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?

[boatsnguitars]

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?

Yes. Just "yes".

There have been instances of voter fraud that were caught and prosecuted, but international watch groups that track this are clear: we have free and fair elections.

It's time to focus our energy on other things.

[The Barbarian]

When the last republican candidate is loser who always blames others for his failures, why is it surprising that some of his followers believe him?

[AgnosticBoy]

I can't bring myself to call American elections "fair" or "free" when our options are limited. And that may be intentional since both parties want to suppress votes when it comes to who we can vote for. And yes, that includes the Democrat leadership.

The very existence of the No Labels group is fanning Democratic anxiety about Trump’s chances against an incumbent president facing questions about his age and record. While it hasn't committed to running candidates for president and vice president, No Labels has already secured ballot access in Arizona and 10 other states. Its organizers say they are on track to reach 20 states by the end of this year and all 50 states by Election Day.

In Arizona, which Biden won by about 10,000 votes, the state Democratic Party sued Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, also a Democrat, to try to prevent No Labels from being on the ballot. The party lost in court and then dropped its lawsuit. Now Democrats are pushing Fontes to force No Labels to disclose its donors, having insinuated that the group is being supported by conservatives attempting to thwart Biden. No Labels has so far refused to name how it is funding its work, saying it follows federal law and wants to protect the privacy of its donors.

- AP

I'm willing to bet that Republicans would do the same. It's all about what benefits their political power! Everything else is secondary, assuming they really even believe the stuff on their political platform.

[Diogenes]

Yes, the elections [the actual voting] are 'free and fair.'
False claims by the loser of an election with ZERO evidence, claims that have been dismissed by 63 courts, does not make this non issue a legitimate issue. Over and over again every legitimate (as well as some biased investigations) inquiry has found no fraud, except statistically insignificant instances, that could have changed the result of the election. The number of actual fraudulent votes is such a tiny percentage it is hard to appreciate as a percentage, but it's 1 in every 52,​631 votes.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exhau ... e-lives-on

[boatsnguitars]

Yes, the elections [the actual voting] are 'free and fair.'
False claims by the loser of an election with ZERO evidence, claims that have been dismissed by 63 courts, does not make this non issue a legitimate issue. Over and over again every legitimate (as well as some biased investigations) inquiry has found no fraud, except statistically insignificant instances, that could have changed the result of the election. The number of actual fraudulent votes is such a tiny percentage it is hard to appreciate as a percentage, but it's 1 in every 52,​631 votes.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exhau ... e-lives-on

Not only that, but many of those examples are often mistakes (like the woman (Black and Democratic) jailed for voting because she thought she had changed her voting address to her new home. Meanwhile, a guy (white and Republican) who tried to vote for his family was slapped on the wrist.

So, even if there is fraud, most of those votes cancel each other out, or are in favor of Republicans.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -disparity

After 15 years of scrapes with the police, the last thing that 33-year-old Therris L. Conney needed was another run-in with the law. He got one anyway two years ago, after election officials held a presentation on voting rights for inmates of the county jail in Gainesville, Fla.

Apparently satisfied that he could vote, Mr. Conney registered after the session, and cast a ballot in 2020. In May, he was arrested for breaking a state law banning voting by people serving felony sentences — and he was sentenced to almost another full year in jail.

That show-no-mercy approach to voter fraud is what Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has encouraged this year during his re-election campaign. “That was against the law,” he said last month about charges against 20 other felons who voted in Florida, “and they’re going to pay a price for it.”

But many of those cases seem to already be falling apart, because, like Mr. Conney, the former felons did not intend to vote illegally. And the more typical kind of voter-fraud case in Florida has long exacted punishment at a steep discount.

Last winter, four residents of the Republican-leaning retirement community The Villages were arrested for voting twice — once in Florida, and again in other states where they had also lived.

Despite being charged with third-degree felonies, the same as Mr. Conney, two of the Villages residents who pleaded guilty escaped having a criminal record entirely by taking a 24-hour civics class. Trials are pending for the other two.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/us/v ... lties.html

[fredonly]

[Replying to historia in post #1]

I had an exchange with someone on another forum about this same topic, and I’d like to share my response to the guy – since it seems relevant. The guy I conversed with was an election conspiracy theorist, who was convinced there was fraud because there was no full and complete audit (from voter to vote count) that could prove the election was free and fair. IOW, he didn’t see the need to show there was actually fraud; but rather that we should consider elections fraudulent by default, so he said this:

"Please give me the evidence again, because I don’t recall you presenting any justifying that it was a free and fair election."

