Are American elections free and fair?

[historia]

According to Pew, the percentage of Americans expressing confidence that our elections will be run well has dropped from four years ago (2018), especially among voters who support Republican candidates (-30%).

Question for debate: Are elections in the United States free and fair?

[The Barbarian]

They are not free and fair.

The best evidence in my opinion is the refusal of the press to investigate and still come out and say "this is the freest and fairest election in the history of America, and there is not even a hint of fraud anywhere".

Didn't see that in the press. In fact, the evidence shows that Donald Trump had the "dead voter" bloc pretty much sewn up...

"Bartman, who is a registered Republican, also registered his mother as a Republican," Stollsteimer said. "He has admitted to the detectives that questioned him that he did this to further the campaign of Donald Trump. He in fact cast the ballot of his deceased mother for President Trump."
https://www.newsweek.com/man-charged-vo ... ia-1556553

Donald Kirk Hartle, a 55-year-old Republican voter who publicly protested a 2020 ballot being cast in his dead wife's name, has been charged with voter fraud.

The Nevada Republican Party and other conservative groups cited Hartle's claim as proof of "widespread" voter fraud hyped by then-President Donald Trump. However, Nevada prosecutors now say that Hartle himself submitted the fraudulent ballot under his dead wife's name.

https://www.newsweek.com/nevada-man-who ... ud-1641477

Robert R. Lynn, a registered Republican and Trump supporter in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly requesting an absentee ballot for his mother, who died in 2015.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/-trump-s ... 185f4848de

The only statewide or nationwide election in the last hundred years that was actually thrown by voter fraud was in N. Carolina. The fraud was done by ... yes, you guessed it. Republicans.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47323556

But so far, we've only had one case where they were able to change an election due to fraud.

In the 2016 presidential election there were four cases of voter fraud found. Three of them were for Trump, and one for a different republican candidate.

And then there's the "cyberninjas investigation" started by the republicans in Arizona, in a vain attempt to overturn the election result. The owner of the company had asserted fraud before the "investigation" started. But when the dust cleared, he announced that Biden actually won by more votes than initially reported.

For decades, the republicans were under a court order to keep them from trying to steal elections, after they had been repeatedly caught trying to do so. Now, the order has been lifted by a politicized Supreme Court. Look for more real cases of fraud to come.

The Republican Party Emerges From Decades of Court Supervision
After being bound by a consent decree for 35 years, the Republican National Committee is now free to continue its “ballot security” campaign.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... es/550052/

But it likely won't change much. As you can see, it's rare to see outright fraud make a difference. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are more effective.

[The Barbarian]

According to Pew, the percentage of Americans expressing confidence that our elections will be run well has dropped from four years ago (2018), especially among voters who support Republican candidates (-30%).

Question for debate: Are elections in the United States free and fair?

The interesting thing is, even among those who supported Trump, most of them admit that the election was fair and run well. Well over two-thirds of Americans continue to express confidence in elections. And that's the bad news for the far right. Hence the idea, advanced by republicans that state legislatures have the power to void presidential elections in their states and to appoint their own electors in spite of the will of the voters.

[michaelgabriel88]

No election is fair thanks to technology if it wasns't for technology the coutning would be legit but it's not.No democracy can work because of all the technology false ballotsd, falso coutning system and masonery undermining it all the time we need one without the thrid parties interrupting.

[The Barbarian]

No election is fair thanks to technology if it wasns't for technology the coutning would be legit but it's not.No democracy can work because of all the technology false ballotsd, falso coutning system and masonery undermining it all the time we need one without the thrid parties interrupting.

The problem is evidence. As Rudy Guiliani admitted before the court, the lawsuit wasn't about fraud. And as the Big Lie began to unravel, more and more Trumpsters began to abandon ship. Now Sean Hannity admits that he was lying about it:

Fox News' Sean Hannity says he knew all along Trump lost the election
Fox News star Sean Hannity – one of former President Donald Trump's strongest allies on the air and one of his closest advisers off it – admitted under oath that he never believed the lie that Trump was cheated of victory in the 2020 presidential election by a voting tech company.

That stands in contrast to what played out on some of Fox's biggest shows – including Hannity's. On television, Fox News hosts, stars and guests amplified and embraced such wild and false claims, made by Trump, his campaign lawyers and surrogates, presenting them to millions of viewers.

Hannity and a top Fox News executive who oversees prime-time programs told a different story about Trump's false claims of fraud under oath and in front of attorneys, during separate depositions in a $1.6 billion defamation suit. While the depositions happened in August, their statements emerged yesterday in a Delaware Superior Court hearing relating to a series of motions by the two sides in the case.

"I did not believe it for one second," Hannity testified, according to an attorney for Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, who was offering it as a precise quote.

