For lack of standing or lack of ability to relieve yes. Courts aren't going to question a presidential election. That doesn't mean we can't look at the videos of observers being banned, the facts of now-declared-illegal extra-legislative policy changes, the timings of various ballot drops etc.
Opinions aren't formed on court cases. That's why in 2020, more than half of Democrats thought the election was irregular. It's remarkable to me because this is one of those issues where polling says voters of both parties agree, but the media insists that there's nothing there. That's crazy
>That doesn't mean we can't look at the videos of observers being banned, the facts of now-declared-illegal extra-legislative policy changes, the timings of various ballot drops etc.
My impression is that there were a bunch of "this seems sus" allegations, but all the popular ones have been discredited. What are the most credible examples (ie. of actual malfeasance going on, rather than merely "this seems sus") that you can provide?
Yeah it’s just a polite retelling of the crazy Trump nonsense that was laughed out of court by every judge who looked at it and the rest is just misunderstandings from casual election observers who refuse to do one iota of research about how things work.
The accusations are always vague as well since each time you zoom in on one it’s completely anodyne but you need the distance to keep up the specter of something nefarious.
I guess for me personally I don't deny that Joe Biden won the contest as performed. I just question the contest themselves. After all, if made up my own election law and ran an election, and declared my candidate the winner, no one would listen to me, but that's what happened here, which we know based on scotus's interpretation of whether secretaries of state can change rules the way they did in Pennsylvania.
I am going to take a guess as to what the GP was referring to: In 2020, Pennsylvania was one of the states that made many changes to how their elections work under the guise of the pandemic. But they changed their rules at the last minute once more in a way that may have altered Pennsylvania’s outcomes.
Existing state law meant ballots had to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day in order to be counted. The Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to extend that deadline and the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court (not SCOTUS) made a highly controversial ruling that extended the deadline to the following Friday. This extension would have helped Biden (given his party filed the lawsuit to force the change), and given they barely won the state (Biden had 50.01%), there is a good chance it affected the outcome.
Are you referring to Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar over the 3 day extension of the received date? Those ballots were collected separately but there were less than 10k of them so even if they’d been 100% Biden voters they wouldn’t have affected the outcome of a race which Biden won by 80k votes.
I am referring to a case filed by the Democratic party of Pennsylvania (not republicans), and I don’t recall the numbers off the top of my head but when it was in the news it was expected that the case would affect a few million votes from mail in ballots that had not yet been returned. Mail in ballots were mostly requested by Democratic voters. The ruling also had some other changes that I can’t recall. Also I forgot to mention that state supreme court deciding the case had a Democratic supermajority.
To me this situation felt like a manipulation of the election process that is outside of the norms, especially for it to happen so late. That was a few years ago but it is an example situation that causes many to still feel the election was “stolen”. I think lots of people use that term to also include actions that are technically legal but feel unfair.
Try to find a reference. The date component makes it sound like Pennsylvania Democratic Party v. Boockvar, whose decision lead to both the case I mentioned and SCOTUS requiring such ballots to be held separately so they could be removed based on the decision of that case. The major discrepancy is that you’re talking millions and that only affected thousands.
Yeah, and if you look at my comments, I agree that Biden won the race as run. I just question the entire legitimacy of counting any of the votes in a rogue election. I don't think rogue elections should happen. The moral hazard is too great, and it's a direct attack on democratic processes.
Yes, my point is that “rogue election” as a term is using the language of deniers. Every election has mistakes, and the pandemic especially created novel challenges, but that’s a strong term to use if the best you can say is that a statistically insignificant number of ballots were challenged with no evidence of misconduct.
Mistakes sure. This was intentionally done though.
It's a strong term but there is no denial. I'm not even sure why people are so against calling out the obvious. Biden probably would have won a legitimate contest
What was intentionally done? Every election has ballots received late but that’s almost always human error, not someone trying to cheat, and in this case there’s been no evidence of that despite a massive effort looking for anything amiss.
> Biden probably would have won a legitimate contest
That’s why you’re getting pushback: he did a legitimate contest. The language you’ve been using has implied otherwise, which is implicitly throwing in with the convicted fraudsters.
I meant the state, although a sister comment to yours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42032946) claims the affected number of ballots was too small (which doesn’t match my recollection but sharing it here for balance). Regardless - although I am open to the possibility of various issues or flaws in various states adding up to something more, I personally am confident Biden won the election, for what it’s worth. I do have my doubts about the overall process though - voting is just the very end step, but there are things that happen before that can skew election results (media bias, social media censorship, whatever).
