to make sure "they" can't vote. You didn't listen. You kept trying to institute "ID laws", but making sure it was difficult to get IDs. Or decided then when somebody served their time , they couldn't vote again for the REST OF THEIR LIVES.
At this point, the only offramp is that the insane right stop pretending that wearing a mask is the same thing as living in North Korea, or that lefties are trying to cheat in the election (remember how the fucking orange man won in 2016?), or that they stop telling us that lefties are all about identity politics at the same time they think that all the liberals are the same, are bad people and the only way to solve the liberal "problem" is with the 2nd amendment.
Re: Partial truths satiate the starving (Score:5, Insightful)
"pushed for mass mail voting", given how much more seriously liberals take the virus then conservatives.
"arguing against signature matching in Pennsylvania" given the high rate of mismatches
Keeping "monitors back at a physical distance while workers in a heavily Democratic city opened ballot envelopes." would not have made a difference in the election but given that the U.S couldn't even protect the most powerful man on earth from the virus it seems pretty reasonable to try and minimize the danger to volunteer workers.
At the end of the day, its really hard to stop the spread of misinformation when its coming from the candidates own mouth and the rest of the party stands by quietly because they care more about their own political careers then the fate of our Democracy.
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I worry about postal votes here because I would have to sign mine, so instead I go vote in person where I don't need any ID or to sign anything.
I have arthritis in my hands. I can't reproduce the exact same signature twice in a row, let alone months or years apart. Too much risk of not being counted because some overzealous counter decides the match isn't good enough.
Fortunately the polling station is only a few minutes walk away and not very busy. I'm lucky, our government has been adopting Republican vote
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I have arthritis in my hands. I can't reproduce the exact same signature twice in a row, let alone months or years apart. Too much risk of not being counted because some overzealous counter decides the match isn't good enough.
FWIW my signature is a bit scrawly but has some characteristics that are pretty easy to match even when I scrawl it out, and I tracked my ballot and verified that it was counted, which I was able to do online. I'd hope that yours would make it through your own system, too.
Re:Partial truths satiate the starving (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no vote manipulation of any significant degree. It is far too easy to detect that later. There is _voter_ manipulation and by all evidence a rather large segment of the voters has no insights, no honor and no integrity and falls easily for the most obvious lies. That is the real problem. And it is going to stay. Unless fixed, it will tear the US apart.
Re: Partial truths satiate the starving (Score:4, Insightful)
"oops, I just delivered a 13000 vote swing in the election where the margin is in places under 13000 votes"
You don't think that's material? You don't think it's worth validating whether this has also happened elsewhere? You don't value a fair electoral system?
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misinformation campaigning are likely happening on all different scales, for both candidates.
Stop being a fuckwit, seriously. The two sides are not equal. Are there lies Biden has told? Probably, seems unlikely he hasn't at some point. But not everything out of his mouth is a lie like Trump. Equating them is like equating a pinprick and losing an arm because they both cause bleeding.
When you tell the entire population that the vote will be 100% democratic
Stop being a fuckwit. No one said that. The news for
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The postal vote really helped fight voter suppression this time around. Doubtless the Republicans are already looking at ways to prevent postal voting in future.
The numbers are really interesting. The vote is way up in places where it was previously heavily suppressed, and a lot of younger people voted too.
The demographics are interesting too. Basically women and people of colour won it for Biden, offsetting the heavily Republican white male vote.
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PoCs are growing in number in America rapidly. The fastest-growing groups are "asians" (yeah, I said it, but I'm quoting from many sources) and after them mixed Hispanics (like me).
Nothing can be done about it short of going full Hitler, either. There's just too many of us embedded in society.
Be prepared. (Score:2, Troll)
Be prepared for a remarkable thing coming rather soon.
That moment when you say "Don't you remember when you supported Donald Trump on [subject]?"
And the response will be a variant of "Oh, yeah, that guy, huh. Well, let's forget about that. What's really important is that..."
Trump's power is and always was endless distraction.
The point of a distraction isn't that you remember it - it's that you notice it in the moment. The sooner it gets forgotten, the sooner the same style of distractions can be used aga
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Do you really think Trump is going away? If he loses, he'll still stick around, perhaps with a job at fox or such, still be rattling out the same shit and having people sucking it up and, especially if the Senate stays Republican and acts like it did in the Obama years, blaming Biden for the fallout from the virus crashing the economy. There's nothing stopping him running in 2024 either, likely on a platform that Biden fucked up and getting his base out.