I responded:

You're naively asking for evidence of a negative fact (no fraud).
There can't be evidence of a negative fact. E.g. what evidence could there be that there's no teapot orbiting Mars? What evidence could there be that unicorns don't exist?
What I CAN do is to justify my belief that US elections are generally fair:

1. Elections are decentralized down to the precinct level, then accumulated up to the state level but still reported by precinct. Each precinct verifies the precinct counts used at the state level, all results are made public- and therefore easily verified.
2. Within a precinct, the voting process is non-partisan. Casting of votes is private, and the vote counting is verifiable. Recounts often occur, and the counts nearly always confirm the original count (with only negligible error rate). On those rare occasions when a significant divergence is discovered, the root cause is found, and it's invariably shown to be a technical problem, not an intentional act. Exceptions are extremely rare, have been only on a very small scale (like a small town), and results in a well-publicized scandal.
3. By and large, election workers are committed to following the process. Although precinct work is a non-partisan job, there will invariably be workers of each party. This provides a background context everyone is aware of, that adds to the motivation to strictly following the process.
4. A wide-spread conspiracy, involving multiple precincts, is infeasible because of the number of people involved. The greater the number of conspirators, the greater the liklihood of errors occurring that expose the crime, and also the greater the chance that some participant will expose the conspiracy. This is a general weakness of any irrational conspiracy theory: they depend on near-perfect execution, and perfect loyalty. (I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on conspiracy theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory)
5. In a national election, the feasibility problems of #4 are exponentially greater. A multi-state conspiracy is grossly implausible.
6. Pre-election polling is generally quite accurate (within the published margin of error that many tend to overlook), and this adds confidence in the election results: surprises are rare.

Every conspiracy theory, not just election conspiracy theories, entails a hypothesis that is POSSIBLY true. The fact that the theory is POSSIBLE (although grossly implausible) makes the belief incorrigible, in the minds of the adherents, because they make the impossible demand, "Prove me wrong". This returns us to the issue I started with: the infeasibility of proving a negative. A reasonablel, rational objective (not just regarding elections) is to hold *justified beliefs*, which entails making an effort to seek, and objectively weigh, *all* available evidence- and to leave the door open to reevaluating when more facts become available.

Conspiracy theorists (regardless of which theory they embrace) don't understand this. They develop, or are receptive to the theory because it appeals to their prior beliefs - and acts to confirm them. This results in an emotional attachment that's an antithesis of objective analysis. It entails extreme confirmation bias. It starts with hunch rooted in bias, and then with seeking facts that are consistent with the theory, and treating these as confirming. Facts that are inconsistent with the theory are ignored, treated as lies, or treated as evidence of an even larger conspiracy (making it more implausible). They also seek out others who share their attachment to the irrational theory, providing a comforting and "confirming" social environment - including more "facts" that fit the theory.

[Purple Knight]

[Replying to fredonly in post #136]

I think it's fair to ask for evidence of the negative when everyone involved has an interest in cheating. A great example is bodybuilding contests. Enter one, and you will be presumed to be taking steroids and asked to prove you did not. This works well and almost nobody objects.

[AgnosticBoy]

IOW, he didn’t see the need to show there was actually fraud; but rather that we should consider elections fraudulent by default, so he said this:
"Please give me the evidence again, because I don’t recall you presenting any justifying that it was a free and fair election."

I responded:
You're naively asking for evidence of a negative fact (no fraud).
There can't be evidence of a negative fact. E.g. what evidence could there be that there's no teapot orbiting Mars? What evidence could there be that unicorns don't exist?
What I CAN do is to justify my belief that US elections are generally fair:
...

