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Comment by xpl | Hacker News Reader

You're reducing elections to voting, while it is only the final stage of a proper democratic process.

First comes the preparation of the public opinion — it is campaigning, political advertisement, debates, etc. This shapes the voting outcome.

At this stage it can be heavily influenced by foreign actors (adversaries), this is why in most countries there are laws regarding the transparency of political campaigns (funding, ads, and so on). You can't let China elect presidents in your country...

> doesn't change the fact that people did in fact vote for him

It also doesn't change the fact that if Russia didn't pour a lot of money into his campaign, he wouldn't have gotten any votes.

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As far as I can tell, there is no actual evidence of foreign interference, unless you count "using a foreign app" as foreign interference. The tik-tok accounts that they speak of could have been created by anyone.

Actual evidence points to people mobilising themselves, including printing propaganda and putting it up on walls, see Arad county as an example https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html

Voting is the only thing in the democratic process. If the people are easily convinced by tictok, that's on the voters.

> Voting is the only thing in the democratic process

Voting is not the only thing. If it was, Russia or Belarus could have been considered democracies — people get to vote there (in case you didn't know). You can research why those countries are commonly considered autocracies / dictatorships, despite holding elections.

> If the people are easily convinced by tictok, that's on the voters

If people are easily addicted to heroin, is that on them by that logic? Ok maybe. Now imagine if China were smuggling heroin into the U.S. specifically to destabilize American society — would you still blame the people? Or might you consider it reasonable to fight against that?

>Russia or Belarus could have been considered democracies

People voting a way you don't like is different from fraudulent votes. Comparing the two is disingenuous.

>is that on them by that logic?

Yes.

> different from fraudulent votes

No, Putin would have won in elections even if you removed fraudulent votes (there is a fraction, but it is not at all decisive). He wins not because of it.

In those kind of countries elections are won way before the voting takes place. So the voting is just an act of the regime's legitimation and is irrelevant regarding the outcome.

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