Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
Would you mind sharing with us what you consider to be an authoritative source that conclusively demonstrates that elections in the US are insecure or among the most insecure across developed nations? I did a quick search and couldn't find any.
I'm still knees deep in trying to find a peer reviewed published scientific study that proves I'm not a horse.
On April 25 2026 20:39 Geiko wrote: [quote]
That's exactly my point, Switzerland and the USA have the exact same score and everything is fine here, no election fraud. What does that tell you ?
It tells me that countries of 8 million and 350 million are different.
The US has had multiple invalidated and redone elections in the last 10 years.
You can be proud of being the "same" as that or read my post or your own article or at the very least look at this conveniently prepared picture which enumerates the dimensions they analyzed and absorb the fact that the score for "election integrity" in the report you found doesn't mean what you think it means to begin with, it's not an election security certificate, it's just a vague democracy index which is not helped by the fact there's no appendix of methods of how they scored anything:
Most of these factors are not to do with securing the vote.
There are two ways of thinking: One, that because we found some elections that were so bad they had to be redone, that means the system is working.
It is like seeing a bridge that cracked and going "Wahoo! It signaled us that it's broken instead of just collapsing immediately! Great success"
And then there's the other way of thinking. The crack is already the failure. The next issue is the cracks you don't see. This is harder if you don't check for cracks and further harder if you designed a bridge which inherently erases evidence of its own cracks at certain steps.
Oh yes the magical population excuse. Which oddly is couched in national population and not by state, but we’re also told x is unfeasible because the US is a confederation of multiple states who like to do things their own way.
Excuse for what?
For why the US can’t do x, y or z by virtue of its population, or can’t be compared to another locale by virtue of the same.
Most systems tend to be scalable
What does Switzerland do better than US elections that you think the US needs to follow/copy?
Not having massively fraudulent elections obviously
Switzerland did invalidate a referendum in the town of Moutier from 2017.
A country of 8 million and one of 350 million are different
Troll.
If you "scaled" Switzerland to the US like you wanted, you should end up with over 40 invalidated elections over the last 10 years by that.
The US had around four that I found.
North Carolina's 9th Congressional District in 2018 was the biggest redo. There was also a city council election in NJ in 2020, Democrat mayoral primary in Bridgeport in 2023, and LA sheriff in 2023.
Either Switzerland is 10x worse than the US and not necessarily worth imitating on this matter (which would make your earlier reflexive "typical excuse" post where you thought this was healthcare and you could just go "Do it like Europe" a mistake - France has almost no mail-in voting, when did MAGA get to them), or US actual fraud is going around 10x undetected.
Oh you’re noticing people don’t treat your pontifications seriously. What could possibly explain this?
On April 25 2026 21:23 oBlade wrote: [quote] I'm still knees deep in trying to find a peer reviewed published scientific study that proves I'm not a horse.
[quote] It tells me that countries of 8 million and 350 million are different.
The US has had multiple invalidated and redone elections in the last 10 years.
You can be proud of being the "same" as that or read my post or your own article or at the very least look at this conveniently prepared picture which enumerates the dimensions they analyzed and absorb the fact that the score for "election integrity" in the report you found doesn't mean what you think it means to begin with, it's not an election security certificate, it's just a vague democracy index which is not helped by the fact there's no appendix of methods of how they scored anything:
Most of these factors are not to do with securing the vote.
There are two ways of thinking: One, that because we found some elections that were so bad they had to be redone, that means the system is working.
It is like seeing a bridge that cracked and going "Wahoo! It signaled us that it's broken instead of just collapsing immediately! Great success"
And then there's the other way of thinking. The crack is already the failure. The next issue is the cracks you don't see. This is harder if you don't check for cracks and further harder if you designed a bridge which inherently erases evidence of its own cracks at certain steps.
Oh yes the magical population excuse. Which oddly is couched in national population and not by state, but we’re also told x is unfeasible because the US is a confederation of multiple states who like to do things their own way.
Excuse for what?
For why the US can’t do x, y or z by virtue of its population, or can’t be compared to another locale by virtue of the same.
Most systems tend to be scalable
What does Switzerland do better than US elections that you think the US needs to follow/copy?
Not having massively fraudulent elections obviously
Switzerland did invalidate a referendum in the town of Moutier from 2017.
A country of 8 million and one of 350 million are different
Troll.
If you "scaled" Switzerland to the US like you wanted, you should end up with over 40 invalidated elections over the last 10 years by that.
The US had around four that I found.
