Facebook Will Ban Ads That Wrongly Claim Election Victory (theverge.com) 145
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Facebook will ban ads that wrongly claim victory in the US presidential race. The news comes a week after the company announced it would reject ads from Donald Trump or Joe Biden claiming a premature win on November 3rd. The policy covers ads that claim legal forms of voting -- like voting by mail -- will corrupt the outcome of the election. It also bans ads that claim rampant voter fraud could alter the results of the election.
This is a real concern for the 2020 race. Due to mail-in voting, the electoral process is expected to take longer than in years past, and the official results likely won't be announced on November 3rd. Experts worry that because more Democrats are expected to vote by mail than Republicans, Trump could declare an early victory, then sow doubt about the results as more Biden votes trickle in.
This is a real concern for the 2020 race. Due to mail-in voting, the electoral process is expected to take longer than in years past, and the official results likely won't be announced on November 3rd. Experts worry that because more Democrats are expected to vote by mail than Republicans, Trump could declare an early victory, then sow doubt about the results as more Biden votes trickle in.
Then my ads should be safe (Score:2)
And so (Score:4, Interesting)
Good. Also ban apoplectic ads screetching about dirty tricks and we're losing we're losing you gotta get out and vote!
Re:And so (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you gotta get out and vote regardless, unless you really don't care what happens around you...
Sure, in the US specifically voting seems a bit more futile than in a democracy, as you might be in a state where you know it's clear who will get the electors, so your vote probably won't make a difference like "contested" states, but leaving the voting to others is not healthy mentality in any case.
Re:And so (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worth voting even if your state is not contested. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could one day make your vote count and the more times the person who lost the popular vote wins the Electoral College the more support for it will grow.
They currently have 73% of the votes they need make it happen, although it could be effective even before they get to 100%. If your state has not joined then write to your representatives asking them to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It's worth voting even if your state is not contested. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could one day make your vote count and the more times the person who lost the popular vote wins the Electoral College the more support for it will grow.
They currently have 73% of the votes they need make it happen, although it could be effective even before they get to 100%. If your state has not joined then write to your representatives asking them to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Why don't those states allocate their electors today based on their states popular vote?
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I guess they think states are more likely to sign up if they know that it will only come in to force when the outcome is guaranteed, i.e. they won't be pressured into doing it anyway before then. The usual political stuff.
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Why don't those states allocate their electors today based on their states popular vote?
Which states currently don't allocate their electors based on the state's popular vote? As far as I know, all states do. Maine and Nebraska assign them proportionally, and everybody else assigns them all or nothing, but both systems are based on the state popular vote.
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> Why don't those states allocate their electors today based on their states popular vote?
They do. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact requires the states to bind their electors according to the NATIONAL popular vote result.
In other words, unless you lived in New York, California, or Chicago, your vote would NOT count under the Compact.
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> Why don't those states allocate their electors today based on their states popular vote?
They do. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact requires the states to bind their electors according to the NATIONAL popular vote result.
In other words, unless you lived in New York, California, or Chicago, your vote would NOT count under the Compact.
I should have been more specific.
Why don't those states allocate their electors proportionally consistent with the vote in their states? Wouldn't that give all their voters a voice?
Wouldn't that put all states in play, because every candidate would get some benefit from campaigning there?
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I'd say good luck getting the other 27% of votes, the states who have influence now under the electoral college are unlikely to give up that influence.
Not saying it doesn't make sense, I think the electoral college system is broken and whatever value its supposed to provide is nullified when the popular vote is the opposite of the electoral outcome.
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The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
That is very interesting. I will look into it. In the UK, I support the Electoral Reform Society, which has been trying for years to get some kind of proportional representation going. First past the post can be grossly unfair in many ways, and it leads to the swing states situation in elections, and polarised politics. The trouble is, the existing system suits the main parties, by and large, so it never gets changed. This has been going on for maybe two centuries in the UK. I am not sure of the history.