It might just be the neuro-spicy in me but Pennsylvania seems morally in the right here even when the courts ruled against them. The rules as set are really dumb and Pennsylvania was counting valid unambiguous ballots. The election as run was to me better than the one following the letter. How shitty would it be to have your vote thrown out because you didn't put it in the special double envelope that's for preserving your anonymity— the state doesn't give a shit if the ballot is anonymous when counting.
I get that this is a privileged take because broadly speaking the more people vote overall the better Democrats do but it's really hard to fault throwing out fewer ballots. Like turnout is already so low and a person took the time to make their voice heard. People already feel like their vote doesn't matter, dqs for arbitrary reasons aren't helping.
I mean I guess it's a viewpoint on who ought to set the rules. I actually don't even disagree with you, and I'm a sworn Republican. However, the moral hazard and threat to democracy of bureaucrat and officials overriding legislative policy is something I dislike basically universally, especially for elections
>After all, if made up my own election law and ran an election, and declared my candidate the winner, no one would listen to me, but that's what happened here, which we know based on scotus's interpretation of whether secretaries of state can change rules the way they did in Pennsylvania.
1. what happened in Pennsylvania?
2. why did a SCOTUS with 6-3 majority of republicans decide to side with Biden, of all people?
3. you haven't answered my previous question. what specific "irregularities" lead to you to not believe the official election results?
Honestly, your line of questioning is a non-sequitur, because I don't question the election results. I question the election itself. There is no doubt in my mind that Joe Biden had enough votes in the contest as run. I just think the contest is not a legal election since they didn't follow the law.
As I've said elsewhere, it's as if I put a ballot box outside my house, got enough votes based on my own rules, and then declared whomever got enough votes in my contest the winner. That's great, but for it to be a legitimate election, the law has to be followed.
Again I'm hardly alone in this. Polling shows widespread bipartisan belief that the election was irregular. I'm honestly shocked at how different the mainstream media views are from the everyday person you talk to.
>As I've said elsewhere, it's as if I put a ballot box outside my house, got enough votes based on my own rules, and then declared whomever got enough votes in my contest the winner. That's great, but for it to be a legitimate election, the law has to be followed.
>Again I'm hardly alone in this. Polling shows widespread bipartisan belief that the election was irregular.
The implication here seems to be that because the election was "irregular", that it wasn't legitimate. But what does "irregular" mean, and should the irregularities be the basis for overturning/ignoring the results of the election? For instance, the election happened in a pandemic. That's arguably pretty "irregular", and probably had a material impact on the results. Should the results be tossed on the basis of that alone? In other comments you mentioned other objections, like counting votes that turned up late, but it's not clear that tossing out those votes would make the election more legitimate. What's more irregular, sticking to the letter of the law exactly, and letting all the pandemic disruptions affect campaigning/turnout, or adding accommodations?
The irregularity is not following the written law when conducting the election and instead making up rules.
These were not mistakes. The secretaries of state announced that they were going to ignore election law. That should not be tolerated. It's an attack on democracy of the highest order.
> Yeah it’s just a polite retelling of the crazy Trump nonsense that was laughed out of court by every judge who looked at it and the rest is just misunderstandings from casual election observers who refuse to do one iota of research about how things work.
The majority of the cases relating to that election were dismissed for various technicalities, not on merit. As in the judges didn’t laugh them out of the court based on the ideas in those cases. Of course they may have also been rejected on merits but we won’t know.
I think it’s worth remembering that Trump’s AG, campaign, and RNC lawyers were all clear that he lost fairly. The cases he brought trying to overturn the results were most commonly rejected not on technicalities but because he couldn’t show evidence of a wrong, and were often dismissed with prejudice and in a surprising number of cases the possibility of penalties for frivolous lawsuits which you just don’t tend to see at that level because the national players have not historically been trawling for anything they could possibly use.
There’s a good list here, and it makes it clear that these cases were simply not going anywhere. The rulings aren’t technicalities like “you filed at 12:01 and the deadline was 11:59” but the failure to provide evidence of a problem even occurring in real life.
Cases dismissed for “technicalities” means they were just dismissed… administering law is a technical process, and while I know what you’re attempting to convey with that phrasing, it’s still abundantly clear that there was no evidence at all of anything untoward or election-changing happening in 2020. So much so that several of trumps lawyers were sanctioned for filing such frivolous nonsense and others were sued for millions of dollars for their defamatory proclamations and conspiracy theories.
Opinions aren't formed on court cases. That's why in 2020, more than half of Democrats thought the election was irregular. It's remarkable to me because this is one of those issues where polling says voters of both parties agree, but the media insists that there's nothing there. That's crazy