North Carolina's 9th Congressional District in 2018 was the biggest redo. There was also a city council election in NJ in 2020, Democrat mayoral primary in Bridgeport in 2023, and LA sheriff in 2023.
Either Switzerland is 10x worse than the US and not necessarily worth imitating on this matter (which would make your earlier reflexive "typical excuse" post where you thought this was healthcare and you could just go "Do it like Europe" a mistake - France has almost no mail-in voting, when did MAGA get to them), or US actual fraud is going around 10x undetected.
Oh you’re noticing people don’t treat your pontifications seriously. What could possibly explain this?
I'm on your side, I don't think it makes sense to say voter ID is "unfeasible" in the wide, disparate US when it's so simple in someplace like Ireland. Congress retains their constitutionally delegated authority to regulate federal elections and they should use it to bring the US up to standard.
On April 25 2026 21:39 WombaT wrote: [quote] Oh yes the magical population excuse. Which oddly is couched in national population and not by state, but we’re also told x is unfeasible because the US is a confederation of multiple states who like to do things their own way.
Excuse for what?
For why the US can’t do x, y or z by virtue of its population, or can’t be compared to another locale by virtue of the same.
Most systems tend to be scalable
What does Switzerland do better than US elections that you think the US needs to follow/copy?
Not having massively fraudulent elections obviously
Switzerland did invalidate a referendum in the town of Moutier from 2017.
A country of 8 million and one of 350 million are different
Troll.
If you "scaled" Switzerland to the US like you wanted, you should end up with over 40 invalidated elections over the last 10 years by that.
The US had around four that I found.
North Carolina's 9th Congressional District in 2018 was the biggest redo. There was also a city council election in NJ in 2020, Democrat mayoral primary in Bridgeport in 2023, and LA sheriff in 2023.
Either Switzerland is 10x worse than the US and not necessarily worth imitating on this matter (which would make your earlier reflexive "typical excuse" post where you thought this was healthcare and you could just go "Do it like Europe" a mistake - France has almost no mail-in voting, when did MAGA get to them), or US actual fraud is going around 10x undetected.
Oh you’re noticing people don’t treat your pontifications seriously. What could possibly explain this?
I'm on your side, I don't think it makes sense to say voter ID is "unfeasible" in the wide, disparate US when it's so simple in someplace like Ireland. Congress retains their constitutionally delegated authority to regulate federal elections and they should use it to bring the US up to standard.
On April 25 2026 21:39 WombaT wrote: [quote] Oh yes the magical population excuse. Which oddly is couched in national population and not by state, but we’re also told x is unfeasible because the US is a confederation of multiple states who like to do things their own way.
Excuse for what?
For why the US can’t do x, y or z by virtue of its population, or can’t be compared to another locale by virtue of the same.
Most systems tend to be scalable
What does Switzerland do better than US elections that you think the US needs to follow/copy?
Not having massively fraudulent elections obviously
Switzerland did invalidate a referendum in the town of Moutier from 2017.
A country of 8 million and one of 350 million are different
Troll.
If you "scaled" Switzerland to the US like you wanted, you should end up with over 40 invalidated elections over the last 10 years by that.
The US had around four that I found.
North Carolina's 9th Congressional District in 2018 was the biggest redo. There was also a city council election in NJ in 2020, Democrat mayoral primary in Bridgeport in 2023, and LA sheriff in 2023.
Either Switzerland is 10x worse than the US and not necessarily worth imitating on this matter (which would make your earlier reflexive "typical excuse" post where you thought this was healthcare and you could just go "Do it like Europe" a mistake - France has almost no mail-in voting, when did MAGA get to them), or US actual fraud is going around 10x undetected.
Oh you’re noticing people don’t treat your pontifications seriously. What could possibly explain this?
I'm on your side, I don't think it makes sense to say voter ID is "unfeasible" in the wide, disparate US when it's so simple in someplace like Ireland. Congress retains their constitutionally delegated authority to regulate federal elections and they should use it to bring the US up to standard.
I 100% agree voting in the US should hit the highest global standards. 1. It should be a national (or local if only local election) holiday. 2. The required voter ID should be provided for free and can be gotten by a simple booking at any city center and has to have reasonable amount of slots on weekends and afternoons. 3. Early voting can be done prior to election day. 4. Post ballots are a standard part of the solution. 5. There should be a penalty fee for not voting at a full day of salary at minimum wage or higher. 6. The electoral college should be abolished. 7. Clear rules for how to draw voting districts should be written and a neutral party should redraw them. 8. First past the post should be abolished and replaced by a better functioning system. 9. Voting ballots should be sent out in advance and all citizens get it sent without needing to register.