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Sure, in the US specifically voting seems a bit more futile than in a democracy, as you might be in a state where you know it's clear who will get the electors, so your vote probably won't make a difference like "contested" states, but leaving the voting to others is not healthy mentality in any case.
Personally, I see the vote for the definitely losing side as a way to add to a percentage of what the public's actual opinion is.
For example, let's say a state wins with 70% of the votes for them and 30% against, last election. And this election, people know their side will lose, so they don't turn up to vote. But how many people did that? Could be that your side would actually lose 45% to 55% if everyone showed up to vote.
Adjusting the numbers by a few percentage points, even if your side loses can
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The same thing with "useless votes" occurs in the UK. I happen to live in a constituency that has been solid Labour Party ever since I moved here. I generally vote Liberal Democrat or Green Party, which makes bugger all difference to the representation of those parties in Parliament.
Only a minority of voters in marginal constituencies actually decide general elections. This is a totally potty arrangement, and I believe the same thing happens in the USA. This can totally distort stated policies in election m
A simpler, better solution? (Score:2, Troll)
Just shut down American access to all social media from 'X' hours before the polls open until 'Y' hours after the votes have all been tallied and cross-checked and a winner has been determined.
This might accomplish two things. First, it would be a more complete and effective mechanism for shutting down the various propaganda machines and the possible civil unrest resulting from them that Facebook is paying lip service to with the ad ban. Second, all the people who would be going "Oh noes!" and suffering fro
So, Fox, CNN and MSNBC will be blocked? (Score:3)
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The headline says "wrongly claim victory", so a new channel saying "exit polling indicates that X has won but the votes are still being counted" is okay.
It's only something like a candidate claiming victory in an ad before the other one has conceded that would be banned.
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I'm sure they are going to be declaring winners at some point.
They are going to do what they are going to do. It is the practice of the press to project who has won by looking at the voting trends, exit polls, and which precincts have returned what results to get a pretty good picture of what the final count will be. This won't change. They will be "projecting" winners and losers just like before.
What will change is the availability of the information that these projections are based on. With a large proportion of absentee ballots out, the uncertainty may be too gr
Which I'm sure includes allegations of suppression (Score:3)
So obviously, Stacy Abrams (for example) will not be allowed to run ads claiming suppression. Otherwise, this would be a blatant attempt by Facebook to corruptly affect the outcome. Right?
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It's not about affecting the outcome, it's about preventing violence on the night because people thought they had won and then find out they haven't. The situation is volatile and one candidate refuses to confirm he will accept the result of the election.
Long lines are a classic voter suppression technique. People have limited time in their lives to vote, the polling stations have to close eventually, waiting long times in the November weather can be difficult for some people with poor health etc.
Also ban exit polling (Score:2)
Or at least ban releasing the results of exit polls until all the real polls in the country are closed so the exit polls can no longer influence the election.
It's Not Over Till WE Say It's Over... (Score:2)
Ban all adverts (Score:3)
Why not ban all political adverts before the election and just have adverts that ask people to vote?
Seems a fair system.
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Yeah. We should just sit back and allow the mainstream media to call the election [activehistory.ca].
The Stacy Abrams standard (Score:2)
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Kemp won buy 55 000 votes for an election he was also in charge of running. Not even getting to the thousands who were purged from the voter rolls, which should not happen right before an election, 53 000 were unable to vote because their voter address didn't match other state records, which can happen if you move and the didn't change your driver's license address yet or the change didn't get registered properly.
Talking points, Talking points... (Score:2)
I just read some 25 or so posts vividly describing what Hannity and Jake Tapper have been going on about forever. Does nobody actually have their own insights into this?
Here in Colorado we've been doing mail in voting for a good while now. We don't have these close contentious elections people keep bringing up. We aren't going to court anymore than we used to over election issues. We don't have massive fraud. Both Republicans and Democrats alike are voting more. We are finding that its better to
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The problem is, the Dems keep trying to conflate Mail In Voting with Absentee voting.
