>Election results must be beyond doubt.
It's been so interesting to see this turn of narrative after months "questioning the outcome of an election is undermining democracy." I wonder what happened between Sept-Oct and now that changed all that?
It's been so interesting to see this turn of narrative after months "questioning the outcome of an election is undermining democracy." I wonder what happened between Sept-Oct and now that changed all that?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13025174 and marked it off-topic.
If (and only if) one party has actual evidence or data of rigging, it wouldn't be hypocritical for them to challenge the results after not taking Donald's whining during the campaign seriously.
But it's academic, the results shouldn't be overturned. Even if it was found legitimate to give Hillary the win, it would make a martyr out of Donald and his movement would gain traction for 4 more years. The next 4 years are going to be ugly either because Donald is president or because half the country believes a conspiracy gave it to Hillary.
One party or the other is going to be punished in 4 years. Better it should be Donald, let him fail and have his movement get put behind us for good.
If there's no paper trail, then there's nothing we can do. We can't overturn results just because some mathematicians think they look funny.
I was once involved in fighting a referendum. The local government demonstrably cheated, publishing information about the proposal that was clearly and significantly false. But I was advised by an attorney that in the end, they're never going to undo an election, so we shouldn't waste our time and money fighting.
Publishing false information isn't sufficient to overturn an election, but proving that the vote count itself is incorrect is another matter. It's possible that we're such an incompetent democracy that accurate vote counts are irrelevant, but I hope that's not the case.
But please don't gaslight about why Russia is the name that keeps coming up in these discussions. We have numerous unrelated (sometimes competing) sources attributing the DNC hack to Russia.
There is no evidence of hacking, their is evidence of potential hacking which can be confirmed by looking at the paper trail.
Only once the hacking theory is confirmed, will anybody need to look into the how, and the who.
If you call the police to your house saying you've been robbed, they don't immediately go out trying to find out who robbed you. They need to look at the scene. Did somebody actually break in? Or is it a fake call? How did they break in, what did they actually take, how do we think they did it, then using the knowledge they have gained from the crime, they can come up with theories of who might have done it. Same goes here.
But since you asked, yes, I do think these "concerns" about Russian hacking of the US electoral process are stupid and a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the next President (which according to the rhetoric of many on left over the fall, is undermining to democracy itself).