I can't bother writing the rest of the things that needs fixing. Voter ID is one point in a long list where other issues are more important if you want to fix things.
On April 25 2026 22:23 LightSpectra wrote: New page in this thread about the same discussion, Republicans here have still offered zero evidence.
On April 25 2026 23:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: We now have baal calling people retarded and autistic, and oBlade calling people trolls. Wow.
The turn of phrase "Duh!" comes to mind. You all know better, just can't help yourselves though.
If you just link back to your own post a few dozen more times, we will have achieved socialism.
I would love to work toward achieving socialism (in the limited ways possible) here too! That's not what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about what we see dozens of examples over years of what you guys prefer to do instead. The perpetual foodfight with "middle schoolers", arguing with squirrels, swatting at Sartres, etc.
Being like "hey they threw food at me" in the middle of you incessantly perpetuating a food fight with them (that's your prerogative btw) is just pathetically preposterous.
I and others here believe that there is no widespread fraud in US elections. We have provided some amount of evidence to back up our claims. You can nitpick the methodology of the studies, say that you can't compare x and y etc. but at least we have provided some evidence.
Now either:
A) you believe there is widespread fraud in US elections and in this case, please post your evidence for that belief. Please note I said "widespread". Examples of small local frauds are not relevant as these are to be expected in every system (even in Switzerland as you stated).
B) you believe there is no widespread fraud in US elections and in this case, please explain how making it harder and more expensive to vote for everyone is a reasonable idea.
On April 14 2026 00:57 GreenHorizons wrote: I'll come back to this later if you'd like (or if you and Ender would prefer to take it to my Blog I suppose that'd be fine). You guys are just on the verge of having something resembling a real discussion about the future of the opposition to Trump/Republicans and I'd like to see that develop.
Do you not re-read your posts before hitting the button? How did you not clock how condescending this last paragraph is?
In all honesty, the biggest problem in communicating with you, besides the shitty attitude, is the sheer quantity of references to different concepts that you never bother to explain in your posts.
Which concepts are you struggling with? (note: "struggling" isn't pejorative, it's complimentary)
That's not condescension, that was observation. For a moment the discussion between each of you seemed to look like it was going to turn to disagreements about how best to get from where we are here, today, to a future where AOC (or another preferred candidate) is a front runner, and/or the policies (ideally non-reformist reforms) we all mutually like are at the forefront of the platform for the Democrat nominee.
That rapidly devolved back into some variations of "vote blue no matter who or else!" (except Swalwell, which I suppose might be worth discussing) before the first candidate has even declared for the primary.
EDIT: Also I realize now I forgot Kwark has been quite clear he thinks Democrats should nominate the oldest whitest guy they can, not an AOC or Harris or whatever.
On April 14 2026 03:53 GreenHorizons wrote: Seems like everyone that's opined (except maybe RenSC2) would prefer AOC over the other candidates, but not so much that they'd actually want to start making an effort to convince the people (and that's a lot more people than Newsom or Harris will need to convince) they'll need to agree with us and work to help make AOC the nominee and eventually president.
GH: Dems only offer token resistance to Republicans while basically losing on purpose to help Republicans with their agenda
Also GH: Why aren’t people working harder to make a woman of colour outsider the Democratic nominee
Are you trying to point out that I'm right or that the posters here aren't "Dems" so much as "independents" and/or "socialists" that believe Democrats are the only viable political body/strategy to even potentially move their interests forward?
Neither. You seem not to have noticed that the American population are deeply racist and sexist. That’s something that needs to be incorporated into your strategy. If you plan on doing a revolution before the next election then fine, voter prejudice is not an issue. But if you don’t then
we need to find us an old white male reality tv star or we’ll have another 4 years of Trump.
On April 21 2026 07:41 WombaT wrote: [quote] Yeah it is patently ridiculous to consider the politics of a place through the prism of how it actually functions
Why would anyone ever do that?
You say that sarcastically, but it's literally the argument I'm making about a leverage based theory of change (supported by the historical evidence) and an "elections/party" based theory of change that is basically a recent product of the political equivalent of a "diamonds are forever" propaganda campaign.
With "recent" you mean since the founding of your country,+ Show Spoiler +
right? Because there have been a bunch of changes to your constitution, but not much at all has changed about how Congress or the president are chosen.
