What did Democrats do wrong?

[theprestige]

You gotta know our lefty friends would never go for that.

Of course they won't. Because as much as they bleat and squeal about stolen elections, they like the current ballot system exactly the way it is.

 

[arthwollipot]

Get rid of vote by mail. Get rid of early voting.

Australia has both of those things and voter fraud is negligible. It's clear that neither of them lead to fraudulent voting.

Actually, voter fraud is negligible in Australian elections

Social media users are questioning the integrity of the Australian electoral process by making false claims about the threat of multiple voting.

www.rmit.edu.au

Get rid of electronic voting machines. Purge the voter rolls regularly. Establish strong controls on physical ballot chain of custody, and enforce them strictly. That's how to mitigate the risk of bulk election fraud.

One problem: bulk election fraud has never been demonstrated to exist.

There is the occasional case but it's far from as rampant as the rightist information bubble will have you believe.

 

[arthwollipot]

Of course they won't. Because as much as they bleat and squeal about stolen elections, they like the current ballot system exactly the way it is.

For the record I think your current ballot system absolutely sucks balls. It should be widely overhauled and I'm not even talking about introducing mandatory voting or abolishing the electoral college here.

 

[theprestige]

Australia has both of those things and voter fraud is negligible. It's clear that neither of them lead to fraudulent voting.

Actually, voter fraud is negligible in Australian elections

Social media users are questioning the integrity of the Australian electoral process by making false claims about the threat of multiple voting.

www.rmit.edu.au

One problem: bulk election fraud has never been demonstrated to exist.

There is the occasional case but it's far from as rampant as the rightist information bubble will have you believe.

For the record I think your current ballot system absolutely sucks balls. It should be widely overhauled and I'm not even talking about introducing mandatory voting or abolishing the electoral college here.

Make up your mind.

 

[bruto]

Though, I don't think voter ID is the panacea some on the right allege. So I am a little suspicious of their motives.

To my mind, election fraud is much more about ballot chain of custody.

Get rid of vote by mail. Get rid of early voting. Get rid of electronic voting machines. Purge the voter rolls regularly. Establish strong controls on physical ballot chain of custody, and enforce them strictly. That's how to mitigate the risk of bulk election fraud.

You know how Congress decided some states couldn't be trusted to run their own elections because of racism? I'd welcome a similar approach to ballot control. No state gets to run their own elections until they demonstrate a high level of competence in ballot control.

I have yet to see a cogent explanation of why early voting and voting by mail need cause a problem, especially one of "bulk fraud." Mail inherently limits ballots to voters who are registered and whose addresses are on record and who have indicated their intention to vote. At least where I am, the ballot is doubly enveloped, signed, and doubly sealed. Drop boxes are available for those who don't trust the mail. It's no harder to check a returned ballot against registration rolls than it is to confirm the identity of a person you may never have met, and if ambiguity exists there's more time to resolve it, and less likelihood of throwing away valid votes. Persons who believe their mail in ballots have been tampered with or compromised, or who change their minds, are able up to poll closing to request that their mailed ballots be invalidated, and to vote in person instead.

 

[arthwollipot]

Make up your mind.

About what?

 

[bruto]

About what?

I think the fact that you don't believe right wing lies about massive fraud, and also think our voting system is messed up seem contradictory. It might escape some people that the possibility that massive lies about massive fraud can gain currency is itself a flaw in the system. A rickety structure that does not fall down is still rickety.

 

[Pixel42]

Get rid of vote by mail.

Disenfranchise the disabled (including many elderly people) and their carers, and anyone who can't arrange to be in the place they're registered to vote on a working day?

Get rid of early voting.

Disenfranchise anyone who can't spare what might be several hours to stand and wait in line to vote on a working day?

 

[Helen]

Most democracies have early voting, and high integrity elections. Most democracies try to make it as easy to vote as they possibly can, and still have elections without massive fraud. It can be done. It seems to have worked in the US as well, thus far.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

I'm way behind in the thread but I've got to disagree. He should have run in 2016. He'd have beaten Trump handily. Beau Biden really screwed this country up by dying.

I'm convinced we live in the alternate timeline created by someone meddling in their past, how else could everything that can go wrong, do?

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Primary every last one of them.

You can try, but I don't think it'll work. There will be another 7 lined up behind them.

The fact is there's a sizable contingent of the Democratic party which are... against my better judgment I'm still not willing to call them complicit, but they're certainly complacent. This ICE ◊◊◊◊ makes them positively giddy. Midterms are coming up, the GOP is more hated than ever and they don't have to lift a finger! All they have to do is hide under their rock until November. They are going to do whatever it takes to keep these goons brutalizing Americans until the next election, when the voters are surely going to recognize their bravery and shrewd political calculus. Anything that might call attention to themselves, like doing the right thing, is to be strictly avoided.

We can track this back for years. In hindsight, Garland was a spineless little puke who intentionally hindered the investigation. Maybe he was hoping to secure another Democrat presidency, maybe he was never going to stick his neck out regardless, I don't know. But surely someone knew. Surely there were Democrats who understood he wasn't going to actually allow the case to play out like Stinky was the treasonous little toad he's proved himself to be many times over, just "gather evidence" until such time as a prosecution of a former President wouldn't be at all controversial.

My hope is that we start to hear from those Democrats soon. The ones who value taking a stand against this ◊◊◊◊ over keeping their phony baloney jobs. The media would love that, Democrats totally in disarray. But having that conversation is necessary to shift things back to principled stands over cynical politicking. Either that or the people who want to help will by necessity split into a new party, leaving the Democrats to go the way of the Whigs and it'll be decades before there's another national voice against the fascist rule.