I think both sides need evidence. I've held a similar position to the guy you responded to but for different reasons. I also never concluded that the elections were fair or unfair. I withheld drawing conclusions because I questioned if there was enough security to catch cheating, especially given the unprecedented amounts of mail-in ballots during the 2020 elections. Still, I was attacked for being undecided on that issue which to me is no different than how plenty of Christians and atheists attack agnostics for not wanting to pick a side. I've since concluded that the results of the 2020 elections were fair after the results of all of the investigations and audits conducted by states, which was also reinforced by the results of Trump's own investigations by his private team.

Conspiracy theorists (regardless of which theory they embrace) don't understand this. They develop, or are receptive to the theory because it appeals to their prior beliefs - and acts to confirm them. This results in an emotional attachment that's an antithesis of objective analysis. It entails extreme confirmation bias. It starts with hunch rooted in bias, and then with seeking facts that are consistent with the theory, and treating these as confirming. Facts that are inconsistent with the theory are ignored, treated as lies, or treated as evidence of an even larger conspiracy (making it more implausible). They also seek out others who share their attachment to the irrational theory, providing a comforting and "confirming" social environment - including more "facts" that fit the theory.

I think it is even broader than prior beliefs in some cases. Some conspiracy theorists may be looking for a reason to doubt the results because they didn't like the outcome. I couldn't believe how much Trump sounded like a conspiracy theorist during his most recent interview on Meet the Press when he kept saying he won in 2020. At this point, I'd even call his thinking delusional.

[fredonly]

[Replying to AgnosticBoy in post #138]

I think both sides need evidence. I've held a similar position to the guy you responded to but for different reasons. I also never concluded that the elections were fair or unfair. I withheld drawing conclusions because I questioned if there was enough security to catch cheating, especially given the unprecedented amounts of mail-in ballots during the 2020 elections.

“Not free and fair” could be interpreted differently, ranging from the extreme claim the election was stolen through a massive conspiracy, to the opposite extreme of claiming there were some fraudulent votes. The allegation that the election was stolen was purely an irrational conspiracy theory, with all the problems they always have. I'll assume you weren't there. Given the closeness of the election in swing states, it could be reasonable to think there might be some issues in some states, but I can't see how anyone could think there was much of a chance of there being sufficient fraud to change the national outcome. But everyone's threshold of skepticism is subjective - the important thing is to apply that threshhold consistently.

The guy I was conversing with was a conspiracy theorist. He told me that he first came to believe the election was stolen on election night, when the lead changed. This amounts to jumping to conclusions, which anyone might do who didn’t understand the nature of the “red mirage” that was expected, but one should then abandon that assumption when he learns the facts. But conspiracy theorists like him are tenacious in their belief. If the lead change is demonstrated to be reasonable, they then look for new excuses to maintain their belief.

I think it is even broader than prior beliefs in some cases. Some conspiracy theorists may be looking for a reason to doubt the results because they didn't like the outcome. I couldn't believe how much Trump sounded like a conspiracy theorist during his most recent interview on Meet the Press when he kept saying he won in 2020. At this point, I'd even call his thinking delusional.

It seemed clear to me that Trump was pushing a conspiracy theory from the beginning. He was told to expect the “red mirage” in advance of election day, and yet he used that as his first basis to claim the election was stolen. There’s an audio recording of Steve Bannon (from pre-election) telling people Trump would do this - so although Trump pushed the conspiracy theory, it's not so clear he actually believed it.

The best sign of a conspiracy theory is the practice of jumping from one claim to the next, as each gets debunked. This demonstrates the belief in the conspiracy is not deduced from evidence, but rather that it's an irrational claim that looks for evidence to support it, and it’s incorrigible. Consider Trump pointing to the so-called evidence in the propaganda film “2000 Mules”. Even if it were true, this theory came out in 2022– so it couldn’t possibly justify a belief that was held by someone in Jan 2021. And yet, Trump (and many others) claimed this proves they were right. Being accidentally right does not imply one was rational to hold the belief. That’s a bit of a subtle point, but it does demonstrate the way conspiracy theorists latch onto anything they can regard as “proof” in a post hoc fashion. What caught my attention in Trump's recent interview is his saying that he "knew" the election was stolen because of his "instincts", which is ludicrous - and consistent with the way conspiracy theories start.

(Since I brought it up, I’ll mention that 2000 Mules is pure B.S. and I can easily demonstrate that, if anyone’s interested).