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Comment by noncoml | Hacker News Reader

> Suppose that's true. So what?

Casting doubts and entertaining the witch hunt is damaging the democracy by eroding the trust of people in the election system. Opening the way for a coup in the future.

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If someone questions the election results and you respond by checking everything over and doing a manual recount and giving them every opportunity to make their case and it still doesn't go their way, you can claim with confidence that they were full of it. Shutting them down before that happens is how you erode the trust of people in the election system.

No one has suggested blocking recounts in states where the margin is close enough that one candidate is entitled to a recount. You are attacking a strawman.

One of their claims was voting machine irregularities where the machine would count votes for one candidate as being for the other. Doing a recount using the same voting machines could thereby preserve the alleged irregularity, which is why I specified a manual recount.

And no one is suggesting blocking a manual recount in the states where a candidate is entitled to one.

> Suppose that's true. So what? We analyze the results. We apply science. It can't change the result if it wasn't supposed to.

You are implying that it is perfectly fine for Trump to spread wild conspiracy theories with no evidence because if those conspiracy theories are false then they will be proven false and no harm will be done. Except irreparable harm WILL be done to the democratic process in America, because there are tens of millions of Americans who worship Trump as an infallible god and will forever believe his claim that the election was stolen from him, even if all the allegations are thoroughly debunked and no evidence turns up demonstrating any kind of fraud.

> And no one is suggesting blocking a manual recount in the states where a candidate is entitled to one.

There are plenty of people suggesting that Trump should concede immediately without going through any of those processes.

> You are implying that it is perfectly fine for Trump to spread wild conspiracy theories with no evidence because if those conspiracy theories are false then they will be proven false and no harm will be done.

The problem with Trump is that just about everything he says is a half-truth. It won't be entirely true but it also won't be entirely false.

Some people think he does this on purpose. It causes his opponents to cover him by pointing out the part that's false and his supporters to defend him by talking about the part that's true, but in either case they're both talking about Trump and they're both talking about the issue Trump wants people to talk about. I assume that anyone who can figure out how to get Trump to stop doing this would be awarded a Nobel Prize.

The trouble is that it means you can't just dismiss everything he says as a lie, because it's only half lie. I expect that when this is all over he'll have uncovered some modicum of voting irregularities but probably not enough to flip as many states as he needs to win, if any. But he's entitled to try.

Now if only somebody would win that Nobel Prize.

Even in states without a close margin a risk limited audit should be automatically performed. The good thing is if the margin is big then you only need to recount a small number of votes to prove dodgy counting didn’t change the result.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit

I think PA and Georgia already do this!

> If someone questions the election results and you respond by

...demanding sufficient evidence that there is reason to expend resources looking for a problem before taking them seriously, especially if they are the apparently-defeated candidate.

> demanding sufficient evidence that there is reason to expend resources looking for a problem before taking them seriously

Isn't that what's happening? They make their claims, others dispute them, it's a public debate. The original post was an objection to "talking about fraud" -- but talking about it is part of the process of evaluating whether the evidence is sufficient. The answer could be no, but you don't know that before you hear them out.

> especially if they are the apparently-defeated candidate.

It would be interesting to know of a case in which the apparently-victorious candidate was making allegations of election fraud sufficient to affect the outcome.

Isn't that what the Russia gate did. It casted doubts about the election results for 4 years of his presidency. And still no definitive proof after 4 years. I don't understand the double standard now. I hope he pardons Snowden and Manning on the way out, as a final act of revenge on the system.

During the debates Biden pledged to wait for the vote to be certified before declaring victory.

Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1miwDWst-IQ

That is absolutely not what Russiagate was about. No one, so far as I am aware, was claiming that the election results were improperly counted in 2016 [1]. Instead, Russiagate was about illegal Russian interference in, and potential Republican collaboration with, political advertising that may have swayed people's votes.

[1] In favor of the Republicans, I mean. Some Republicans, primarily Trump, did claim fraud in favor of the Democrats, but were unable to find any evidence for their claims.

The implication and implied end result was that he was an illegitimate president that won by cheating. Same difference. You are splitting hairs.

The implication is that he committed a criminal act that he deserved to be impeached for (and indeed he was, although the Senate did not vote to convict), following the normal constitutional procedures. There is no implication that the election result should be annulled and the presidency should go to Clinton instead. Trump is no less an illegitimate president than Nixon, Bush, or Hayes was.

>No one, so far as I am aware, was claiming that the election results were improperly counted in 2016

The mantra for Trump's opponents and the media in the first year or so of his presidency was that "Russia hacked the election".

> During the debates Biden pledged to wait for the vote to be certified before declaring victory.

No, he didn't.

Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1miwDWst-IQ

When discussing elections, "certified" without qualifications (or, equivalently, "legally certified" or "officially certified") conventionally refers to formal action by the government entity overseeing the election results declaring them legally final (potentially, pending certain appeals), whereas "independently certified" refers to a less formal declaration of the results by a third party other than the candidates and their proxies or government administrators such as election observers or independent media outlets.

Waiting for the election to be "independently certified", which is what Biden was asked about, is a very different thing than waiting for it to be "certified" without qualification.

> ...whereas "independently certified" refers to a less formal declaration of the results by a third party other than the candidates and their proxies or government administrators such as election observers or independent media outlets.

Can you provide a reference for that assertion? I tried to find it myself, the best thing I found is this blog post, describing the wording "independently certified" as curious:

https://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2020/10/what-does-it-mean...

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