Are American elections free and fair?

[historia]

According to Pew, the percentage of Americans expressing confidence that our elections will be run well has dropped from four years ago (2018), especially among voters who support Republican candidates (-30%).

Question for debate: Are elections in the United States free and fair?

[Purple Knight]

"I didn't mean to, it was an accident" does not absolve you of a crime. If you run someone over in a crosswalk and kill them, saying "it was an accident" won't cause the police to be like "Oh, well then you're free to go".

Fraud is usually defined as intentional (though there are exceptions). Striking a pedestrian with your car is a crime whether you did it intentionally or not.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fraud.asp
Fraud is an intentionally deceptive action designed to provide the perpetrator with an unlawful gain or to deny a right to a victim.

[Daedalus X]

That's just bizarre. Also, our elections are auditable and are audited.

I tell you that we can't look at the code inside these machines and you just assert that we can. If you can audit these machines then show me a printout of the code, please.

Or did you just mean that the elections can be audited like this:

https://rumble.com/v1racv4-proof-of-fra ... ction.html

So, I asked you to support your claim that the elections were free and fair, and that Sidney Powell had confessed that her arguments were just a lie. And none of your evidence was any better than my friends support of the Russian narrative.

I showed you precisely where Powell told a court that "no reasonable person would take her claims as fact", and I even provided you the document where she said it. I also pointed to all the post-election audits, recounts, and signature verifications that showed the 2020 results were accurate.

I don't want you to believe anything that I say, I would be happy if you would just research what I say. In this case I asked you to support your claim about Powell's statement "no reasonable person would take her claims as fact" implies that she lied about the fraud claims, and you just took Dominions word for it. As if Dominion said it, then that settles it. I told you that her words were lifted out of context and she still stood by her original assertions. When you trust an organization like Dominion the first question should be "do they have a dog in this fight?" And, yes, they do. They need to sell these voting machines. They can probably make a small amount of money selling these unnecessary machines, if all they do is count votes, but if these machines could actually determine the outcome of the election then they could make huge profits from the people who have a lot invested in the election. (follow the money and you will be right most of the time) That is why we need to be very critical in our assessment of their conduct. Suing Powell for a ridiculous amount of money is just their way of intimidating her into silence. (or so it would appear to me)

Here is a video where she answers your question.
https://rumble.com/vfbwwh-part-1-sidney ... -down.html

How do you know that the people that have been lying to us about everything else are not lying about the elections being honest?

Exhibit A

I did not understand what Exhibit A was.

And the strongest part of your argument had to do with the courts not overturning the elections, if there were fraud then the courts would have overturned the election, the courts did not do that, therefore there was no fraud.

It shows that despite all the cries of fraud and conspiracies from Trump's people, when it came time to back all that up with evidence they couldn't do it. I'm sure you don't like that fact and you've tried all sorts of rather hilarious ways to wave it away, but reality tends to be rather stubborn. The basic reality is, you have no evidence to support your argument.

Would you also say that President Trump is the most law abiding president in the history of our nation, since he has been charged in the courts more than any other presidents and still zero convictions?

Or is it possible that the courts are not in the truth finding business and are there just to apply the law as written? So it would still be possible for there to be fraud, only it is up to the law enforcement agencies to investigate to get to the truth.

Humans tend to be tribal and we are willing to overlook a little cheating and corruption if our side wins. But this can end up putting all of us in a very dangerous situation as we saw in Russia a hundred years ago. Many people were so happy with the "workers of the world unite" and "from each according to ability and to each according to need" slogans that they were willing to overlook all the evil that was being done by the Communist party. Soon enough the true believers in the movement found themselves on trains going to Siberia, because the true believers were the biggest threat to the totalitarian system that Lenin set up. I just hope that we don't repeat this history.

The idea that the vote is rigged should send shudders through us in a way that few other forms of corruption can. If our president is selling our nation to China, Russia, Ukraine and other interests, is bad, then what makes it a total disaster is that he is able to control the news organization to aid and abet him in this effort.

And the voter fraud is not limited to our nation, but appears to be going on throughout the world in nations like Brazil and Holland not just Venezuela.

The people that are brainwashing our nations are good at what they do, and we need to be on our toes if we hope to have any chance of escaping their influence.

[Jose Fly]

"I didn't mean to, it was an accident" does not absolve you of a crime. If you run someone over in a crosswalk and kill them, saying "it was an accident" won't cause the police to be like "Oh, well then you're free to go".

Fraud is usually defined as intentional (though there are exceptions). Striking a pedestrian with your car is a crime whether you did it intentionally or not.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fraud.asp
Fraud is an intentionally deceptive action designed to provide the perpetrator with an unlawful gain or to deny a right to a victim.

