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2020 Presidential Election part 2

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cullennz said:
Honest question

Do you actually seriously think the US's ugly current ugly issues are going to magically suddenly be solved because you get rid of this orange misogynist, racist, lying, piece of scum?

Actually do you think one dude caused it?
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Here's my take.

It's not the US's ugly issues we are really talking about. It's the entire world.

The root cause of them all is disinformation.

If we look around the world there are numerous countries where fascist, authoritarian, populist ideologies are holding sway, the US is the largest and easiest to see but it's happening throughout Europe too and has been happening for years in many other countries.

People are suckers for a good story and will convince themselves that X is true despite all evidence to the contrary (see religion) and nowadays we have a way of spreading information rapidly. The internet in general and social media in particular can rapidly disseminate information to anyone who cares to receive it, regardless of how true it is.

Lots of people regard sites like Breitbart (other wingnut "news" sites of all political stripes are available) as credible news sources, when they are anything but. Most of the wingnut news paint the mainstream news as biased and slow and not credible, and people believe them.
"Never believe anything you read in the papers" was an old refrain the same is ever more true of things you read on the internet.
Whatever you think of MSM they are typically regarded by the law as publishing information, and as such they face legal consequences if they make up stuff. Blogs and forums and facebook and twitter notsomuch.

Some bad actors have seen how this works and are weaponising it to a) make a pile of money and b) spread their particular ideology as much as they can. States like Russia and likely others spread many false stories in an effort to destabilise people they regard as their enemies. Some people just like spreading rubbish just for the lolz. Some honestly believe what they are spreading around.

The other facet to this is big data. Google came up with a genius algorithm to place adverts. They wanted to find a way to make money. They provided a very high quality product (internet search) free to use to the world, and they settled on advertising. They placed curated adverts in the search results tailored to individual users. As a result f how good they were at doing that adverts placed with them got more clicks and sold more things and made them piles of money. They keep iterating on and improving their algorithms.
It turns out though that those same algorithms can be used to place "alternative facts" with low educated, low turnout voters. We've seen the rise of big firms like Cambridge Analytica who are *damn* good at what they do. Dominic Cummings pulled this trick over Brexit. Steve Bannon did it with Breitbart and many others.

"A lie has got halfway round the world before the truth even has it's boots on" someone once said.

We need to change things so that we argue both sides of an issue based off of the same set of facts. We need to marginalise conspiracy theories and wingnut news again. We need to get back to healthy debate over issues we face, and how to solve them.
We need to co-operate with and compromise with people who hold opposing views to move things forward.
We need to redistribute wealth, so that the top 1% of the top 1% don't hoard everything and everyone in the world can afford basic human necessities like clean water, food and healthcare.
We need to stop releasing CO2 into the air and find ways to mitigate the damage we've already done to the planet.
We need to build infrastructure to colonise other worlds before another asteroid hits.

We need to do a lot of things. Though it starts with being less partisan and talking with people of opposing viewpoints.

It's not just the US. It's the whole world, though like it or not the US tends to drive a lot of policy in other countries too, so having a POTUS who isn't an unwitting puppet of wingnut ideologues is a good start for now.
 
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Sideroxylon said:
It’s not the system casting doubt in the integrity of this election, it’s the loser Donald Trump.
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It was his backup in case he lost. If he won, the election would have been completely credible; if he lost he had an excuse because it certainly couldn't be because the country rejected him. As we know, nothing is ever, ever Trump's fault.
 
How long does it take you guys to count the votes?? So I was expecting to see the declaration but we are still hanging on?

Re the discussion on the best ever WWII film. To my mind the best I have ever seen remains the 1961 British film, 'The Long and the Short and the Tall": proper story line, heartwrenching and not just a series of predictable sound and visual effects.

So in honour of the ocassion of us all hanging around awaiting the US Election results of 2020, I'd like to suggest the following remake:

Pennsylvania - the Long

Georgia - the Short

Arizona - and the Tall.