They're not the same.
Absentee, you have to request a ballot and provide ID.
Mail-in, they just automatically send ballots out to everyone on the rolls. Regardless of how correct the rolls are. So people are getting multiple ballots for things like previous tenants, etc.
There is also NO VERIFICATION. So, do you know who ACTUALLY voted?
There is also no chain of custody for MIBs. None.
Also, independent and internal testing
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I live in a state that has long had all mail-in voting, and accept that there will be a certain small amount of loss. Every process has exceptions / issues, even in-person voting. I don't believe the numbers for that are significant in states with previously established mail-in voting. Show me some credible numbers, set in context with totals, if you want to convince me otherwise.
I can, however, understand the concern for states where mail-in voting is being rushed into use due to the COVID crisis. Suc
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Absentee, you have to request a ballot and provide ID.
Mail-in, they just automatically send ballots out to everyone on the rolls. Regardless of how correct the rolls are. So people are getting multiple ballots for things like previous tenants, etc.
There is also NO VERIFICATION. So, do you know who ACTUALLY voted?
There is also no chain of custody for MIBs. None.
Also, independent and internal testing of the USPS shows that ballots ARE lost, and a significant portion come in LATE.
This is such a mixture of blind ignorance, outright lies, and total stupidity that you should be ashamed to have posted it.
Automatic sending of ballots everywhere is not a problem. Blank ballots are irrelevant and immaterial as long as everyone gets at least one. Blank ballots don't mean anything. Only filled in ballots are relevant.
Which leads us to the next point, which I can only assume you're willfully lying about because reality has been described right here on Slashdot before. Mail in ballots are
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Mailed ballots get lost, and more could get "lost" depending on the district's political leaning. There's already documented cases of absentee ballots ending up in the trash or by the side of the road.
Extra ballots already get sent to addresses where people don't live any more. Increases the chances of ballot stuffing and fraud. What's stopping someone from faking a driver's license to make those extra ballots valid? What's stopping someone from putting more than one marked ballot into a single secrecy enve
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Yes. Auto-sending unverified ballots IS a problem.
You can pooh-pooh it all you like.
The problem is you have NO CHAIN OF CUSTODY.
You have no verification of who you're sending to.
"Blank ballots don't mean anything."
Except where real people, who are not the person it's addressed to, fill them out illegally and send them in.
Sorry, your supposed chain of custody is too short.
I have signed up to be a proctor in my district.
Unfortunately, I live just outside of Chicago, one of two major cities that turn an otherw
Just ban Facebook (Score:3)
So not exactly objective in goal, is it? (Score:3)
"Democrats are expected to vote by mail than Republicans, Trump could declare an early victory, then sow doubt about the results as more Biden votes trickle in."
Yes, definite concerns that Trump might do that.
Of course, on the other hand, Republicans are *merely* concerned over the idea that legions of fraudulent ballots will be submitted from the mass-mailing of voting forms to every single address in heavily Democratic-leaning states, ballot harvesting, etc.
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The only declarations that matter are the 50 (plus territories) state's Secretaries of State when they certify their state's election. For many states, this must be done by 3 Dec. 2020.
For every state (and territory) [wikipedia.org] 8 Dec 2020 is the "safe harbor" deadline under the 1887 Electoral Count Act so that the Electoral College may met on 14 Dec 2020 to actually choose the next President and Vice President.
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in heavily Democratic-leaning states
Of course, the electoral college ensures that votes in states which lean heavily to one side or the other don't matter. Only votes in swing states count for anything.
Facebook will ban adds... (Score:2)
Which don't pay them enough to declare early victory...
I mean seriously, facebook refusing a political advert, it's company motto is "Wish everybody a happy birthday, and elect fascist governments"
Facebook got written into the Constitution? (Score:3)
Who elected these gazillionaire tech plantation owners to interfere in our political system?