Sigh....

Throwing mail away is not fraud, it's obstruction of correspondence (felony), felony theft, and if it includes ballots, vote tampering (felony). And each piece of mail can carry its own count, if a prosecutor so chooses.

[Jose Fly]

That's just bizarre. Also, our elections are auditable and are audited.

I tell you that we can't look at the code inside these machines and you just assert that we can. If you can audit these machines then show me a printout of the code, please.

Or did you just mean that the elections can be audited like this:

https://rumble.com/v1racv4-proof-of-fra ... ction.html

So, I asked you to support your claim that the elections were free and fair, and that Sidney Powell had confessed that her arguments were just a lie. And none of your evidence was any better than my friends support of the Russian narrative.

I showed you precisely where Powell told a court that "no reasonable person would take her claims as fact", and I even provided you the document where she said it. I also pointed to all the post-election audits, recounts, and signature verifications that showed the 2020 results were accurate.

I don't want you to believe anything that I say, I would be happy if you would just research what I say. In this case I asked you to support your claim about Powell's statement "no reasonable person would take her claims as fact" implies that she lied about the fraud claims, and you just took Dominions word for it. As if Dominion said it, then that settles it. I told you that her words were lifted out of context and she still stood by her original assertions. When you trust an organization like Dominion the first question should be "do they have a dog in this fight?" And, yes, they do. They need to sell these voting machines. They can probably make a small amount of money selling these unnecessary machines, if all they do is count votes, but if these machines could actually determine the outcome of the election then they could make huge profits from the people who have a lot invested in the election. (follow the money and you will be right most of the time) That is why we need to be very critical in our assessment of their conduct. Suing Powell for a ridiculous amount of money is just their way of intimidating her into silence. (or so it would appear to me)

Here is a video where she answers your question.
https://rumble.com/vfbwwh-part-1-sidney ... -down.html

How do you know that the people that have been lying to us about everything else are not lying about the elections being honest?

Exhibit A

I did not understand what Exhibit A was.

And the strongest part of your argument had to do with the courts not overturning the elections, if there were fraud then the courts would have overturned the election, the courts did not do that, therefore there was no fraud.

It shows that despite all the cries of fraud and conspiracies from Trump's people, when it came time to back all that up with evidence they couldn't do it. I'm sure you don't like that fact and you've tried all sorts of rather hilarious ways to wave it away, but reality tends to be rather stubborn. The basic reality is, you have no evidence to support your argument.

Would you also say that President Trump is the most law abiding president in the history of our nation, since he has been charged in the courts more than any other presidents and still zero convictions?

Or is it possible that the courts are not in the truth finding business and are there just to apply the law as written? So it would still be possible for there to be fraud, only it is up to the law enforcement agencies to investigate to get to the truth.

Humans tend to be tribal and we are willing to overlook a little cheating and corruption if our side wins. But this can end up putting all of us in a very dangerous situation as we saw in Russia a hundred years ago. Many people were so happy with the "workers of the world unite" and "from each according to ability and to each according to need" slogans that they were willing to overlook all the evil that was being done by the Communist party. Soon enough the true believers in the movement found themselves on trains going to Siberia, because the true believers were the biggest threat to the totalitarian system that Lenin set up. I just hope that we don't repeat this history.

The idea that the vote is rigged should send shudders through us in a way that few other forms of corruption can. If our president is selling our nation to China, Russia, Ukraine and other interests, is bad, then what makes it a total disaster is that he is able to control the news organization to aid and abet him in this effort.

And the voter fraud is not limited to our nation, but appears to be going on throughout the world in nations like Brazil and Holland not just Venezuela.

The people that are brainwashing our nations are good at what they do, and we need to be on our toes if we hope to have any chance of escaping their influence.

Nope, not engaging in your wild assed conspiracy theories.

[Jose Fly]

New state voter fraud units finding few cases from midterms

WASHINGTON (AP) — State-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud are looking into scattered complaints more than two weeks after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems.

That’s just what election experts had expected and led critics to suggest that the new units were more about politics than rooting out widespread abuses. Most election-related fraud cases already are investigated and prosecuted at the local level.

Florida, Georgia and Virginia created special state-level units after the 2020 election, all pushed by Republican governors, attorneys general or legislatures.

“I am not aware of any significant detection of fraud on Election Day, but that’s not surprising,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president of the Campaign Legal Center. “The whole concept of voter impersonation fraud is such a horribly exaggerated problem. It doesn’t change the outcome of the election, it’s a felony, you risk getting put in jail and you have a high possibility of getting caught. It’s a rare phenomena.”