The fact that the parties aren't stable and are, instead, descriptive of the main voting blocks in the country is, if anything, an argument against your thesis: burning down the apparatus and starting again will most likely lead to something within the currently achievable political spectrum, and not something wildly new, and the USA has probably not been further away from a communist revolution than it is right now, maybe ever.
Finally I understand you are piggybacking on the point about the political parties working for the elite and always having done so, in a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" kinda way. That's partially true but there is clearly a meaningful difference in ideologies between the parties. Maybe your ideology isn't reflected and everything east of social democracies is "basically fascism" in your book, but that's about as meaningful as a colourblind person claiming green is the same as red, because they can't see the difference anyway. Would I rather have less corporatism and lobbying? Hell yes. Does that mean all corporations are the same? Obviously not, and the choice between the parties isn't meaningless because they are both beholden to large donors. Lists like these make it quite clear what the lesser evil is: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors
Are elections going to solve it all? Almost certainly not. But that doesn't make them meaningless.
No, I'm talking about the distinct shift in how people understood politics in the US that came after the civil rights movement. I previously described it this way:
Doesn't matter what you want politically really, what you need to get it is leverage. Small d democratic majorities and elections are one aspect of how you get that leverage, but historically, they typically come at the end after the work on the ground has made the status quo less tolerable than giving in to at least some of the demands.
Since the Civil Rights Movement, the pitch was "Hey women and Black people! We're (mostly) letting you vote now! Isn't that great! This is how you are to make any changes politically now! No more of that silly mass disruption stuff until demands are met! You can have big fun protests, just make sure to keep them symbolic"
We got mass incarceration (with legal slavery), women lost bodily autonomy, the surveillance state is out of control, Nixon's EPA is being dismantled, and the list goes on.
The idea that lining up behind Democrats after they finally parted ways with their most virulent racists in the 60's as part of a democratic political block to accomplish the things the poor people's campaign was aiming at before the US government conspired to subvert the campaign and assassinate MLK jr. for it looking too promising has categorically failed.
Any and all progress that can be said to have been gained since then must be recognized as happening despite the Democrat party, not because of it.
That said, I agree with your belief that elections won't solve it all and aren't meaningless.
The thing is, being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights is a huge driver of quite a few of those kind of movements in the first place.
You’re almost framing it as some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met. + Show Spoiler +
And they tend to dissipate when momentum stalls as the kinda main goals that glue the broad coalition together, and we get into various stretch goals that are more niche.
Or to put it another way, a big driver of mass disruptive/revolutionary movements often isn’t to overturn a system, merely to be enfranchised within it. Plenty are more structurally transformative too of course but I think broadly in either instance you’ve got a handful of quite clear grievances that are sufficiently shared for some kind of critical mass of people to garner enough momentum to move the needle.
Not to downplay the importance of such movements, my position is rather the opposite. I just don’t see the appetite from Americans for radical transformation, nor am I sure what the ‘civil rights issue of our time’ is that could rally sufficient people to that banner.
Sort of?
Those aren't mutually exclusive. I'm pretty familiar with the history, so you know you're not bringing new information to my attention.
What exactly in the quoted post are you trying to dispute?
Your previous narrative almost presents these approaches as parallel if not directly oppositional.
I may be misunderstanding you on certain points, fair enough that may be on me.
I assume we agree that public sentiment and electoral politics don’t enjoy a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, the leverage is required but what is the pivot?
I think your characterisation of historic political movements is either incorrect, or alternatively I’m just reading you wrong. Which makes adoption into modern contexts strategically flawed, assuming I’m not reading you wrong.
It’s very frequently ‘I want to be in the club too’, and not ‘let’s destroy the club’, a movement pushes the Overton Window sufficiently that political, legal or cultural norms become broadly acceptable to the movement and it somewhat dissipates.
I think a minority in this thread would disagree with you on the importance of movements shifting the political ground, but a lot of your rhetoric seems to suggest just bypassing codified political structures because they’re broken. Or bypassing other things that characterise successful movements more generally.
If I’m misinterpreting I mean that’s somewhat on me but I don’t think I’m the only one somewhat confused as to what your vision of action encompasses
Let's start there.
I meant: "[being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights being] some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met." aren't mutually exclusive.
Are we understanding each other that far?
They’re not mutually exclusive, they are just different framings.
If person A’s goal is simply to be enfranchised in the electoralism machine, and that’s granted, it’s not some carrot or pseudo-bribe being dangled, it’s simply their ambitions being met. + Show Spoiler +
If person B’s goal is huge systemic change and their pressure gets the same concessions, it doesn’t meet their goals.