We won't bother with Nevada as it'll never reach the film set on time.
 

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More false claims by Republicans about voter fraud:

With all eyes on Georgia’s razor-thin presidential vote margin, falsehoods are swirling on social media about supposed ballot counting irregularities there.

Among the most widely shared examples is a video that has racked up millions of views on Twitter. It claims to show a poll worker crumpling up an absentee ballot. As it turns out, it shows no such thing. Richard Barron, the Fulton County elections director, said late Friday that the poll worker seen in the video was discarding paper instructions, not a ballot, which would have been much larger than the paper seen in the video.

Barron also said the worker was in hiding after being harassed online due to the false claims.
Here’s a look at the facts:

CLAIM: A video showing the ballot count in Fulton County, Georgia, shows fraud because a poll worker processing absentee ballots crumples one up.

THE FACTS: Election officials say the poll worker in the video did not crumple or discard a ballot.

“It’s been questioned whether the poll worker featured in the video was discarding one of those ballots. The answer is no, undeniably no,” Barron told reporters at a Friday evening news conference at the Fulton County elections warehouse in Atlanta. “At no time was the poll worker able to extract a ballot.”

The widely shared video shows Fulton County poll workers processing absentee ballots at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on Nov. 3. The poll worker appears to gesture in an animated way, and then crumple up a small piece of paper.

It appears that someone took a video of a video that someone else had recorded in the arena and added narration from a male voice. It is not clear who shot the original footage that the tweeted video was based on.
“He has a fit about something. And then flips off a ballot, and then crumples it up,” the narrator says. “If that is not voter fraud I don’t know what is.” David Shafer, the chairman of Georgia’s Republican Party, retweeted the video and wrote, “Lawyers for the Georgia Republican Party have demanded that the Fulton County Board of Elections investigate and explain what is happening in this video.” Barron said his review of the incident determined there was no way the poll worker in the video could have discarded a ballot.

The poll worker’s assignment was to use a cutting machine to open the outer envelopes and separate them from interior envelopes. “At no time was the worker able to extract the ballot,” reads a statement from Fulton County. “Ballot extraction only occurs with workers assigned to sorting duties.”


The statement explains that the piece of paper seen in the video is too small to be a ballot, which would have measured 8.5 by 19 inches.

Instead, Barron said it appeared the worker was discarding the list of instructions voters receive in their mailed ballots, which are 8 by 5 inches. “Due to the difference in sizes, it is clear that no ballot was damaged or discarded,” the statement reads.

On the question of why the worker appeared agitated in the video, the statement says he had explained his fingers were slightly injured due to a machine malfunction.

Barron told reporters that the worker was staying with friends because he no longer felt safe at home after social media users harassed him and released his personal information.
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Stacyhs said:
It was his backup in case he lost. If he won, the election would have been completely credible; if he lost he had an excuse because it certainly couldn't be because the country rejected him. As we know, nothing is ever, ever Trump's fault.
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It makes me wonder how stupid Trump and his team really are. Was the whole "don't vote postal" bit a tactic to allow them to try, in the event of a loss, to invalidate the postal votes whilst causing minimum harm to their own vote?

If so, it was genius.
 
I've read the suggestion that Trump's behaviour after the deaths of John McCain and John Lewis may have contributed to his troubles in Arizona and Georgia. I am an atheist but on this occasion I would like to imagine McCain and Lewis looking down from 'The Good Place' and laughing.;)
 
Trump Retweeted
Buck Sexton
@BuckSexton
Does anyone even try to make an argument why there is a good faith reason to block GOP poll watchers, or are we just supposed to ignore how highly suspicious that seems?
Quote Tweet

Maura Barrett
@MauraBarrettNBC
Philadelphia mail-in ballot count has been temporarily halted as Democrats have gone to PA’s Supreme Court to try to reverse the Commonwealth Court ruling allowing Trump observers inside to watch the count (which is also live-streamed) - per @mitchellreports
 
