Experts call it a 'clown show' but Arizona 'audit' is a disinformation blueprint

The latter is exactly what they want. The former President has literally said he expects to be “reinstated as President” in august

If judges don't listen to private groups challenging the government, then we are in a world of trouble. The judge will ask them to prove it, though.

One way to show evidence of audit tampering is to watch the live feed and report on any suspicious behaviour:

https://azaudit.org/

It's entirely uncharted territory. There is absolutely no precedent for this. People can cite elections being invalidated for lower positions, but nothing on the level of the Presidency. A do-over for something like state senate seat is no big deal, but a new presidential election is unthinkable and probably unconstitutional as well.

Can you imagine the absolute chaos that would result if the audit was able to find enough evidence that would change the outcome? If I were a judge having to make a decision with such implications I would fear for my life. I would fear for the rule-of-law and being seen as a 21st century Roger Taney. My name would probably be listed in the Wikipedia article under "Causes of the Second American Civil War".

So here's what I predict will happen. The audit will find fraud (that's what it was designed to do here). But the amount and impact will be debatable enough such that the results are not overturned. Media outlets are not interested in making this Watergate 2.0 and they most certainly do not want Donald J. Trump back in office. They certainly do not want to give energy to conducting an audit in Georgia and giving any credibility to the Arizona audit would facilitate that. In 40 or 50 years maybe we will find the truth.

They are not looking to overturn presidential results. Or even local results. All this "middle talk" is just optics. It makes for good coverage.

If this was a legal case they would be doing it differently. It's not. They are using their opposition's tactics for generating support that will extend into future elections.

If they find something wrong, then they know what to fix. If not, they pivot.

The outrage over how the audit is being conducting is expected. They want this to be covered by outlets such as NPR.

There is no legal path that leads from this audit to a change in the election results; the election is over, the results are certified, the electors have voted, etc.

The goal of this audit is to find evidence that will bolster the claims that there was significant election fraud. That evidence could be used to push for changes to future elections, for campaigning purposes, whatever.

Whether this is a good-faith effort to identify actual potential fraud or an attempt to manufacture FUD about the elections process is left as an exercise for the reader.

MLs would also need tell the difference between disinformation and real information. This is incredibly hard to do, since disinformation looks like real information unless your understanding of the world is broad and specific. And then eventually you end up with the same problem as humans, which is that if the world context leaves out trustworthy information needed to discriminate real information from faulty information, then the ML will also fall prey to the hack. And of course, for truly nefarious misinformation, it is just consistent enough with trustworthy information to appear trustworthy.

This is no easy slice.

The models would need a live, updated data source. What could they have possibly relied on to accurately label e.g. the Wuhan lab leak theory?

And that's where propaganda/advertising come in. It's not just red vs. blue politics, there's brainwashing in effect in the consumer market and about economics/taxation/education as well.

Spend years saying something is true, and when you can will it into power using a power grab, you actualize a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Disinformation campaigns aren't lone wolves - they're part of a wolf pack that's been harrying their prey for a LONG time.

If there's a way to prove a Biden victory to their satisfaction, I have no idea what it could be at this point.

Poll =/= Voting Results. Equating the two makes zero sense.

The polls were off by miles, but in the other direction from the alleged fraud; Democratic candidates received fewer votes and Republican candidates more than would have been predicted by polls.

There have, however, been very few claims of fraud benefiting Republican candidates, because this is mostly explained by high turnout by Republican voters due to strong personal support for Trump in a segment of the party that historically has low turnout. This is illustrated by improved performance by Democrats in runoff elections where Trump was no longer on the ballot.

To be fair, a good argument only needs to appeal to two sides of the rhetorical triangle. Logos and Ethos are two perfectly viable platforms to make a statement on.

Even formal mathematical proofs "appeal to authority" when they invoke theorems without re-deriving them every time. It's a shorthand reference to knowledge that time and energy has already been spent discovering. The parallel for this in society, where the present cumulative scope of knowledge is completely impossible for a single person to independently discover on their own, is called expertise. When you are denigrating experts, you are denigrating acquired, shared knowledge.

Pure reason has limits, but one of the neat things about rational argumentation is that it can be applied to itself to discover what alot of its own limits are.

The audit is being funded by by a private party conservative news network. What results do you think they're going to find?

I'm not sure where you check into this but the whole things I a clown show. I'm walking distance to the site, even outside the venue it is weird stuff.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/post-election-audits-ar...

Unless of course said ID is expensive for the poor and they can't afford it (hint: it is). Or you purposely close offices/DMVs in black districts to make it harder to obtain that ID (hint: Republicans do).

Side note: If you're comparing NPR to Fox News in terms of trustworthiness, your bias is showing.

No, because the quoted expert continued to serve with integrity during the Trump administration. He appeared to transition from one non-partisan government agency (US Election Assistance Commission) to another (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in DHS).