Meade Cooper, Fox News' executive vice president, "confirmed under oath she never believed the lies about Dominion," the Dominion attorney, Stephen Shackelford, Jr., also said.

"Tucker Carlson, he tried to squirm out of it at his deposition," Shackelford added, and then alluded to the Fox News star's texts from November and December 2020, when Judge Eric Davis cut Shackelford off.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/11449263 ... suit-trump

[michaelgabriel88]

People are leaving the Trump ship but it's working and will work here people we must use technology to counter all this false ballots. Rudy Gulianni has effect but still he's actions won't stop Trump from returning it will be either Donald Trump or his Donald Trump jr. but be assured that a future will happen and if we continue our voice heard it will happen because no voice will be let down and the silent majority is greater before and America has not lost very soon Putin will leave office. We must fight and keep fighting we because our future is still bright and Trump has not given andnoterh has God on America.

[The Barbarian]

Yes, the states appoint electors according to the states rules, other states have no say in how that is done. If Nevada allows dead people to vote by mail, then Texas does not get to interfere in that procedure.

The data show that Donald Trump had the dead voter bloc pretty much to himself. But it wasn't remotely enough to throw the election for him.

There's always that kind of thing, but it just never works very well. Voter suppression and Gerrymandering are much more effective ways of cheating. But often they aren't enough, either.

[Jose Fly]

Just in the last 2 weeks we've learned that...

The Trump campaign hired a research firm to investigate their "election fraud" claims, but when the firm found that the claims weren't true, they buried the report and continued to repeat the lies.

Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret

Fox News hosts knew the "election fraud" claims from Trump's team weren't true and off-air disparaged the people who promoted them, yet the network continued to allow Trump's people to push the lies to their viewers (and at times FN hosts pushed the lies themselves).

Lawsuit filing shows Fox hosts didn’t believe election fraud lies they pushed on TV

The former Republican Attorney General from Arizona had a team of investigators look into the "election fraud" claims in AZ, but when they issued a report showing the claims weren't true, the AG buried the report.

Former Arizona AG sat on records refuting 2020 election fraud

The pattern here is clear...conservatives/Republicans knew the 2020 election was accurate and claims saying otherwise were false, yet they suppressed that reality and instead kept lying to their supporters, insisting that the election was fraudulent and had been stolen by Democrats. That makes me wonder a few things. First, does any of that even matter to the average Republican voter and/or Fox News viewer? Do they care at all? Or are most of them actually aware of these things? Has this news penetrated their information bubble?

Or perhaps this is a classic case of a type of boomerang effect, where showing some people info that contradicts a belief actually makes them hold to the belief even more?

Regardless, this is another instance where I'm watching conservatives and I can honestly say....I just don't get them...at all.

[Miles]

Just in the last 2 weeks we've learned that...

The Trump campaign hired a research firm to investigate their "election fraud" claims, but when the firm found that the claims weren't true, they buried the report and continued to repeat the lies.

Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret

Fox News hosts knew the "election fraud" claims from Trump's team weren't true and off-air disparaged the people who promoted them, yet the network continued to allow Trump's people to push the lies to their viewers (and at times FN hosts pushed the lies themselves).

Lawsuit filing shows Fox hosts didn’t believe election fraud lies they pushed on TV

The former Republican Attorney General from Arizona had a team of investigators look into the "election fraud" claims in AZ, but when they issued a report showing the claims weren't true, the AG buried the report.

Former Arizona AG sat on records refuting 2020 election fraud

The pattern here is clear...conservatives/Republicans knew the 2020 election was accurate and claims saying otherwise were false, yet they suppressed that reality and instead kept lying to their supporters, insisting that the election was fraudulent and had been stolen by Democrats. That makes me wonder a few things. First, does any of that even matter to the average Republican voter and/or Fox News viewer? Do they care at all? Or are most of them actually aware of these things? Has this news penetrated their information bubble?

Or perhaps this is a classic case of a type of boomerang effect, where showing some people info that contradicts a belief actually makes them hold to the belief even more?

Regardless, this is another instance where I'm watching conservatives and I can honestly say....I just don't get them...at all.

It's almost as if lying to get one's way was business as usual among Republicans (just look at George Santos, although he's also an idiot), and that no one should be surprised when it's exposed. At least I'm not, anymore.

.

[Jose Fly]

It's almost as if lying to get one's way was business as usual among Republicans (just look at George Santos, although he's also an idiot), and that no one should be surprised when it's exposed. At least I'm not, anymore.

[AgnosticBoy]

Question for debate: Are elections in the United States free and fair?

Not when it's hard for anyone other than the two dominant parties to run in all 50 states. So I don't consider it fair when it comes to who can run. This would severely limit our options. It always seems like I'm voting for the lesser of two evils.