Conspiracy theory for the day
Recent attacks on Internet infrastructure, are somebody getting ready to shut down internet news on the day of/day after the election. So, who would want to do that, and why?
Two good possibilities that I can think of. First, Russia seems to definitely prefer Trump. They might want to create some kind of chaos/disturbance to make the vote "invalid" in some way. But that attack might be early on the day of, trying to create enough insanity that people didn't go to the polls.
Second, Trump has made noises about not accepting the results of the election. He has the potential to trigger a civil war (or at least widespread unrest and violence) by his choice of words immediately after the polls close. The US government might want to slow the propagation of inflammatory words at that time; shutting down the internet seems like a reasonable step in that direction.
I don't think that's going to happen, though - either the rigging or the Trump landslide.
There is far more excitement today for Trump than there was for Reagan back in 1980. The only difference is that the news media were not trying to hide the fact 36 years ago.
It may not be obvious to you if you live in one of a few echo chambers like SV, but drive around anywhere else and you'll see very little excitement for the other side.
As for the rigging -- believe what you want to believe -- it's going to fail anyway.
I don't know where you are and where you get your information, but I'm pretty sure that Trump is not winning in a landslide.
I was visiting Scotland just a couple of weeks before the vote to leave the UK. I correctly predicted that "No" would win, though I was off on margin of victory by 6 points. As an outsider, and knowing nothing of the issues, I could see that the "Yes" people were more vocal and the "No" people were more quiet, and therefore that if you got the sense of where the vote was going based on the amount of noise, you were going to over-rate "Yes".
I think it's the same thing here. The Trump supporters are vocal. Hillary supporters are more "Meh, at least she's not Trump". Don't mistake the amount of noise for the number of votes.
The hillary "support" is mostly fake. Just like the fake Carter support in '80.
You'll see.
A question for you: Suppose that Trump loses. Are you going to believe that it had to be rigged? Or are you going to decide that you were wrong in how you read the country?
(BTW, for whatever it's worth: Here in Utah, there's plenty of political signs, but very few for either Trump or Hillary. Nobody feels enough in favor of either of them to put up signs. I've seen more signs for Gary Johnson than for anyone.)
Not to mention the emails (verifiable through DKIM) released by Wikileaks outlining the rigging of the Dem primaries -- as well as Project Veritas videos some of which are corroborated by FEC filings, CNN video, and other mainstream media sources.
DNC was clearly on Hillary's side, which is not what they're supposed to be doing. I accept that as well.
To most people, though, "the election is rigged" means "the votes are not counted honestly". Do you have evidence of that?
They pulled electronic voting machines and switched to paper ballots because the machines were switching the presidential votes from Trump to Clinton for people who had voted all-republican?
http://www.12newsnow.com/news/local/programming-issue-briefl...
http://www.fox26houston.com/news/local-news/213659018-story
I think machines that change votes to favor Clinton -- and ONLY Clinton -- counts as votes not counted honestly. Would you agree with that?
Also, one county in Texas is not going to hand Clinton the election. Is there any evidence that this is systematic and country-wide? Or is it just one incident in Texas?
Look, all votes should be counted accurately. But it's going to take probably more than a million votes changing to change this election. Anything less than that is still a problem, still needs fixed, but isn't going to change the result.
I don't believe you're arguing in good faith.
What does it take to convince you? Does video evidence of people involved in the Clinton campaign bragging about voter intimidation suffice? Or do you not think voter intimidation counts as rigging an election?
So what's good enough? We've got some pretty damning emails that can be proven not to have been altered (DKIM) -- is that good enough?
Clearly, voting machines supplied by companies with ties to the Clinton foundation having "glitches" that always work in favor of Clinton isn't good enough.
Do we consider Clinton having received debate questions beforehand to be rigging? Or do we just ignore that a candidate for President of The United States has just been proven to have CHEATED -- because that cheating wasn't dishonestly counting votes with PROVABLE INTENT?
I could bring up the "coincidence" of the Democratic Party bus caught illegally dumping raw sewage on the side of a road in my hometown -- miraculously coinciding with an unprecedented early voter turnout. But why bother? We'll just move the goalposts further.
Whatever. It doesn't matter. Because even with a completely rigged system -- we're going to elect Trump anyway.
I didn't think it completely reasonable to restrict the definition that way, but accepted it.
You asked for evidence of your more restrictive definition -- and I provided it. There's plenty more now. And Pennsylvania State Police seem to be in the middle of a raid that'll likely provide yet more.
You decided that machines removing or changing votes was "votes not being counted accurately" (apparently in your world, changing votes after they've been cast is only inaccurate -- not dishonest) -- and continued "It's only not being counted honestly if it's deliberate."
So first we moved the goalposts to establishing evidence of votes not being counted honestly.
Then when that evidence was provided, suddenly the goalposts move to proving it was deliberate?
But not only that, you nudge the goalposts further by asking "Is there any evidence that this is systematic and country-wide? Or is it just one incident in Texas?"
Let's review the movement of goalposts:
- move from my assertion that the system is rigged to your more limited "the votes are not counted honestly"
- move from there to "It's only not being counted honestly if it's deliberate."
- move from there to "Is there any evidence that this is systematic and country-wide? Or is it just one incident in Texas?"
There is in fact, evidence from the Dem primaries that voting machines with paper audit trails matched pretty closely to exit polls -- but machines without a paper audit trail disproportionately voted for Clinton.
Widespread.
Country-wide.
So where shall the goalposts move now? Do we have to get video of somebody on team Clinton erasing and changing votes on paper ballots? (you do realize we have video of that too during the primaries, right? -- you know, the very recent rigged election where the nomination was stolen from Bernie Sanders)
http://themonkeycage.org/2012/08/what-really-happened-in-the...
If we're taking risk proportional to what we have in the bank, the amount is immaterial -- an impartial 3rd party can verify that I'm not sandbagging (I do have to reserve rent, electric, internet, and gas bills though).
But I could really use the $100,000 -- so how 'bout we set up an escrow to keep each other honest.
Trust but verify and all that jazz.
At least I got some of your money on PredictIt.