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Well, there is the little thing that he has rather large legal problems waiting for him and that pardoning himself is not really something that will work. Why do you think he is so frantic now? The guy is deeply afraid.
Deleting these groups... (Score:3)
Re:Deleting these groups... (Score:5, Funny)
Randomize meeting adresses for every reader for different public parks, commercial parkings, shopping malls, etc.
Re: Deleting these groups... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Leave them and put the members on the terrorist watch-list. They are clearly dangerous fanatics.
The idea is ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
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But the high turn out is full of illegal voters, and we know they're illegal because they voted for the wrong guy!
(sarcasm, in case some out there in RT don't understand english well enough to recognize it)
And that's why the will never trust you. (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem is that while trump is likely gone (Hopefully to prison. ...), the ones that voted for him will remain. And they are worse than Trump ever could have been.
And it's because of comments like that, that the left will never be trusted when they get their hands on the levers of power.
How could someone, in the roughly half the country who voted for Trump, trust someone, who is willing to say such things, to use power in any way except to hurt them?
Congratulations on your own, personal, "Irredeemable Deplorables" moment
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Trump voters have branded themselves as supporters of abuse of a broad variety of kinds which need not be enumerated here. They cry about how leftists are dividing the nation while they support the unsupportable.
It's not clear what can be done to reconcile with people who willfully support fascism, and also willfully remain ignorant in order to justify supporting the orange menace.
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Well a certain political leader did encourage his followers to vote twice.
Two wrongs make a right? (Score:2)
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I know, right? I mean, if they could carry a tune they'd have known to ~ bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran ~
Wouldn't the "break glass" measure be... (Score:5, Insightful)
To just temporarily suspend forming new groups on the site for a week?
"Due to technical issues on the servers, the databases managing the creation of new groups will require maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience and will be working around the clock to get this issue resolved and give you an ETA for when group creation can begin again."
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#ShowMetheSteal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: #ShowMetheSteal (Score:2)
"Batshit Crazy Facebook Groups" (Score:5, Funny)
It's like 99% of them.
FB should just get back to selling ads.
the dangerous cruelty of a i (Score:2)
Trip all the breakers on Facebook (Score:2)
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. The big turns in the numbers were predicted well in advance based on entirely non-nefarious models. Trump's own advice to his supporters was a big contributor to it. Simple fact, more Trump supporters voted in person, more Biden supporters chose absentee ballots. Absentee ballots are counted after in-person votes.
Re:huh.. (Score:4, Interesting)
in fact, he asked his supporters to vote in person so it would appear like this and he could later claim fraud.
Did you pay attention to the news over the summer? The Postmaster General disassembled mail sorting machines and shipped the parts around the country so that they couldn't be reassembled right AFTER Trump started beating the mail ballot fraud drum. I don't think the intention was to claim fraud - I think the intention was to keep Democrats from voting by making it impossible for the USPS to deliver their ballots on time. And I think the PG ought to be facing criminal charges for this.
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If you just wish hard enough, it's true! Seriously though, you're talking about people who think the lack of evidence is further proof of a vast conspiracy.
Re: huh.. (Score:2)
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There is pseudo evidence. As in a friend of a friend posted something, so it must be true. And please ignore all the retractions that show up an hour later explaining how it was a mistake but all cleared up now. The people who say "do your own research" to mean "watch our conspiracy theory videos" seem to have passed this tactic onto people trying to convince others of fraud. You know the #StopOrStartTheVoteWhicheverOneGetsTrumpElected group.
Seriously, all the proof of massive fraud claims have petered
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He'll just post screen shots from Twitter and call it evidence.
Re: huh.. (Score:2)
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Well to be fair, how would one provide a reliable source when the reliable sources immediately dismiss any allegation of fraud?
Re: huh.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Reliable sources are the law enforcement and election monitoring officials whose job it is to detect and investigate fraud. If you think you have evidence of fraud then you take it to them so they can decide if it's credible or not.
When they say they are investigating fraud is the time when the mainstream media reports it, not when Trump says so. That's a vital part of the democratic process - separation of law enforcement from the candidates.
Re:huh.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually went to Pravda, and found this article [pravdareport.com] on their front page, which leads off, "A great many Americans voting believe the lies their criminal corporate media pours out daily..."
So far so good. What's Russia Today reporting on recently? As of this posting, 40 of their 50most recent uploads on YouTube [youtube.com] are about the US election results being disputed. The fixation on Mr. Trump's disputes seems a little... excessive. I can't imagine why.