The sheer arrogance of these freaks running Google (co-founded by Moscow-born Brin, for those of you who STILL scream "Trump Russia!"), Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Microsoft is simply breathtaking. There is simply NO provision in our system of government for the hyper-rich to decide anything about when the election is over, who won it, or what anybody else can say about the matter.
People need to stop feeding these beasts, while we all still have the freedom to choose to do it.
There is absolutely no limit to the control these people want to exercise over society. They currently lack the power to enforce their will, but they're gaining more and the public at large will eventually lose the ability to push back if they do not start soon. It's already [and sadly unsurprisingly] the case that if one tries to organize people to do something like abandon Facebook, some idiot will pipe-up with something like "let's start s a Facebook group to organize that!". If the tech giants can just get people far enough into things like "social credit scores" and tie this all into your employment (which is being HUGELY aided by the current COVID-associated remote-work tethers of stuff like Teams, GoToMeeting, etc - all conveniently tied to tech giants, rather then being open source) then people will be unable to push back ever again - they'll be trapped in a world where you either live under the techopoly rules or you live in poverty.
Adams, Franklin and the other founders would be disappointed and saddened to see the public lining up to walk into the slaughterhouse where liberty is killed...
They should ban ALL POLITICAL CONTENT (Score:2)
Banning Adds Does Little. (Score:2)
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In related news a private company has the ability to choose what advertisers it takes money from.
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Even if they had them all counted on the day I can't see this one being resolved without legal action.
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I guess they are like InfoWars. They have an audience.
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Ooo Look, we found ourselves a koolaid drinking commie, AmiMoJo.
By your standard all the Video Project Veritas has posted is somehow created by green screen and impersonators?
That's rich
I think he's claiming that Project Veritas is a false flag operation planned and financed by George Soros and the Deep state to make Trump supporters look stupid. That means James O'Keefe is a liberal crisis actor!! OMG!! Has "Q" confirmed this?
Re:Facebook, loyal determiners of truth! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, everything created by project veritas is absolute trash, just edited to shit, taken out of context, and filled with outright lies. Fuckhead who runs the place has been sued and lost so many times, it isn't even funny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Interesting that you immediately deflect from the issue of voter fraud and attack the reporter instead of dealing with the issue at hand. Multiple videos were taken you know. Anytime someone attacks the source instead of the substance it is always a red flag that there's something going on. You don't happen to work for the Biden campaign, do you?
Citing wikipedia to make a political point is like citing the Bible to win an argument against an atheist - it only carries weight with the faithful. Meanwhile a si
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Fuck you, the only real voter fraud is from the right, and it's miniscule.
The real problem is that when you say "voter fraud" what you mean is "Let's have more voter suppression, especially of minorities and known democratic districts."
In any sane society, what Trump and his rich crony have done to the post office would be called out as voter fraud.
In any sane society, calling on armed right wing goon squads like the proud boys to "stand by" while telling them to be "poll watchers" would be classed as voter
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Your not my type, I'm just not into trolls
The Democrats are suppressing entire states and working really hard to steal the election nationwide for every major seat of power. Where did you get the idea the plan to stop with minorities or democratic districts? Fool
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You do you, "Barack W Bushbama" who is definitely not a troll or parody account. You do you.
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TL;DR but thanks for wasting your time crafting dishonest propaganda no one will ever read.
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Funny how you don't even try to back up your childish claim with sources.
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And you are an fascist authoritarian conservative, but I repeat myself. You know what they say about conservatives:
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be an in group the law protects, but does not bind, and an out group the law binds, but does not protect."
The fact is, you don't understand what your own holy book says about the weak. You probably have no idea why Jesus would go ape-shit on the money lenders, and you almost certainly fantasize about people like me roasting i
Re: Facebook, loyal determiners of truth! (Score:2)
Where'd you get the straw for that strawman you just built?
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Show me ONE conservative lead nation, state or city where that isn't true. Go ahead, I'll wait. Every single time conservatives take power, they make sure the rules only apply to the "others." Trump doesn't even think he's president of "blue states." He only wants to help those who genuflect and kiss his dirty brown ring.
