Hacker News Reader

Denying election results, for example.

That depends on the basis on which they deny them.

Not if they file dozens of lawsuits challenging the election results and loses all of them.

Lawsuits are not a threat to democracy.

Democrats and Republicans both have done this routinely. It happens in every election.

I am dating myself and making myself unemployable in SV but this was not a normal thing when I was younger. It seems to have become far more common post Bush II; the Supreme Court and hanging chads had a much bigger effect than you'd think.

(Incidentally, I also remember the "Your side lost, hippies" trolls, the "Peak oil" comments, and the apocalyptic "George Bush is going to impose martial law and cancel the election, they are building concentration camps" comments. Such a wild time for internet discussion, many of these were recycled later on.)

I grant that it wasn't too common before Bush vs. Gore. But it did happen. There was in fact a great deal of electoral fraud in the U.S. in the past, too.

In common parlance, it means overly right wing.

Adolf Hitler to the Weimar Republic. Hugo Chavez to Venezuela. Vladimir Putin to the Russian Federation. Etc.