Good to know that there are still sources of officially approved news available. Thanks for the tip.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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To be fair, the American mainstream media has long ago outed itself as being almost as credible as Russia Today.
Anyone who declares anything about "mainstream media" clearly demonstrates that they only expose themselves to a small portion of it. Congradulations you found an echo chamber.
American "mainstream media" is leftist. It's rightist. It's centralist. It's sensationalist. It's also calm and rational. What *you* seemingly have done is chosen to expose yourself to a particular subset of the media to form your opinion.
If you want to really understand the world around you, pay attention to mainstream media. ALL OF
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Informative)
The FBI is investigating a whistleblower's report that ballots were illegally backdated in Detroit. Nevada has reports of huge numbers of votes who moved away but illegally car ballots in the state. Colorado has huge numbers of dead voters.
A) The only one reporting this is RT and Project Veritas, a known hotbed of lies who has been caught numerous times altering data to suit their needs.
B) The only one making this claim is the con artist and when his representative on site was asked to provide evidence, refused to answer any questions or provide evidence.
C) Talk about fabrication. Those "dead" people aren't voting. Some, a small handful, of people who are dead may have received a postcard about voting, but did not vote.
If you're making the claim, you have to provide the proof. Thus far, you have not and so we can ignore whatever other lies you come up with.
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Actually dead people who fraudulently gave their names to offspring before dying and allowing the offspring to inherent the house and live there and registering under the same name. Yes, the case in the youtube video that's going around is just that, two people with the same name in the same address, one of whom is the son (or grandson?) of the other.
Re: huh.. (Score:2)
Im fairly sure that people living in their dead parents house, who also received ballots foe their dead parents, probably filled those out too. However, it could be just as likely they voted trump as it is they voted biden.
The office of president is not elected king. Im more focused on the senate race. If the republicans keep a 51 seat majority then Joe will work to compromise to get things done. Thats what he did when he was VP. He has a history of doing just that. Unfortunately people forgot how that proc
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone can look up the court records for James O'Keefe. It's an interesting read which pretty much shows that Project Veritas have trouble sticking to the truth or that they just make shit up.
Here's a little list of some of their shitty stunts in the news:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/andrew-breitbart-and-james-okeefe-ruined-him-and-now-he-gets-100-000/273841/ [theatlantic.com]
https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2020/10/man-says-he-was-offered-10000-bribe-for-project-veritas-claims-about-voter-fraud-rep-ilhan-omar.html [syracuse.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/florida-bars-project-veritas-founder-james-okeefe-from-fundraising-due-to-criminal-conviction/2017/12/08/f20a05c4-dc41-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Informative)
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They also have never lost a lawsuit brought against them for misinformation.
Only because they settled out-of-court - they've been on the losing end of at least two lawsuits.
O'Keefe and three others pled guilty to federal charges when they tried to break in and tap someone's phone.
That's the short summary. The full list of their garbage work is very long:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Informative)
They may not have lost any lawsuits, but some quick googling shows they've paid out a fair amount of settlements out of court.
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You are an anonymous poster making allegations with no references. I see no reason I should believe any of it, and I don't.
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Nevada is looking up that case, it is under investigation, you don't need to send protesters with guns to make sure it happens. The backdated story has been cited as part of a lawsuit, so if there is evidence hopefully someone digs it up and presents it to the judge instead of just alleging it. The dead voters has been debunked very quickly.
Of course ... (Score:4, Interesting)
So allegations of voter fraud in 4 cities with some fishy numbers are automatically disinformation.. no investigation needed?
Of course - according to anyone who is a propaganda artist or dupe for the other side. B-)
(In a similar vein, if a reporter called Trump's claims "unfounded" he wasn't acting as a reporter, but as a propagandist. Maybe they WERE unfounded. But the reporter is in no position to KNOW and OBJECTIVELY REPORT that they are unfounded. We were at the very start of the assertion, where the claim is made but the evidence supporting it has not yet been presented. The reporter doesn't know what, if any, support there is for the claim, so how can he have researched it and know it's bogus.)