Did you even fucking read the comment I was responding to? Pure ad hominem, but you are fine with that. Because the only thing you believe is that rules should apply to people like me, but
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I'd recommend the same for you, but as a death cultist, you can only see weakness as something to be despised. Thus, you could never admit any mental weakness to yourself. That would open up a whole internal dialogue about self-loathing you simply are not mentally capable of engaging in.
And so, your self loathing remains hidden from your conscious view, and only comes out when you project your illness and weakness onto others.
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Look, there is much more to the concept of psychological projection than merely using it as an "I'm rubber, you're glue" grade school level come back. But of course, someone of your intellect simply can't understand complex psychology. I'm honestly surprised you can respond in anything but grunts and farts.
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Troll. That’s what they call people that disagree with them. Yet another word that’s been bastardized beyond recognition.
Slashdot, can’t you give them something else to use for these occasions?
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Still waiting for the Planned Parenthood unedited tapes. Can you provide a link?
Re:Facebook, loyal determiners of truth! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's 2020. There is NO reason on Earth that we shouldn't know who won before midnight on election day. If a person is so stupid they can't get their ballot in by the deadline, they don't need to vote. The deadline should be election day!!!
Vote in person if at all possible. It's the only way to be sure.
Multiple states have laws that prevent election workers from even beginning to process absentee ballots until Election Day, even if they are received weeks earlier. That guarantees it is impossible to certify a winner that night, especially with the increase in absentee voting this year.
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It's 2020. There is NO reason on Earth that we shouldn't know who won before midnight on election day. If a person is so stupid they can't get their ballot in by the deadline, they don't need to vote. The deadline should be election day!!!
Vote in person if at all possible. It's the only way to be sure.
Multiple states have laws that prevent election workers from even beginning to process absentee ballots until Election Day, even if they are received weeks earlier. That guarantees it is impossible to certify a winner that night, especially with the increase in absentee voting this year.
Which is actually a pretty good idea. In my county they actually count absentee ballots as they are received so the voter casting their ballot can be removed from the list allowed to cast a ballot at the precinct, which also makes sense. If absentee ballots are not counted until AFTER election day, then they must be screened to make sure an in-person ballot hasn't been cast too. It seems easier to me to count what you receive before election day, marking off those voters as having voted, then filtering ab
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For mail in ballots we know how many are sent out. In states that count based on postmark it is pretty easy to see how many have been returned and how many are outstanding. So long as large numbers are outstanding and being delivered every day by the post office you keep counting until you legally have to stop to certify the election.
That it takes longer is no reason to stop early. There are issues on the ballot unrelated to the president that have serious consequences for the people of the state and so sto
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For mail in ballots we know how many are sent out. In states that count based on postmark it is pretty easy to see how many have been returned and how many are outstanding. So long as large numbers are outstanding and being delivered every day by the post office you keep counting until you legally have to stop to certify the election.
That it takes longer is no reason to stop early. There are issues on the ballot unrelated to the president that have serious consequences for the people of the state and so stopping the count just to make a decision faster can hurt many people.
I would agree.. I do think that absentee ballots must be postmarked on or before the day of the election and received by a day certain which is set to some reasonable amount of time to allow the post office to deliver them. When that deadline passes, no more ballots are accepted and the received ballots are counted and results posted as soon as possible after that date. Any ballots that arrive AFTER the final deadline may not be counted and I would prefer they were destroyed before they were even opened, l
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Maybe... Some states let you change your mind up to election day. If you sent in an absentee ballot you can have the clerk spoil
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Washington, Oregon, and Colorado are completely vote by mail states and it works very well. I don't see any reason why that should not continue. It works extremely well, increases voter participation and has fraud rates essentially the same as voting in person. Since it increases voter participation without creating additional problems there is no reason not to do it.
Re:Facebook, loyal determiners of truth! (Score:4, Insightful)
Washington, Oregon, and Colorado are completely vote by mail states and it works very well.
