Conservative publication fact checks election fraud stories

[dgszweda]

Don Johnson wrote:

dgszweda wrote:

Of course the President’s actions on COVID have only increased this number this year.

Come on David, you’re better than that.

Really? This thread is about dead. But the President provided no comprehensive plan on how to protect and keep the country open. He doesn’t even speak about it anymore. He peddled conspiracy theories, whether it was hydroxychloroquine, or putting UV lights in your body. He provided very little leadership and his approach has been to ignore it and try to change the focus. Now has everything he has done, been wrong? No. He has done some good things. Jared Kushner actually had a good plan spinning up in the beginning, but it was crushed. And no I am not siding with the liberals that want to lock everything down. But if you think the lack of leadership,lack of comprehensive plan and confusion didn’t create a situation where one unnecessary person died, I would say that you might be naive here. We talk about the sanctity of life on here and we embrace that term to mean stopping abortion, but we are on track to almost hit the same death numbers from COVID. Are they all preventable? No. But with a better plan, we could have prevented some of them.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation. You can’t know if any of these deaths could have been prevented with a “better plan.” The USA record is no worse than other countries, some countries with more aggressive lock down policies have worse death rates (Peru, Belgium, I am told). Others with similar policies have lower. The worldwide record means no one really knows what to do and it is foolish to try to lay blame at any one persons feet.

I don’t know how new this news is, but Georgia announced a hand recount and audit of all ballots, according to WSJ and other sources. This is good news. If the result doesn’t change, we still get a lot more confidence in our voting systems.

[G. N. Barkman]

For the sake of our Nation, let us encourage Trump to follow through on every suspicious case. It probably will not give him the presidency, but it will help ensure the integrity of future elections.

Yes, indeed. Even if there was widespread fraud and it was enough to flip the election, Trump is unlikely to get enough evidence of it to legally warrant a judicial action that would give him the victory—especially given the Constitutionally-mandated date for finalizing things. And, as I stated in the early part of this thread, if the Supreme Court were called upon to rule without sufficient evidence, I’m confident they’d rule 9-0 against Trump. (See my prior post in the early part of this thread.) In a way, I’d like to see this come before the Supreme Court even if there isn’t enough evidence to overturn the election for this reason: I think it would afford the conservatives on the Supreme Court a highly visible opportunity to illustrate proper jurisprudence. Namely, justices making a decision based on law and evidence rather than desired outcome.

But, as you said, following through with prosecution of individual cases is very important, regardless of whether it affects this election’s outcome.

I’d also add that the follow up should include serious proposals for reforming our voting processes. There are some straightforward things we can do procedurally (e.g. required ID for proof of citizenship) and technologically (e.g. software auditing/code reviews) that could greatly reduce the opportunities to cheat and get by with it. I don’t have time to elaborate further right now. Some will argue that it’s politically difficult to pass such reforms, and that’s true. However, since the detailed mechanics of voting and ballots is left up the the states, we could focus first on the “red” and “purple” states where the battles would be easier and, in the case of the “purple” states, where the results would be the most consequential to future outcomes.

[Mark_Smith]

So you all admit Trump didn’t win then? Or, at least you realize there is no way any court is going to overturn enough votes for Trump to win. You just want the irregularities accounted for.

I am not predicting this outcome, nor do I think it is even very likely. But there still a fairly straightforward path for a Trump win.

If the courts look at the statistical evidence, there’s plenty of indication of questionable numbers. Fraud? That’s the most likely explanation. How much fraud? At this point nobody knows, but there is a level that if reached would throw the legitimacy of the election into more doubt than it already is. Then what? Since at this point there is no practical way to separate the phony ballots from the real ones in most places, the court, and it would have to be the Supreme Court, could order the electors to be chosen by the state legislatures as provided for in the Constitution (and per Donohue v NY Board of Elections they can do that even after the citizens of those states have voted, and without regard to who won the most “votes” in the process). Also per Donohue the court could order new elections held in those states, but that would face calendar issues. They are much more likely to choose the first course and order the state legislatures to act. Those electors go to Trump (see the partisan makeup of the legislatures of PA, GA, MI, WI and AZ) and he wins the Electoral College vote handily.

Then the riots start.