Back to those allegations. I saw some and tried to trace them. As near as I can tell:
A poster (duckdiver19, I think) claimed to be watching, and timestamping, the numbers released by the counts in several states. In Wisconson he was drawing a pair of curves - rising and curving over a bit, roughly in parallel, as the votes for both candidates were counted. Suddenly, in the wee hours, he (says he) gets an update where Biden's number jumps by about 200,000 and neither Trump, nor any minor candidate, gets a single vote. This takes Biden's curve, in a vertical step, from substantially below Trump's to somewhat above it - not much, but enough that if they continue as before from this discontinuity Trump's won't quite catch up to Biden's.
Similarly, at another time a couple hours different, he (says he) gets an update from Michigan bumping Biden by 138,339 while Trump and the minors get zero.
This is exactly the signature you'd expect if somebody dumped a stack of bogus ballots, all for one candidate, into the counting process, rather than spreading them out (and taking a bigger chance of getting caught). (There are a couple other ways for this to happen legitimately. But they'd also show other artifacts, such as similar jumps for the other candidates.)
So he posts a nice graphic, with the count-versus-time graph for Biden and Trump in Wisconsin, and a before-and-after screenshot pair for the Michigan count jump, to his twitter account. I'd like to have examined it more, to see if I could find a way to fact check it. Was it real, or forged? But wee hours. When I went back to it after a few hours sleep, Twitter had suspended his account.
I'd love to show you the graphics. Here's what I think was the correct link, from my browser history:
https://t.co/YJBrZpVfYA [t.co]
So I guess publishing any observation that might support claims of fraud in the election is against Twitter's (effective) terms of service.
Eric Frank Russell's quote (from _Wasp_) seems to apply as well to social and news media and politics as it does to governments an war:
Maybe somebody else - like a service that collected the info from the counters and spread it around to the newsies, or a news site itself - has timestamped logs of the counting operations' announcements. Those could be used to check the allegations - and to search for more occurrences of that signature.
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Actually, if a reported called Trump's claims unfounded, the reporter was acting as a reporter and indicating that neither Trump nor his administration had provided anything resembling evidence.
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Those are mostly synonymous anyway, but let's face it, Trump is a colossal liar who lies all the time. At some point, it becomes dishonest not to call him out for all his lies. Consider the boy who cried wolf. Now imagine it's happened hundreds of times. Should the villagers, when the boy cries "Wolf!" again say that the assertion is unfounded or unsupported? At some point, being impartial actually requires saying that the President is a notorious liar. Not pointing it out becomes the biased act.
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"Unfounded" is perfectly acceptable shorthand for "thus far unfounded". It isn't indended to mean "not true" - although you could make the case that the amount of evidence that observers have not found anything untoward on scale does constitute the knowledge that it's not true. Again, everything in journlism comes with a caveat that would have to be repeated every time: "as far as we know, at this point."
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Suddenly, in the wee hours, he (says he) gets an update where Biden's number jumps by about 200,000 and neither Trump, nor any minor candidate, gets a single vote.
Simple explanation: That's when the Post Office made the delivery from the mental hospitals.
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It wasn't as described.
Both Trump and Biden jumped simultaneously, though Trump far less than Biden.
To me it just looked like a huge batch of mail-ins was counted, which had already been reported to be favoring Biden at a rate of around 70%- which shouldn't be contentious.
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Unfounded means that he's not basing his claims on any kind of evidence, ...
Agreed.
They're using the word correctly.
Agreed that that is what they are saying. (Some of the discussion earlier in the thread was me making this point when others were claiming they meant something else.)
and that's what's going on.
And how did they supposedly know that when they said it? How can they objectively claim they, themselves, one and all, over and over, were not making an unfounded assertion, but had definite knowledge
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... says the side that insisted there was anything to the "pee tape" dossier. The side that impeached the president for asking Ukraine to look into the (thoroughly substantiated) reports that Hunter Biden was selling influence. That's IMAX-class projection.
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There is zero evidence for any type of "fraud" anywhere. Every time someone said, "But what about . . ." it's been shot down by cold, hard facts.
Cite the court case and decision. Because while Trump's claims are meaningless until a case has been filed the same holds true of cold hard facts that haven't been vetted by a judge. Both sides are acting like chimpanzees flinging poo at the opposing clan.
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
ur electoral process is a giant fucking joke from hanging chads
Yes, that type of ballot is a joke.
to stuffed ballots
The con artist didn't get his wish to make us like Russia [youtube.com], so no.
to marking mail past the real post-mark date.
Stop reading RT. You're embarassing yourself. This did not happen. What did happen is the head of the USPS did commit election fraud by deliberately slowing the mail and ordering the postal service to stop processing mail to prevent people's votes from being registered. Funny how you didn't bring that up.
it's that we have transparent and verifiable votes.