But we had a couple of years to work the bugs out of it. Not months.
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The only valid reason not to participate in person is prior knowledge that it will not be physically possible.
Um, yeah, this is a recipe for the candidate with the most media exposure to win.
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Washington, Oregon and Colorado have been vote by mail states for more than a decade now without any major problems. In Colorado you can even track your ballot to see if it has been counted or if there is a problem with it so you can correct it. You can also drop it off at many state locations so you don't need to worry about the post office.
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On their own platform they can do as they see fit, those that consider it trustworthy don't deserve any better an are fooled regardless of this policy.
The real problem is so many weak people see Facebook as a source of information and this can seriously fuck up the outcome of the elections.
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Retirement homes "helping" their residents seems plausible though, but it'd be hard unless the entire staff was in on it because no way one employee would help
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Did not say why they would, seems simply enough for interested parties to provide financial incentives for said crack dealers.
Retirement homes one person could do it all just need whoever does the mail to filter them out.
Point is mail in becomes a verifiable method to buy votes.
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Why don't the studies on mail-in voter fraud that have shown no significant incidence of fraud not dissuade you from your point of view?
It's this same exact way of thinking that fuels all conspiracy theories.
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The studies look at the past. We have parties that are motivated and unethical looking to abuse the system.
It's not starting with the conclusion it's good engineering you look at potential failure modes and design to prevent them. Mail in voting is potentially fine, but you have to build the systems around it correctly to prevent potential abuses. As previously generaly used it was narrowly applied often to people in a position to avoid abuse and thats what the studies were looking at.
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We have parties that are motivated and unethical looking to abuse the system.
They seem to be able to abuse the system just fine through social media very easily and cheaply. Not sure why they would spend more money to do it the harder way.
And engineering has the luxury of not having to be so objective, because it's only ever done after the science is decided. So those potential failures modes have already been proven. In this case, the science shows that the failure modes you're so worried about aren't actually significant concern. Engineering against insignificant concerns is
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Actually, there could be postage invol
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If it's truly not a partisan issue, I find it curious that you only cite Republican talking points and make no mention of Democrat talking points about voter suppression.
Only this year (Score:3)
This year, Republicans are the ones concerned about election fraud. This year.
"Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.â That's the the conclusion of the of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter (a Democrat, of course) and Jim Baker.
Being against election fraud should kinda be a bipartisan thing.
Just like four years ago, Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were (rightly) pointing out that the president is elected for four years, not t
Re:Only this year (Score:4, Insightful)
The arguments aren't swapped.
Democrats said "We think precident should be set in way X."
Republicans said "We think precident should be set in way Y."
Well, way Y happened, and that's the precident set.
Now, Republicans are saying "Oh right now we want way X."
Honestly, I prefer the idea of a president being able to assign a supreme court justice in the last year of their term. However, it is FAR more important that the rule be applied consistantly.
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The rule is pretty consistent. The President and the Senate appoints a Supreme Court Justice together. One of these can block the appointment in hopes that the next election will make the other more pliable, i.e. a different majority in the Senate or a President with the same outlook as the Senate. And while it may not have been the intent of the rules to make the position of Supreme Court Justice so extremely political, such opportunistic behavior is well within the bounds of the rules.
From a moral point o
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There's no reason Democrats can't vote for the current nominee. She's not "hard right" by any definition - she actually understands her job is to interpret the constitution as written.
She recently ruled against a cop in a qualified immunity suit and wrote a scathing opinion - that alone destroys any "hard right" creds she might have.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politic... [go.com]
Guess why it's called "the Biden rule" (Score:2)
I'll give you one guess why the process followed four years ago was known as "the Biden rule".
"Should a justice resign this summer and the president move to name a successor, actions that will occur just days before the Democratic Presidential Convention and weeks before the Republican Convention meets, a process that is already in doubt in the minds of many will become distrusted by all. Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, to the nominee, or to the Sena
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"Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.â That's the the conclusion of the of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter (a Democrat, of course) and Jim Baker.