Certainly in the Northern Irish example, our Civil Right’s movement was mostly person As, with person Bs helping to push that along.
Your rhetoric seems to shit on boring old electoralism, and your evidence frequently invokes past movements whose actual goal was merely to be a meaningful part of that process.
If my read is off well, my bad
Okay.
Let's put/take "person A" from a real historical moment of "significant progress" in the US of your choice?
Either of them could pick that back up or anyone else could really. But you've all got important shitposting about the latest far-right nonsense to do and I understand you find that much more satisfying.
You could forget about Socialism for the moment if you will, I'm also talking about discussing plain lib/Dem/ilk ideas among yourselves.
Weirdly, I'm with GH on this. Stop feeding the stupid. There's no progress being made in this cesspool. You win no points. You've gained nothing. Stop. I want to participate in the thread, but what you've all been doing...fucking yuck.
On April 14 2026 00:57 GreenHorizons wrote: I'll come back to this later if you'd like (or if you and Ender would prefer to take it to my Blog I suppose that'd be fine). You guys are just on the verge of having something resembling a real discussion about the future of the opposition to Trump/Republicans and I'd like to see that develop.
Do you not re-read your posts before hitting the button? How did you not clock how condescending this last paragraph is?
In all honesty, the biggest problem in communicating with you, besides the shitty attitude, is the sheer quantity of references to different concepts that you never bother to explain in your posts.
Which concepts are you struggling with? (note: "struggling" isn't pejorative, it's complimentary)
That's not condescension, that was observation. For a moment the discussion between each of you seemed to look like it was going to turn to disagreements about how best to get from where we are here, today, to a future where AOC (or another preferred candidate) is a front runner, and/or the policies (ideally non-reformist reforms) we all mutually like are at the forefront of the platform for the Democrat nominee.
That rapidly devolved back into some variations of "vote blue no matter who or else!" (except Swalwell, which I suppose might be worth discussing) before the first candidate has even declared for the primary.
EDIT: Also I realize now I forgot Kwark has been quite clear he thinks Democrats should nominate the oldest whitest guy they can, not an AOC or Harris or whatever.
EDIT2:
On April 14 2026 06:17 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:41 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:21 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 03:53 GreenHorizons wrote: Seems like everyone that's opined (except maybe RenSC2) would prefer AOC over the other candidates, but not so much that they'd actually want to start making an effort to convince the people (and that's a lot more people than Newsom or Harris will need to convince) they'll need to agree with us and work to help make AOC the nominee and eventually president.
GH: Dems only offer token resistance to Republicans while basically losing on purpose to help Republicans with their agenda
Also GH: Why aren’t people working harder to make a woman of colour outsider the Democratic nominee
Are you trying to point out that I'm right or that the posters here aren't "Dems" so much as "independents" and/or "socialists" that believe Democrats are the only viable political body/strategy to even potentially move their interests forward?
Neither. You seem not to have noticed that the American population are deeply racist and sexist. That’s something that needs to be incorporated into your strategy. If you plan on doing a revolution before the next election then fine, voter prejudice is not an issue. But if you don’t then
we need to find us an old white male reality tv star or we’ll have another 4 years of Trump.
On April 21 2026 07:45 GreenHorizons wrote: [quote] You say that sarcastically, but it's literally the argument I'm making about a leverage based theory of change (supported by the historical evidence) and an "elections/party" based theory of change that is basically a recent product of the political equivalent of a "diamonds are forever" propaganda campaign.
With "recent" you mean since the founding of your country,+ Show Spoiler +
right? Because there have been a bunch of changes to your constitution, but not much at all has changed about how Congress or the president are chosen.
The fact that the parties aren't stable and are, instead, descriptive of the main voting blocks in the country is, if anything, an argument against your thesis: burning down the apparatus and starting again will most likely lead to something within the currently achievable political spectrum, and not something wildly new, and the USA has probably not been further away from a communist revolution than it is right now, maybe ever.
Finally I understand you are piggybacking on the point about the political parties working for the elite and always having done so, in a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" kinda way. That's partially true but there is clearly a meaningful difference in ideologies between the parties. Maybe your ideology isn't reflected and everything east of social democracies is "basically fascism" in your book, but that's about as meaningful as a colourblind person claiming green is the same as red, because they can't see the difference anyway. Would I rather have less corporatism and lobbying? Hell yes. Does that mean all corporations are the same? Obviously not, and the choice between the parties isn't meaningless because they are both beholden to large donors. Lists like these make it quite clear what the lesser evil is: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors
Are elections going to solve it all? Almost certainly not. But that doesn't make them meaningless.