That's why we have cameras in the counting rooms and people from all parties watching the counting take place. Not sure how much more transparent you want the voting to be unless you want to assign a government official to every ballot and hand deliver it to the person, watch them make their mark, then hand deliver that ballot back to the election bureau. Being a big government kind of guy, that sounds like what you want.
Re:huh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you and the horse that you rode in on. Let's add to that list to make it fair.
-All votes should happen on national voting holiday
-All voters should be required to wait no more than 1/2 hour in line to vote
-All voters should be provided with free identification suitable for satisfying any Voter ID requirement
-All voters should be automatically registered to vote or offered same day voter registration
Re:huh.. (Score:4, Informative)
All voters should be provided with free identification suitable for satisfying any Voter ID requirement
Be very careful with that. Even if the ID is free there must be some way to determine the identity of the person requesting it, and there is huge scope for voter suppression there.
The UK has a good system that avoids the need for ID. Once registered to vote your name and address goes on a list. When you vote they cross you off the list. If you turn up and find that your name as already been crossed off, i.e. someone fraudulently claimed to be you and voted, you know that there is voter fraud and the police can investigate.
If the amount of fraud is enough that it could have swung the election then there can be legal challenges to the result, but I don't think that's ever happened. The point is that fraud can always be detected and we always know if it had any impact on the result. Fraud is extremely rare.
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I think Republican politicians may deviate from their own supporters on this one. The politicians have future elections to worry about, so will want to be seen as statesmanlike and pro-democracy.
That means they'll speak only cautiously, and talk in generalities such as "Every legal vote should be counted. Any illegally-submitted ballots must not. All sides must get to observe the process. And the courts are here to apply the laws & resolve disputes."
-- https://twitter.com/senatemajl... [twitter.com]
To be fair, he's h
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You just cut the damn neckbeard off, and if it kills the host as it dies, so be it. Just remove the infection, hope for the best, and call it done.
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Slashdot was never good
Good and evil are learned, value-driven concepts; but, Slashdot was great, and innumerable current doppleganger news site aggregators prove the theory that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
MSGA!
Re:Why are you blocking INFORMATION (Score:5, Informative)
There is a list of 14k dead voters in Wisconsin, you can check them manually to verify.
Bullshit. It does no such thing [politifact.com].
There's the case of voting software in Michigan changing the results from one county to where 6k Republican votes were counted as Democrat... the same software is used in 47 other counties, that have not double checked for similar issues...
More bullshit. The error was found by a clerk in the county. They corrected the numbers. That same system was used in 47 other counties who then went back and checked their own numbers and made the corrections.
Sure maybe some of this information is bad, bu the facts are there is some voter fraud
Then show your evidence. The only ones I'm aware of are from 2016 where a Republican woman in Iowa deliberately voted twice, and a former GOP sent in an absentee ballot for his wife who found out she already voted when she went to the polls to cast her vote.
isn't it better to be able to talk about it to know the extent?
Every time this canard is brought up it is talked about and study after study has shown there is an insignificant amount of fraud which doesn't even register as a rounding error.
Maybe it's really small, but what's the harm in actually talking about examples found?
Because the vast majority of time it involves Republicans committing the fraud or someone who inadvertently did something they didn't realize they weren't supposed to do, such as voting in their previous area after the moved to a new area right around the time of an election. You want to know who small fraud is in elections [forbes.com]?
A Brennan Center for Justice analysis in 2007 found incidence rates of voter fraud in past elections of between 0.00004% and 0.0009%, and the organization said in an April analysis “it is still more likely for an American to be struck by lightning than to commit mail voting fraud.”
So you're done talking about fraud. Everything you said is bullshit and has been shown to be false. There is no fraud, there are no "huge" numbers of dead people voting. When you're done spreading misinformation and lies, let us know.
Stages of grief (Score:2)
* anger
* bargaining
* depression
* acceptance
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why are you blocking INFORMATION (Score:5, Insightful)
Being specific, there's a video which shows that these supposedly dead people are registered to vote (people stay registered until unregistered by someone) but have not got voting cards since they aren't alive to ask for one.
The question nobody seems to be asking is, what is the Trump campaign doing with a list of 14k dead voters? Normally, if you had such a list and had no nefarious plans you would give it to the state before the election so they could clean their voter roles with the list. Seems to me that if you get such a list you have one of two aims: 1) generating anti-USA propaganda or 2) voting using those people's identities. Maybe the Trump supporters started with plan 2) and then realised they were likely to get caught before switching over to plan 1).