Trump Retweeted

John Solomon
@jsolomonReports
Detroit city worker blows whistle, claims ballots were ordered backdated. FBI probing.
Just The News
 
Trump Retweeted

Paul Sperry
@paulsperry_
‘Blindsided’: GOP elections board members in NC resign in protest over irregular absentee ballots
Democrats insisted on letting voters fix certain witness information problems by filling out an affidavit instead of starting a new ballot from scratch
Two Republican members of the NC State Board of Elections resigned late Wednesday night in protest of a proposed settlement to a lawsuit on absentee ballots, WTVD reported Wednesday night.
wsoctv.com

BREAKING: Sources on the ground say Stacey Abrams has been involved in the monitoring of mail-in ballot and absentee ballot counting in Fulton County where some 11,200 votes remain uncounted in George race where Trump holds lead


BREAKING: Mich Gov Whitmer sent health dept into Detroit TFC Center to evict GOP pollwatchers but not Dem pollwatchers or media, claiming COVID concerns despite 40k-sq-ft bldg. Counters cheered when they were evicted. Also put up cardboard over windows to block inspection process
Donald J. Trump Retweeted

Funny how CNN has suddenly stopped its "COVID-COVID-COVID!" drumbeat, isn't it? They've even taken down their death toll tumbler. Arent we still in the middle of a supposed national health-care emergency, CNN? Don't you care anymore, CNN? What a bunch of phonies #CovidNewsNetwork

BREAKING: Michigan county misdirected 1,000s of Trump votes to Biden
Michigan county flips back to Trump, following repair of voting software glitch
Reliably GOP county had originally swung to Biden
justthenews.com
 
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Trump Retweeted

Tom Bevan
@TomBevanRCP
It doesn't matter if Fox's call of AZ ends up being correct in the end. It was totally unnecessary to call it as early as they did. And the fact they jumped to call it, after waiting hours to call FL when 97% was in and Trump up 3+points is an awful double standard.

Joseph E. Schmitz
@josepheschmitz
True Electoral Count Shows Trump Winning | http://Newsmax.com https://newsmax.com/josepheschmitz/electoral-count/2020/11/06/id/995773/ via
@Newsmax
 
It's All Over But The Fascist Crying

The 4 AM EST updates are as follows.

GA Biden is up by 7,248 votes

PA Biden is up by 28,633 votes

AZ Biden is up by 29,800 votes

NV Biden is up by 22,652 votes

The orange adolescent is about to go on a 4 year sabbatical and he will need to fork over 400 million dollars to Uncle Sam. These are good times.
 
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Stacyhs said:
More false claims by Republicans about voter fraud:

“He has a fit about something. And then flips off a ballot, and then crumples it up,” the narrator says. “If that is not voter fraud I don’t know what is.”
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Yeah, so Voter Fraud is when a Voter casts an illegal ballot. What is being described here, if it was actually true, which it wasn't, is a poll worker's action. That would be Electoral Fraud, so narrator... no, you don't know that Voter Fraud is.
 
Trump Retweets

Paul Sperry
@paulsperry_
Valid question Trump's legal team is asking:
How many people who requested and mailed in ballots near or on Election Day also showed up at the polls on Election Day and cast ballots in Philly, Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Vegas?

Democrats will have to reconcile a couple other things, as well. To wit:
--If Biden's ground game was so nonexistent due to COVID, who organized & harvested the flood of urban ballots for him?
--Why was there such a disproportionately large share of singular Biden-only ballots?


Dan Bongino
@dbongino
These errors only seem to ever happen in one direction.
Learn about US 2020 election security efforts
Michigan County Flips to Trump After Software Glitch Is Fixed
Biden initially led the county by 3,000 votes - then Trump won by 2,500 after the glitch was fixed
rumble.com

(this tweet has been flagged as deceptive)
 
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