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Comment by sakopov | Hacker News Reader

So, maybe I'm not understanding something, but there are numerous reports from what appear to be reputable sources -- a few listed below -- claiming that there were uncovered missing votes during recounts in Georgia. However, there isn't a word said about this on CNN, MSNBC or any other heavily left-leaning media sources. The only sources that I hear talking about this are on YouTube. I don't give a shit if I get downvoted for saying this, but when the damn Atlanta news channel says there are uncounted votes how the hell does the left not take an issue with this? My goodness, this is the beginnings of a banana republic.

[1] https://www.ajc.com/politics/recount-finds-thousands-of-geor...

[2] https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/another-georgia-county-h...

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> However, there isn't a word said about this on CNN, MSNBC or any other heavily left-leaning media sources.

That's untrue, nor are those "heavily left-leaning" sites [1]. With a quick google search, I can already see that CNN did report on it [2]. There's no reason for it to be a "huge news story" because they caught it, it wasn't malicious, and it didn't affect the vote tally in any meaningful way.

[1] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-trump-us-el...

The "missing votes" were found during the recount, and added t the eventually certified totals. So yeah, the system works. Whats the issue again?

>So, maybe I'm not understanding something

You're right about that. Most claims about election fraud have absolutely nothing to do with the two links you are shared.

And your links don't show fraud. And your links don't show anything that would change the outcome in Georgia let alone the election as a whole.

Because the recount did exactly what was intended (found missing votes) and the result didn’t change?

Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim. Just because the number of missing votes found during the recount ended up not changing the outcome doesn't mean that the earlier claims of "there was no election fraud and missing votes" were correct, because they, according to the recount, are factually incorrect.

But missing votes isn’t even evidence of fraud. Could be just an error. And from my knowledge I know for a fact that at least NPR reported the change in votes and discussed it in commentary.

>But missing votes isn’t even evidence of fraud. Could be just an error.

Important clarification, agreed, but that wasn't the point of my comment. The point was the retraction of "there are no missing votes, it is nonsense", and that is yet to happen afaik.

I wasn't aware that NPR did it already, which is good. But I am still salty that it doesn't get nearly as much attention as the initial "we know for a fact there were no missing votes despite zero evidence one way or another" from a bit more "mainstream" publications like CNN and such. But I guess I am moving the goalpost at this point, because you are correct that one of the somewhat mainstream media publications indeed retracted their earlier statement.

If the point of your statement not about fraud, then why did you use the word “fraud” in your initial example?

“Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim.”

No one is seriously claiming that none of the elections have any errors. That would be insane; all human activity is full of errors.

What we are saying is that literally all experts and the people who run the elections themselves — from both political parties — have stated that they don’t believe that there is any organized fraud, and that any error they have isn’t significant.

The fact that several recounts didn’t change the results shows exactly that: the detected errors did not make a significant impact on the results. The election was safe to call because Biden was ahead by more than the margin of error.

There is one man who has objectively lied constantly for his entire life in the public record, who had lied about his results in polls (both political and entertainment related) his entire life, and who has repeatedly stated that he will not admit defeat. (In the past, he even called magazines under a fake name to try to convince them that he should be higher in their “richest people” rankings!) On the other side, we have literally every election official in the country across party lines.

I'm not sure I understand the aim of your message -- the recount did what it is supposed to (well, count again). What does that have to do with the press-release from YouTube?

That's not true at all. Every recount changes the results by a little bit, and that's exactly what happened and exactly what was reported in the recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin.

What was not seen was "fraud", nor any reason to suspect the end result of the election (Biden victories in those states) was incorrect.

Yeah this bothers me, whether Trump won or lost is kind of besides the point, the real issue is that clearly the media “wants” a specific outcome and has been doing as much as they can to make that outcome more probable starting even way before the day of the election.

I think is a perfect encapsulation of the muddled thinking that is caused by this kind of misinformation. This is a really narrow example, and it doesn't generalize any conclusions about to the entire electoral system the way you are suggesting it might.

For some reason, consumers of misinformation take these small fragments and use them to cast doubt on the entire system, which is a conclusion totally out of proportion to the evidence. But if you say that out loud, all you will get is a blank stare.

You are attributing to malice what can be easily explained by bad processes and incompetence (we see this all the time in tech with bugs that make it through to production!).

The missing votes weren't much, and changed the nature of the race by less than 500 votes. Trump still lost Georgia by about 13,000.

The banana republic part of this is a man who lost the election by more than 7 million votes trying to steal the election. Trump didn't come close to winning. Trump got straight up thumped, and he is still trying to sue to get millions of votes thrown out. Millions of American votes.

If you are concerned with why voting isn't smoother in this country with less errors, you need to support creating national standards and funding to help make voting easier and more modern. This is an artifact of an incredibly balkanized voting processes. A lot of Americans would support easy, modern, universal voting.

The election is long since past, and Trump lost. The reason you don't see national news orgs covering small-scale election issues in individual counties is that they aren't national news stories. It's really that simple.

The fact that a recount found additional votes -- the point of a recount -- and that the additional votes didn't impact the election is not news. It's just not news.

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