Re: (Score:2)
The sick part?
I bet the list of dead voters came from the company they've been sending the US's death certificates for COVID-19 statistics.
Yank the data collection from the CDC, make lemonade from the lemons.
I have no doubt they have a big list of dead people from the database for every contentious state ready to use for lawsuits.
Re: (Score:2)
You will need to take that up with my school teacher from 1978 who told me we were a democracy. And then take it up with most everyone else who has said the same thing.
Keep your personal attacks in your mind because I don't need them. In fact it just makes everything you've said irrelevant. Grow the fuck up.
Re: (Score:2)
You sound like you met Trump and go the Midas Touch you know where.
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The first thing Biden will do is bring the H1B's back into the country, and the living standards of the working class will accelerate down even faster.
I don't understand how any changes to the H1B program will help the kid who's only options are military or Walmart.
Re: Orange fans sad (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed, cornering the coveted Slashdot voting block was integral in the ousting of the incumbent American President. Well done, sir.
Re:This whole mess is going to the House (Score:5, Insightful)
Early voting, mail voting and absentee voting are problematic. Everyone should just show up on Election Day and vote at the same time. The sanctity of the election itself is more important than convenience. Yes I have early voted for 10 years, but i'm willing to sacrifice here for the common good.
Oh, Orange Fan Sad.
It worked perfectly fine all those other times. But now my team lost, Whaaaa.
Get a grip.
Re:This whole mess is going to the House (Score:5, Informative)
Otherwise here you go with a source that explains voting options in France http://www.elections-legislati... [elections-...latives.fr]
They seem to be fine with proxy voting. Especially under circumstances like the current pandemic they're a bit more open to do things differently.
https://www.france24.com/en/20... [france24.com]
If there were 'larger' elections they'd probably do something similar.
You see, while Macron behaves much like an asshole aristocrat, he's not demented yet.
Face it, voting while not being physically present is considered to work fine enough in most countries. The massive voter fraud has not yet been supported by data no matter how often you repeat the claim.
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"Early voting, mail voting and absentee voting are problematic"
citation needed.
Re: This whole mess is going to the House (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: This whole mess is going to the House (Score:3, Informative)
But I guess screw the disabled, foreign servicemen, and emergency folks who may not have the same holiday time? If they can't stand in the long lines on election night, then too bad right?
On tax day, there are massive traffic jams at post offices (which the IRS counts as on time if post marked). Imagine if we didn't have 3 extra months and years afterward to submit or adjust our taxes? If we ALL had to file them on JUST tax day. Forget in person, I doubt some local internet networks and banks could handl
Re: This whole mess is going to the House (Score:5, Insightful)
So you make the time but you lose your job, which means you lose your home and your family starves.
It's ONE DAY every FOUR YEARS. America is rich enough to make it a national holiday when voting is so fucking imperative for the fabric of a democratic society.
Re:This whole mess is going to the House (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone should just show up on Election Day and vote at the same time.
Why? Just to cater to the morons who "don't believe in the election results?"
Why does America have to pander to idiots? Other nations like Canada with mail-in voting don't have to. Just provide the evidence that the election was fair, ignore the idiots and leave it at that. Otherwise you're just pushing a rope uphill.
Also, in-person voting makes voter suppression in some districts *much* easier. If you create a scenario where in some districts people can vote in 5 minutes, and in others it takes 5 hours then in those 5-hour districts many people will go home without casting a ballot.
Mailing a ballot is the great leveller.
Re: It's Ok (Score:5, Informative)
World standards have not been "warped by commies".
American standards have been warped by decades of corporate propaganda.
It's once of the two major reasons why you septic tanks believe that government is inherently evil, regulations are bad (especially the regulations that stop nice corporations from poisoning you), and why tax cuts for the rich are good for you personally.
The other major reason is that most of you are ignorant, poorly educated, and just plain fucking stupid.
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You do not identify the friends and enemies of democracy when they win. You can identify them without fail by their behavior when they lose.
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Right but at 10,000 to 1 odds, paid for by the taxpayers and campaign funds, you can file all the lawsuits you like and hope for a Hail Mary (or whatever it was that lady who was speaking in tongues said).
Re: Technology cannot fix stupid (Score:2)
But it is not accident Indeed.