The keyword there is "potential" [thehill.com]:
The nonpartisan 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, found that when safeguards for ballot integrity are put into place, “there was little evidence of voter fraud,” according to the May statement.
“The commission’s main recommendations on vote-by-mail and absentee voting were to increase research on vote-by-mail (and early voting) and to eliminate the practice of allowing candidates or party workers to pick up and deliver absentee ballots,” the statement continued.
Opinion re SCOTUS justice (Score:2)
Since I mentioned the issue of appointing a Justice and called the Republican argument "nonsense", I want to expand on that, but in a separate post to avoid mixing up two different points in the same post.
It seems to me that RBG was right - the president is president for four years. Not for three years. The Constitution says whenever there is a vacancy in the court, the president shall nominate a replacement, with the advice if the Senate, and that person shall become the new justice subject to the consent
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The problem is that Merrick Garland would have probably been on an honest list of "justices the Republicans would go along with" :)
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He might well have been. I haven't researched enough to say.
One option which McConnell and/or Obama had then would be to publicly put forth a list of 10 nominees acceptable to them and invite the other party to choose one of the ten. If such a list were made in good faith, not a list of left-wing or right-wing, and the other party declined to choose one, the voters could hold them accountable for failing to cooperate.
This time around, of course one party holds both the White House and the Senate, so they h
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For the avoidance of doubt, because I suppose GPP could be misinterpreted, I agree. It's an indictment of the health of US democracy that each of the two major political tribes appears to have stronger opposition to some types of electoral fraud than others.
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Can you give us some of the Democratic talking points? Besides "don't ever remove anyone from the voting rolls because you might accidentally delete a legitimate voter," I see nothing from them.
Further, if that's not a straw-man argument but a legitimate concern, I would expect to see some news/evidence about all the people who showed up to vote and couldn't... and I'm not seeing any.
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Wikipedia goes into far more detail [wikipedia.org] than I would be capable of, as did John Oliver [youtube.com] in 2016. I think gerrymandering is also more of a Democrat than Republican talking point, but I didn't mention it earlier because AIUI it's irrelevant to presidential elections; John Oliver made it the main topic of a show in 2017 [youtube.com].
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If the election system were a private institution it would have been sued into the ground decades ago for criminal negligence in how it operates.
Perhaps if you had called out the Trump Administration for sabotaging the Post Office you lot would have some credibility to work with.
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What legal authority decides upon the authoritative results, and what thresholds must be met before they can do so?
Technically? The Electoral college...
The people who "count" the votes in each county don't declare the winner, they just report their results. Then the county authorities (which vary from state to state) certify their final counts and forward them to the state. The state collects the county results, compiles and adds them up to determine the results of state and federal elections and certifies the results. Usually the Secretary of State (for each state) signs the official results. Barring any judici
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Supreme court.
So let's get that 9th judge confirmed.
The Supreme Court only is there to judge if the laws have been properly followed or not. They don't decide elections; their interpretation of the laws in question *might* impact the vote counts to the benefit of one candidate or the other, but in reality the vote counts decide who the winner is.
Now the reason we need to keep the number of Supreme Court justices odd (i.e. seat the 9th justice) is that if the court is deadlocked 4 to 4 on an issue then they can decide nothing. However, all that really mea
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It came to me in a dream that Ferdinand Macros won. Any objections?
Won what? The position of local dog catcher?
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"Wrongly" claim victory translates to: only ads claiming a Trump victory will be censored.
what difference does it make, really? Facebook can arbitrarily decide who won if they like and it won't change the legal result. The issue is what will the electoral college vote be and that's driven by the election results from each state.
All that really matters is that they avoid doing things to unfairly influence the vote before they are cast. After the votes are cast, it doesn't matter.
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"Wrongly" claim victory translates to: only ads claiming a Trump victory will be censored.
hee hee I love accidental self-owns!