[Mark_Smith]

So you all admit Trump didn’t win then? Or, at least you realize there is no way any court is going to overturn enough votes for Trump to win. You just want the irregularities accounted for.

Yes and no, Mark. First step is, yes, to start taking these irregularities seriously. Look up where the ballots went to dead people, sort out things with signatures to figure out who filed the ballots, let’s have some prosecutions, and finally, let’s have some distributions of (when we know) who filed to help dead people vote (other excluded categories), and what party they’re registered with.

Second stage is that when someone’s facing a felony charge, they often develop a very good memory of who induced them to commit that felony. That, in turn, gets you to “bigger fish” that could, conceivably, lead to bigger piles of ballots that need to be reversed. Do this for dead voters, counting houses that excluded poll watchers, and the like.

I’m not anticipating that the (mostly Democratic) secretaries of state are going to do this for us, for obvious reasons, so that leads to “Plan B”. Those of us who remember the birthdays of recently deceased relatives and their zip codes need to figure out if they’re still voting, and then we report that to authorities and the press.

Long and short of it is that the short term goal is to illustrate where the fraud is occurring. Long term goal is, whether or not a felony conviction is achieved, to demonstrate a pattern that will be incredibly difficult to avoid acting on.

So did Biden win? Or did Trump? I really don’t know. All I do know here is that the pattern of counting votes in the wee hours, changing mail ballot laws to reduce accountability, and excluding poll watchers is exactly what I’d do if I were trying to stuff the ballot box without being caught.

Without comment on the weight of statements from Senators, here is a statement from Sen. Rubio about the election results that sums up pretty well what at least some people are thinking:

[Sen. Marco Rubio]

The legitimacy of our republic requires public confidence in our elections. The fact that 70% of Republicans don’t believe the 2020 election was free and fair — that should be of concern to everyone. That’s why both sides should support allowing the post-election process provided for in our laws to work, to move forward. Our election laws call for recounts in close elections. They provide candidates the right to contest votes cast in violation of the law. They allow the right to present evidence of fraud, if you have it, to present that evidence in court. And they require meeting specific deadlines for all this, so that a winner can be certified and take office.
Both Democrat and Republican candidates have used these laws themselves. They’ve availed themselves to these rights many times, including in this election. Joe Biden had hired an army of election lawyers to use this very process if he had fallen short in the preliminary results. And therefore, President Trump is well within his legal rights to pursue all these things under these laws now.
Now for those in the media who are angry that Republicans won’t just take their word for it that Biden won — I think you need some self-awareness. You spent four years claiming that Russians hacked the last election. You supported Democrats when they went to court to overturn the governor’s race in Georgia in 2018. And you say nothing when, to this day, they claim that they won that race. And you railed against how dangerous Trump rallies were, but now you seem to have no problem with Biden supporters celebrating in big crowds. So Republicans, I think, have good reason to believe that some of you are just a little biased.
The only way the outcome of this election is going to be widely accepted — which is what we need — is through the post-election process in our law.

[Robert Byers]

Mark_Smith wrote:

So you all admit Trump didn’t win then? Or, at least you realize there is no way any court is going to overturn enough votes for Trump to win. You just want the irregularities accounted for.

I am not predicting this outcome, nor do I think it is even very likely. But there still a fairly straightforward path for a Trump win.

If the courts look at the statistical evidence, there’s plenty of indication of questionable numbers. Fraud? That’s the most likely explanation. How much fraud? At this point nobody knows, but there is a level that if reached would throw the legitimacy of the election into more doubt than it already is. Then what? Since at this point there is no practical way to separate the phony ballots from the real ones in most places, the court, and it would have to be the Supreme Court, could order the electors to be chosen by the state legislatures as provided for in the Constitution (and per Donohue v NY Board of Elections they can do that even after the citizens of those states have voted, and without regard to who won the most “votes” in the process). Also per Donohue the court could order new elections held in those states, but that would face calendar issues. They are much more likely to choose the first course and order the state legislatures to act. Those electors go to Trump (see the partisan makeup of the legislatures of PA, GA, MI, WI and AZ) and he wins the Electoral College vote handily.

Then the riots start.

You and I both know the ONLY way SCOTUS hands the electors over to the state legislatures in whatever state is if there is proof, PROOF, of egregious fraud that makes the vote undeterminable. The likelihood of that happening is about the same chance I win the Publisher’s Clearing House Grand Prize.

