Comment by bananabiscuit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bananabiscuit | Hacker News Reader

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I’d put more of the blame on mainstream media which was basically gaslighting anybody who wanted to rest assured that the election results are accurate.

Calls were made too early too many times over the course of the last couple of months, eroding the trust of the 99% of the completely normal Trump supporters out there.

Even if the Democrats are 100% sure the election is totally squeaky clean there should be no problem to go over it with a fine tooth comb so that everyone can be certain. Instead any attempt at transparency was ridiculed from the beginning with lots of goal post moving to follow about just how much discrepancies there actually were.

Some law changes right before the election also don’t really make sense (like waiving the need to verify signatures and in fact making it impossible to do after the fact by destroying envelopes) and instead if bringing clarity to the situation, mainstream media ridiculed anyone who had doubts about this as being crazy.

The elections were certified. Not just by the media, also by the courts. Many of them, including the supreme court, have heavy republican representation. If there was any credible reason to doubt the results these Republican officials - many of them outspoken Trump supporters - would have considered it. This isn't about wanting people to feel secure about the election, it's about yelling and screaming until they get the results they want.

Yea I know how it played out. I think you may be projecting the viewpoints of crazy trump supporters onto me.

My problem is before it was certified, the media “called” it and ridiculed anyone who doubted them.

It’s totally reasonable for people to want to know why is it that dead people voted, (and more importantly, how many), why strange laws were passed right before the election that made signatures un-important, or why observers were being given a hard time during counting. Instead of being treated as reasonable people, we are lumped in with the crazies who shout that all of this is fraud before there is evidence of it. However, it is equally crazy to shout that “there is no fraud!” before all of this is actually ironed out, and that is where mainstream media failed and destroys any existing trust I had.

I have never watched Fox News. I’ve laughed at stupid NY Post stories my whole life with my likeminded liberal friends. But I am not so blind with rage towards Trump that I can’t see when the media will do anything within their (soft) power to make sure he doesn’t win, even at the cost of their journalistic integrity.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't come to the same conclusion. I don't think that there is any amount of certification or 'fair treatment' that could have come from the press that would have made Trump stand down. Every inch of leniency trump and his most ardent supporters get they take a mile. As long as he's up yelling on his soapbox his people are going to try to find reasons to believe him.

Yes, sometimes dead people 'vote', but that happens in all elections and more importantly happens in both parties, but not enough to swing elections.

I have a pet theory (maybe a conspiracy theory, idk) that the reason the Republican officials have been so quick to shut down fraud claims is because any investigations will find just as much or more fraud on their side.

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