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Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

You're missing substantial historical perspective here. In both 2000 and 2004 - the last two Republican presidential victories that are old enough to talk about without inflaming modern political tensions - Congressional representatives on the left attempted to block the counting of electoral college votes from a crucial swing state. I don't mean to defend these kinds of challenges, I think they're dumb, but they're sadly quite common.

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> Congressional representatives on the left attempted to block the counting of electoral college votes from a crucial swing state

Reference?

Florida in 2000: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-07-mn-9426-...

Ohio in 2004: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Boxer-delays-preside... . (It should be noted for the sake of fairness that the leaders of this attempt claimed they weren't trying to overturn the election results by blocking the count.)

Florida in 2000 bears no resemblance to this situation. Trump and his supporters are alleging widespread, systemic fraud for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Florida in 2000 was a historically close election for which there should have been a recount, but the election was handed to Bush by the Supreme Court instead.

Right. And in 2004 Boxer's action was a symbolic protest designed to draw attention to voting irregularities. She never seriously sought to change the outcome.

Again: there is no moral equivalence here.

Do you dispute that Ohio in 2004 bears a resemblance? Every Presidential election of course has its own unique context, so if you want to discuss broader patterns you have to be willing to step back from the nitty-gritty of each individual year.

I do, because Ohio was a single state with apparently some irregularities in the vote, and the effort to challenge was not even broadly supported within the Democratic party. What is being alleged here is that Democrats "stole" the election. Nonsense.

I think we're talking across each other here. I'm not attempting to draw a strict equivalence; I'm not saying this year is as bad as that year, this side is as bad as that side, this argument is as bad as that argument. I'm just saying that the original claim - that only one part of the political spectrum attempts to dispute clear election results - is flawed.

I'm not talking about in general though, I am talking about this year. And moreover, one senator and one representative cannot be taken as representative of a whole side. One objection is an aberration. A whole party objecting is a political strategy.

That sounds like we are indeed talking across each other, then. I'm not talking about this year.

You were bringing in historical perspective to justify the idea that the left commonly denies basic facts to dispute clear election results. I have argued, and I believe demonstrated, that the context you present does not support the conclusion you argue. This is disagreement, not misunderstanding.

Florida 2000 was indeed very different. That said, Gore was hoisted by his own petard and not by SCOTUS. It's important to remember that Gore did not wish to recount the entire state and all the ballots in the same way, but only in areas and ways considered favourable to Gore.

If Gore hadn't tried that stunt, the process wouldn't have dragged on until December, and the Court wouldn't have been able to interfere. Even more ironically, later attempts to check the count show that all of the recounting standards Gore had actually asked for would have led to Bush winning; Only a complete and fair recount may have allowed Gore to win.

Do you have a source for these allegations? It doesn't track my understanding of the Florida recount, and moreover it's pretty indisputable that SCOTUS acted illegitimately, regardless of what the outcome would have been.

See [0] for a SCOTUS-favourable perspective on Gore's original request and how even the Florida court version was tilted. As for recount results, wiki has a decent overview [1].

[0] http://www.floridalawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/L...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...

See especially the NORC results. The wiki entry argues that if the Florida court had continued the proceedings, it may have applied a uniform standard where Gore would have won - but none of the existing orders did that, they used standards where Bush would have won [based on NORC]. Anyway, by Dec. 12 time was running out, the Federal deadline was Dec. 18.

I believe that if Gore had pursued the fair strategy from the beginning than there would have been time enough for the uniform standard recount and no cause for the partial recounts and the appeals that wasted so much time.

The governor of that swing state happened to be the brother of the Republican presidential candidate. That governor's secretary of state also purged the registrations of 90,000 black voters months before the election.

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