Even if they had proof, I highly doubt 5 justices are going to vote to nullify the votes cast and send it to the legislature. That is so improbable us to be unreasonable because to do so would drop a nuclear bomb on the politics and cultural war going on. No way that happens.

[Don Johnson]

Correlation doesn’t equal causation. You can’t know if any of these deaths could have been prevented with a “better plan.” The USA record is no worse than other countries, some countries with more aggressive lock down policies have worse death rates (Peru, Belgium, I am told). Others with similar policies have lower. The worldwide record means no one really knows what to do and it is foolish to try to lay blame at any one persons feet.

I am not saying everything is related to Trump. But he has no plan. He chooses to ignore it. He peddles all kinds of nonesense in his meetings. His statements after the last month is that we are turning the corner, when in reality we are skyrocketing. And in the last week he hasn’t even talked to the American public. He is praising the good work he did with Pfizer, and Pfizer releases the statement that they have never talked to the Whitehouse or gotten a single penny from them. He has no clue what is taking place. His advisors say that he just ignores it all. Now how much could it be better? Who knows. Countries with the very strong leadership have fared better. In terms of cases per 1M in population, only 15 out of 220 countries are doing worse than we are. And these are countries like Aruba, San Marino, Vatican City… And in terms of deaths per 1M in population, only 5 countries are doing worse than we are (Brazil, Peru, Belgium, Andorra, San Marino). And to give you a bit of perspective countries like Andorra and San Marino haven’t even had 100 deaths total. 20% of all deaths in the world are from the US, and 20% of all cases in the world are from the US. I can’t believe how naive and how willing evangelicals are in making excuses for this president about everything. I am really sorry if you think that the best nation, with the most amount of resources and money is doing the best that they can, and that we have had a solid plan and solid leadership to combat this. I would say that this election was Trump’s to loose. The number one reason on why he lost this was his lack of any kind of meaningful response and leadership to the virus. Utter ignorance on his part. A bunch of silly comments every time he talks about it, some that are either lies or just peddled conspiracy theories, and at best he has the vocabulary and talks like a 6th grade student. Unless it is about him he doesn’t care.

[dcbii]

Without comment on the weight of statements from Senators, here is a statement from Sen. Rubio about the election results that sums up pretty well what at least some people are thinking:

The only way the outcome of this election is going to be widely accepted — which is what we need — is through the post-election process in our law.

Keep dreaming. The president won’t accept them, and therefore a large swath of people won’t accept them. He has been proven wrong about a whole host of issues, and he still fights it all the way. Why do people still think the earth is flat. I mean that theory is actually gaining ground. It is thought that upwards of 15% of the nation believes the earth is flat.

I am 100% fine with anyone digging into the election and looking for issues. What I think is ridiculous is a president that peddles in a ton of misinformation just to turn up the mud and cause issues. This has been his MO for the last 40 years. He claims fraud, based on absolutely nothing. Could there be some irregularities? Sure, 100% confident there are. With 150M votes, you are bound to find some irregularities. Nothing is 100% perfect. Confidence to me in the election is not whether there are no irregularitites or mistakes. My problem would be on systematic issues and/or fraud that is entrenched or creates significant variations in a vote outcome. Even most of the irregularities that were found were corrected as part of a normal checking process. That was what took place in the 6,000 votes in MI. People drop pieces of paper, machines have hiccups, there are some nefarious people in the world….. The problem is that a story is being created highlighting a mistake and then translating them into fraud. I thought people were better about this on this board. The secular people do this with Scripture and we are able to identify the logic issues and scriptural issues and defend against these attacks. It seems that when we get into the secular arena and we just really like our Republicans or our President we throw all caution to the wind. Weirdest thing that I have ever seen. Especially given the garbage that this president peddles.

[dgszweda]

Marco Rubio wrote:

The only way the outcome of this election is going to be widely accepted — which is what we need — is through the post-election process in our law.

Keep dreaming. The president won’t accept them, and therefore a large swath of people won’t accept them.

[…]

The secular people do this with Scripture and we are able to identify the logic issues and scriptural issues and defend against these attacks.