[Purple Knight]

"I didn't mean to, it was an accident" does not absolve you of a crime. If you run someone over in a crosswalk and kill them, saying "it was an accident" won't cause the police to be like "Oh, well then you're free to go".

Fraud is usually defined as intentional (though there are exceptions). Striking a pedestrian with your car is a crime whether you did it intentionally or not.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fraud.asp
Fraud is an intentionally deceptive action designed to provide the perpetrator with an unlawful gain or to deny a right to a victim.

Sigh....

Throwing mail away is not fraud, it's obstruction of correspondence (felony), felony theft, and if it includes ballots, vote tampering (felony). And each piece of mail can carry its own count, if a prosecutor so chooses.

It has to be purposeful.

https://www.egmlaw.com/blog/2021/11/is- ... lses-mail/
It is not possible to obstruct correspondence accidentally or unknowingly. After all, the intent is an element of the crime.

[Jose Fly]

"I didn't mean to, it was an accident" does not absolve you of a crime. If you run someone over in a crosswalk and kill them, saying "it was an accident" won't cause the police to be like "Oh, well then you're free to go".

Fraud is usually defined as intentional (though there are exceptions). Striking a pedestrian with your car is a crime whether you did it intentionally or not.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fraud.asp
Fraud is an intentionally deceptive action designed to provide the perpetrator with an unlawful gain or to deny a right to a victim.

Sigh....

Throwing mail away is not fraud, it's obstruction of correspondence (felony), felony theft, and if it includes ballots, vote tampering (felony). And each piece of mail can carry its own count, if a prosecutor so chooses.

It has to be purposeful.

https://www.egmlaw.com/blog/2021/11/is- ... lses-mail/
It is not possible to obstruct correspondence accidentally or unknowingly. After all, the intent is an element of the crime.

Did you read the article?

"Knowingly shredding or discarding mail that does not belong to you is probably sufficient."

Now how would a professional mail carrier successfully argue that they didn't realize they were throwing away mail that wasn't theirs? "I didn't know it was mail?" "I didn't know that was a trash can?"

And I'm pretty sure every postal employee gets specifically told in orientation and training not to throw away mail and what the penalties are for doing so.

[Purple Knight]

Did you read the article?

"Knowingly shredding or discarding mail that does not belong to you is probably sufficient."

Now how would a professional mail carrier successfully argue that they didn't realize they were throwing away mail that wasn't theirs?

They will say that they threw it away on accident and it will be up to the prosecutor to prove they did it on purpose. There will never be that proof. They don't need a plausible excuse, but it's not as if they can't make up 10 good ones. You're talking about a crime. You need to prove it was deliberate to convict them. Having made a mistake is reasonable doubt.

[Jose Fly]

Did you read the article?

"Knowingly shredding or discarding mail that does not belong to you is probably sufficient."

Now how would a professional mail carrier successfully argue that they didn't realize they were throwing away mail that wasn't theirs?

They will say that they threw it away on accident and it will be up to the prosecutor to prove they did it on purpose. There will never be that proof. They don't need a plausible excuse, but it's not as if they can't make up 10 good ones. You're talking about a crime. You need to prove it was deliberate to convict them. Having made a mistake is reasonable doubt.

So your actual argument here is that a mail carrier who throws away mail will just say "It was a mistake" and any prosecutor in the country will have no choice but to throw up their hands and declare there's nothing they can do?

That's so goofy, I'll just let it speak for itself.

[Purple Knight]

Did you read the article?

"Knowingly shredding or discarding mail that does not belong to you is probably sufficient."

Now how would a professional mail carrier successfully argue that they didn't realize they were throwing away mail that wasn't theirs?

They will say that they threw it away on accident and it will be up to the prosecutor to prove they did it on purpose. There will never be that proof. They don't need a plausible excuse, but it's not as if they can't make up 10 good ones. You're talking about a crime. You need to prove it was deliberate to convict them. Having made a mistake is reasonable doubt.

So your actual argument here is that a mail carrier who throws away mail will just say "It was a mistake" and any prosecutor in the country will have no choice but to throw up their hands and declare there's nothing they can do?

That's so goofy, I'll just let it speak for itself.

It doesn't read as goofy when you think about all the extra crimes we have to codify (like manslaughter) because "I didn't do it on purpose" is such a good defence.

Plus, you'd be arguing the opposite if ballots were actually found in the trash. Nobody can prove it was deliberate.

I think you just don't want to believe that most first world countries have utter garbage legal systems that for the most part (aside from violent crimes) can only punish really, really stupid criminals that don't do the bare minimum of CYA.