 

[dirtywick]

i agree that their biggest and most obvious errors are all surrounding their lack of urgency in prosecuting the seditionists and traitors, allowing them to recover and control the framing, delay and eventually derail the investigations into trump's obvious election fraud plot. i will say that while at least the dems aren't insane nazis, they do need to be better about standing up to them.

edit

and how many of them, like sinema and fetterman, completely lied about who they are and what they would do and flipped when they got elected? that it's happened multiple times is also inexcusable

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I don't think Fetterman lied. He has a history that doesn't match up with his current stances. I think he's a different person after his stroke. Proving that all you need to make a conservative is a decent person with brain damage.

Sinema though, yeah that was a complete fabrication. And again, surely DNC leadership spoke to her and understood this while there was time enough to act.

 

[wareyin]

Both sides seem to think the other side keeps trying to steal elections. Lack of trust in the voting system is more than reason enough to make it more trustworthy.

You want to stop worrying about the right trying to steal elections? Push for strong ballot controls and strict enforcement.

Demanding stronger controls to fix a lack of trust is a circular scam. Trust does not erode because of a lack of locks. It erodes because people like you spend all your time screaming that the house is being robbed despite there being zero evidence of a crime. Rushing around to "fix" a system that is not broken is exactly what creates the suspicion you claim to be worried about.

It is clear your goal isn't trust or integrity. It is a smaller electorate. You want to get rid of mail-in ballots and early voting to make it as difficult as possible for citizens to exercise their rights. You are not trying to make the system more trustworthy. You are trying to make it more exclusive. You are not advocating for a better fence; you are advocating for a smaller yard.

 

[dirtywick]

I don't think Fetterman lied. He has a history that doesn't match up with his current stances. I think he's a different person after his stroke. Proving that all you need to make a conservative is a decent person with brain damage.

i’ll say perhaps that’s true. but i also think it’s wishful thinking that some the dems aren’t somewhat influenced by the oligarchs as well. i’m sure fetterman is under similar pressures

 

[Segnosaur]

We can track this back for years. In hindsight, Garland was a spineless little puke who intentionally hindered the investigation. Maybe he was hoping to secure another Democrat presidency, maybe he was never going to stick his neck out regardless, I don't know. But surely someone knew. Surely there were Democrats who understood he wasn't going to actually allow the case to play out like Stinky was the treasonous little toad he's proved himself to be many times over, just "gather evidence" until such time as a prosecution of a former President wouldn't be at all controversial.

At the time I thought Garland was an OK choice for the Department O'Justice. (Something that I recognize was a mistake.)

I do have to wonder what motivated his decisions. I think he might have had the same mistaken mind-set that Mueller did... that they would "do the job" calmly and methodically and that "the process" would work things out in the end, without understanding that "the process" was itself flawed.

In Mueller's case, he did his investigation, and probably thought "My work is done, I am sure others in the DoJ will handle things appropriately from here on in", so no need to rock the boat, not realizing that Discount Fred Flintstone (as Trump's Attorney General) would do everything he could to protect Stubby McBonespurs. As a result, his work did not have the impact it should have.

In Garland's case, his unwillingness to push too hard and to work on cases slowly and methodically might have been appropriate in a more sane country, but it failed when presented with people like Judge Cannon (who did everything she could to run interference on the classified documents case) and the Roberts supreme court.

 

[Trausti]

Australia has both of those things and voter fraud is negligible. It's clear that neither of them lead to fraudulent voting.

Yeah, probably not. After all, Australia requires a person to prove citizenship when they enroll to vote. The US doesn't require that. I wish we were more like Australia, don't you?

 

[johnny karate]

Both sides seem to think the other side keeps trying to steal elections. Lack of trust in the voting system is more than reason enough to make it more trustworthy.

You want to stop worrying about the right trying to steal elections? Push for strong ballot controls and strict enforcement.

People think the Republicans try to steal elections because Republicans tried to steal an election. It happened right out in the open. Everyone, including you, saw it happen. I'm not sure what "ballot controls" will do to stop a president who lost an election from sending a mob to attack the Capitol or concocting a fake electors scheme to stay in office, but I agree with you on the "strict enforcement". Trump should have been in shackles the day after Biden was sworn in and everyone who was part of his scheme should be in prison.

The basis for the belief that Democrats try to steal elections is lies and conspiracies theories.

You're solving for a problem that doesn't exist.

 

[johnny karate]

I voted to keep the profligate government from raising my taxes. That's my principle. In light of the massive fraud on taxpayer dollars that the Democrats are desperately trying to cover up, it was definitely the correct vote.

The guy you voted for is selling pardons to the highest bidder, including numerous fraudsters:

Over half of Trump’s 88 individual pardons are for white-collar offenses, with money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud among the most frequent crimes the president has wiped clean.

It's hilarious how stupid and gullible Trump makes MAGA look every time they pretend to have a principle.

As long as Orange-Man doesn't raise my taxes, cuts regulations, and deports foreign child rapists and murders, he can blather on and say all the crazy craps he wants.

Tariffs are a tax. You voted for more taxes.

The Trump administration is engaged in a massive and illegal coverup of a child sex trafficking ring. You voted to protect child rapists.

And of course, you also voted for anti-vaxxerism which kills children, so an argument could be made that you also voted for murder.

 

[johnny karate]

You gotta know our lefty friends would never go for that.

Still waiting for our righty friends to tell us the actual real-world problem this would solve.