An important difference between this and the 2020 fraud claims is that here, you don't see the supposedly "defrauded" candidate amplifying the BS. Harris wants no part of this.

Also, you don't get a discount on an overpriced pillow for donating.

@mattblaze what do you think about the post facto research on the Florida recount in the 2000 election? Some work by the New Yorker, for instance, suggests that if the recount had continued, Gore would have had more votes.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/12/24/recounted-out

@mattblaze @evan

Sort of like, it's fine to seek the truth, but the truth now isn't going to deliver the promise being made when asking you to donate money to assist in uncovering the truth.

I understand that finding the truth now won't overturn the certified election. But, *IF* there did end up being proof of actual vote manipulation, the individuals that did so could still be held accountable at least right?

@finner @evan Go for it. But understand a few things:

- the supposed "smoking guns" indicating fraud in 2024, like those put forward in 2020, aren't really anything.

- elections are ultimately human endeavors, run by fallible people, and small but inconsequential "irregularities" are normal and expected. But it's often very easy to make them seem much more sinister and significant than they are.

- versions of almost everything claimed about 2024 were claimed by the MAGA people in 2020.

@finner @evan Does any of this this *disprove* that there was fraud in 2024 (or 2020, or 2016, or ...)?

No. It's *possible*. But saying that an election was "rigged" is an *extraordinary* claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which no one has produced.

@finner @evan Another thing to keep in mind: You probably *want* to believe it, and that's very dangerous.

US national elections in recent years are hotly competitive. The country is split across parties pretty evenly. This means that whatever the outcome of a presidential race, there are a *lot* of disappointed people, all primed to be receptive to claims that the outcome they wanted was stolen from them. Beware!

@mattblaze @evan

That's exactly the state I'm in. I want to believe it. And I want people to be held accountable. But I've never done anything more than read a handful of articles. I agree I've seen nothing that looks like hard evidence. I just don't know enough about this stuff to have a good opinion about what may or may not be true. So I leave it up to the people that actually study this stuff.

@MaierAmsden @finner @evan There's more work to do, to be sure, but it's simply incorrect to suggest that nothing has been done to improve elections in recent years. Over the last 15 years we

(1) developed the formal requirement of "software independence" in elections

(2) Invented risk-limited audits, which achieve (1)

(3) have greatly diminished the use of paperless "DRE" (touchscreen) voting terminals, which are now considered obsolete because of (1) and (2).

There's been huge progress.

@MaierAmsden @finner @evan An essential, and perhaps unavoidable, irony here is that as all this progress has been made - as US elections become more secure - public confidence in the integrity of our elections seems to be at an all-time low.

This is partly because the progress is driven by (and produces) public awareness of the threats and risks elections face. This awareness is generally good - knowledge is power! - but it can lead to this perverse inversion between reality and perception.