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Comment by tabony | Hacker News Reader

I understand why some people vote for some parties and why they’re “voting on inflation” or “right to abortion” but I guess, for me, keeping checks and balances and democracy is the one value above ALL for me.

In the span of human history, not a lot of countries and civilizations have lasted long, marked by constant instability and uncertainty for the future. We have a boring and imperfect political system created by our founding fathers but at least it’s been stable for nearly 250 years. A lot of people have tried standing up their own political system… most fail and everyone suffers. Even the founding fathers completely failed once first.

I know times are tough now but, in the context of history, they can be much worse and I rather not lose what good we currently do have.

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> we got 250 years so far without imploding

We may have arguably recovered from it, but we rather famously did not get 250 years without the union violently fragmenting. (Our best record on that is right around 160, currently.)

While it’s true we came close during Civil War, we still decided to keep the same system of government. In the end, while the Civil War did result in some constitutional crises, the root of the problem was more that one half of the country completely disagreed with the other half… I don’t think any political system can really work with that level of division and yet we kept the same one. Obviously the Civil War did very much bring into the question of states’ rights but, for better or worse, the founders were a little vague on that so we can still keep most of the same system and quabble over the details for the rest of eternity…

Trump refusing to accept the 2020 election results should've been the line for many voters, but sadly it wasn't. And the potential crimes he and some of his allies may have committed while trying to overturn it will now never be prosecuted.

2024: > More than 155 million people cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election. It's second only in U.S. history to the 2020 election. Turnout in 2024 represented 63.9% of eligible voters, the second-highest percentage in the last 100 years, according to the University of Florida Election Lab. The only year that beat it – again – was 2020 when universal mail-in voting was more widely available.

2020: > More than 158 million votes were cast in the election

So 3 millions of Democrats suddenly decided to not go out to vote "to save democracy" against "fascism"?

> The only year that beat it – again – was 2020 when universal mail-in voting was more widely available.

You answered your own question. Voting was made more difficult in 2024, so fewer votes were cast.

The simpler and much more likely answer, my friend, is that people didn’t vote from a combination of disillusionment, assuming Kamala would win, and likewise factors.

I saw many people close to me not bother voting because they didn’t enjoy Biden’s presidency, despite voting for him in 2020.

So, I find that FAR more likely as a reason than supposed election fraud.

I'm really confused how tech people shifted from "voting machines are inherently insecure" to simply ignoring the issue despite many political connections between Democrats and voting machine vendors. I'll stick with the results of my research into the matter. If you think you're well enough informed and that your sources actually care about the truth, let's agree to disagree.

This is one of the most investigated issues in American legal history. There was absolutely no indication of fraud. You've fallen for a conspiracy theory. It's now Pizzagate-tier.

(I still argue with Pizzagate adherents on a monthly basis. They think it's perfectly logical.)

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