Note that the Senator didn’t say that everyone would accept the election if the post-election process were properly followed. He said that without it, there won’t be wide acceptance. I agree with you that there will be some (many?) who won’t accept it anyway, but verification needs to happen. A verification is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

You’ve gotta be kidding! Have you been to San Marino? (I have.) It’s a little city-state landlocked by Italy. It makes my city of Burlington, NC (population around 40,000) seem huge. I’m glad they’ve had only 100 cases of COVID, but talking about cases per 1M in San Marino is way too funny.

I agree that President Trump has not exercised great leadership in regard to COVID. It’s also evident that most European countries, whose leadership is generally praised by the Left, have not done well either, and are now experiencing a new wave. Truth is, nobody has been able to control COVID. Biden won’t either, but you can count on the media to laud his performance, even if it turns out to have no better results than Trump’s.

[G. N. Barkman]

Truth is, nobody has been able to control COVID. Biden won’t either, but you can count on the media to laud his performance, even if it turns out to have no better results than Trump’s.

Yeah, no kidding. If Biden does become president, I’m waiting to see just how much hand-waving will happen when Covid doesn’t go away and continues to infect and kill Americans.

Personally, I wonder how or if Sweden’s approach would work more generally. They are also now experiencing a large spike in cases, but the number of deaths is showing only a small bump. However, it’s clear that the recent spike is affecting many nations, including those attempting much more control.

[dgszweda]

Don Johnson wrote:

Correlation doesn’t equal causation. You can’t know if any of these deaths could have been prevented with a “better plan.” The USA record is no worse than other countries, some countries with more aggressive lock down policies have worse death rates (Peru, Belgium, I am told). Others with similar policies have lower. The worldwide record means no one really knows what to do and it is foolish to try to lay blame at any one persons feet.

I am not saying everything is related to Trump. But he has no plan.

That is actually probably better than all the other “plans” out there.

However, I would disagree that Trump has no plan. He just has little ability to institute any federal directives that would make much difference. I don’t like the USA approach, most of the problem lies in the hands of the dictatorial Democrat governors who botched things with insane lockdowns and sending infected folks back into care homes.

[dgszweda]

He chooses to ignore it. He peddles all kinds of nonesense in his meetings. His statements after the last month is that we are turning the corner, when in reality we are skyrocketing.

What is a case? Is it someone who is actually sick, or someone who tested positive to a (sometimes suspect) test?

What is skyrocketing? Is it rising new cases or increased testing numbers?

[dgszweda] am really sorry if you think that the best nation, with the most amount of resources and money is doing the best that they can, and that we have had a solid plan and solid leadership to combat this. I would say that this election was Trump’s to loose. The number one reason on why he lost this was his lack of any kind of meaningful response and leadership to the virus. Utter ignorance on his part. A bunch of silly comments every time he talks about it, some that are either lies or just peddled conspiracy theories, and at best he has the vocabulary and talks like a 6th grade student. Unless it is about him he doesn’t care.

I’ve skipped most of the rest of your post, this discussion will only sidetrack us from the thread, so I will be done with this comment.

However, what you are displaying is the same kind of willingness to believe the narrative as those who are vainly hoping that somehow the legal challenges will overturn the Biden lead. I agree with you, the election is over. But I don’t agree with you that the Covid crisis is what you say it is. You are drinking the Kool-Ade on this one, just from a different pitcher.

We all believe what we want to believe.

As for the election, one small point of gratification is that I will soon be able to include a US President in my circle of acquaintances. So I guess that’s something. Hope the Republicans win out in Georgia Senate races and really stick it to him!

Here you go. Contrary to David’s claims—this is getting to be a pattern here, ahem—the United States is actually #13 in the death rate per 100k, not fifth. Overall, the pattern seems to be that most nations that speak a Latin-derived language are doing pretty badly, followed by those speaking Germanic languages, then the Slavic languages, then the nations of Africa and Asia. We might suspect that culture and international travel have a lot more to do with this than does the government response.

Regarding the claim that Pfizer did not get a penny from the government, the actual fact is that the first hundred million doses, at a cost of $1.95 billion, were purchased by the government back in July. They didn’t participate in one program, but somehow I’d guess that a pre-payment of that size made a “wee little” difference in their development programs, especially since no one knew at the time whether such a vaccine could work.

And regarding the notion that the President is somehow uniquely responsible for high case and death rates, it wasn’t the President who refused to sanitize the subways, allowed bums to sleep in the subways, and sent COVID patients into nursing homes before their cases were cleared. It wasn’t the President who created an American culture which, in the words of my R.N. daughter, “does not quarantine well.” For that matter, one would expect wealthier nations with a lot of people traveling the world for business and pleasure to get hit harder here. Let’s get a grip.

Regarding the claim that things might have been better in a country with “strong central leadership”, perhaps. But wasn’t the fear of a “strong central leader” a key part of the objection to President Trump in the first place? (yes, it was) And if we really wanted to get rid of COVID well, we could be like Liberia, Angola, or Madagascar. If only we could get our per capita income down to $1400 and our mean lifespan to 63 years, we could whip this epidemic! Or maybe….we could be like North Korea! They don’t have much COVID.

I’ll pass. Again, I am fine with disagreeing with the tone and methods of President Trump. What I am not fine with is the pattern of assigning blame to him alone when others richly deserve a large portion (Cuomo, Whitmer, American culture, etc..), distorting the evidence to make Trump look bad, and endorsing ludicrous methods to deal with issues that (again, here’s that culture) have no chance of working in our country.

Keep dreaming. The president won’t accept them, and therefore a large swath of people won’t accept them. He has been proven wrong about a whole host of issues, and he still fights it all the way.

Yep. I think we conservative Christians have such a selective memory about Trump, forgetting that he used the same rigged and fraud language (based on hearsay, shallow proof, and outright lies) when he lost in Iowa and Wisconsin in the 2016 Primaries to Ted Cruz. Let’s not forget that back in 2012, he accused the Democrats of rigging the election to allow Obama to beat Romney, claiming that they had over a million dead people voting (sounds familiar). Also, a few weeks before the 2016 election, he was preparing his base for a possible loss in Pennsylvania, claiming that the only way that he would lose Pennsylvania is if the democrats committed fraud. And he accused the NATAS was rigged because he didn’t win the Emmys 3 years in a row for The Apprentice.

Also, he accused the Trump University Lawsuit of being rigged, even though he was found personally liable for operating the company without the required business license in 2014. Even though he settled the Federal case against him for 25 million for misleading and defrauding students, there was alot of evidence where several Trump University employees personally testified against Trump University for misleading and defrauding its students and even transcripts of Trump stating that he had never met any of his instructors even though Trump University repeatedly publicly advertised that the instructors were all hand-picked by Trump. During the primaries, he repeatedly accused judge Curiel of hating him and rigging the court case against him because he was appointed by Obama and also made sure that his MAGA supporters knew that Curiel was Mexican. Having investigated the case, I found this claim of the court-case being rigged quite hilariously untrue especially since Curiel showed fairness towards Trump when Curiel refused to make it a National Class Action Suit, by limiting the case to California, Florida, and New York. Also, Curiel refused to release the video-taped deposition of Trump, stating that transcripts are enough so that Trump’s political opponents wouldn’t use the tapes in political ads against him, which would’ve devastated Trump’s Candidacy for president.

As much as Trump has been the repeated target of unfair investigations and media slander by progressives that sought to discredit his presidency, Trump is also a quintessential example of how to play the victim card and will bombard and overload social media with misinformation, lies, slander, ad hominem attacks and has no problem undermining the legal structures in America to benefit his policies and agenda.

If we are to judge the results of the 2020 election fairly without any bias, we need a Political Theology that recognizes both Total Depravity and Common Grace. Biblically informed Christians need to apply the Biblical doctrines of Total Depravity and Common Grace to all people, not just our political tribe. Progressive/Liberals are not the only ones that are capable of doing evil, fraud, corruption, and etc… So are conservatives. And so is Trump. Also, Christians should apply Common Grace to everyone (not just their political tribe) realizing that those who hold views that are completely incompatible with the Christian faith are also capable of being truthful, honest, civil, generous, and loving (only because of God’s common grace). And that also means for NeverTrumpers to recognize the good that Trump did during his presidency as well (the peace accords that he brokered between Israel and middle eastern countries are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize)

If we do not hold both the doctrines of Total Depravity and Common Grace in tension, we risk distorting the doctrines of Imago Dei and Sin and biasedly becoming self-righteous.