No, I'm talking about the distinct shift in how people understood politics in the US that came after the civil rights movement. I previously described it this way:
Doesn't matter what you want politically really, what you need to get it is leverage. Small d democratic majorities and elections are one aspect of how you get that leverage, but historically, they typically come at the end after the work on the ground has made the status quo less tolerable than giving in to at least some of the demands.
Since the Civil Rights Movement, the pitch was "Hey women and Black people! We're (mostly) letting you vote now! Isn't that great! This is how you are to make any changes politically now! No more of that silly mass disruption stuff until demands are met! You can have big fun protests, just make sure to keep them symbolic"
We got mass incarceration (with legal slavery), women lost bodily autonomy, the surveillance state is out of control, Nixon's EPA is being dismantled, and the list goes on.
The idea that lining up behind Democrats after they finally parted ways with their most virulent racists in the 60's as part of a democratic political block to accomplish the things the poor people's campaign was aiming at before the US government conspired to subvert the campaign and assassinate MLK jr. for it looking too promising has categorically failed.
Any and all progress that can be said to have been gained since then must be recognized as happening despite the Democrat party, not because of it.
That said, I agree with your belief that elections won't solve it all and aren't meaningless.
The thing is, being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights is a huge driver of quite a few of those kind of movements in the first place.
You’re almost framing it as some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met. + Show Spoiler +
And they tend to dissipate when momentum stalls as the kinda main goals that glue the broad coalition together, and we get into various stretch goals that are more niche.
Or to put it another way, a big driver of mass disruptive/revolutionary movements often isn’t to overturn a system, merely to be enfranchised within it. Plenty are more structurally transformative too of course but I think broadly in either instance you’ve got a handful of quite clear grievances that are sufficiently shared for some kind of critical mass of people to garner enough momentum to move the needle.
Not to downplay the importance of such movements, my position is rather the opposite. I just don’t see the appetite from Americans for radical transformation, nor am I sure what the ‘civil rights issue of our time’ is that could rally sufficient people to that banner.
Sort of?
Those aren't mutually exclusive. I'm pretty familiar with the history, so you know you're not bringing new information to my attention.
What exactly in the quoted post are you trying to dispute?
Your previous narrative almost presents these approaches as parallel if not directly oppositional.
I may be misunderstanding you on certain points, fair enough that may be on me.
I assume we agree that public sentiment and electoral politics don’t enjoy a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, the leverage is required but what is the pivot?
I think your characterisation of historic political movements is either incorrect, or alternatively I’m just reading you wrong. Which makes adoption into modern contexts strategically flawed, assuming I’m not reading you wrong.
It’s very frequently ‘I want to be in the club too’, and not ‘let’s destroy the club’, a movement pushes the Overton Window sufficiently that political, legal or cultural norms become broadly acceptable to the movement and it somewhat dissipates.
I think a minority in this thread would disagree with you on the importance of movements shifting the political ground, but a lot of your rhetoric seems to suggest just bypassing codified political structures because they’re broken. Or bypassing other things that characterise successful movements more generally.
If I’m misinterpreting I mean that’s somewhat on me but I don’t think I’m the only one somewhat confused as to what your vision of action encompasses
Let's start there.
I meant: "[being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights being] some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met." aren't mutually exclusive.
Are we understanding each other that far?
They’re not mutually exclusive, they are just different framings.
If person A’s goal is simply to be enfranchised in the electoralism machine, and that’s granted, it’s not some carrot or pseudo-bribe being dangled, it’s simply their ambitions being met. + Show Spoiler +
If person B’s goal is huge systemic change and their pressure gets the same concessions, it doesn’t meet their goals.
Certainly in the Northern Irish example, our Civil Right’s movement was mostly person As, with person Bs helping to push that along.
Your rhetoric seems to shit on boring old electoralism, and your evidence frequently invokes past movements whose actual goal was merely to be a meaningful part of that process.
If my read is off well, my bad
Okay.
Let's put/take "person A" from a real historical moment of "significant progress" in the US of your choice?
Either of them could pick that back up or anyone else could really. But you've all got important shitposting about the latest far-right nonsense to do and I understand you find that much more satisfying.
You could forget about Socialism for the moment if you will, I'm also talking about discussing plain lib/Dem/ilk ideas among yourselves.
Or, alternatively people couldn’t be arsed engaging with you based off your long posting history and aren’t especially interested in indulging you and what you think should be being discussed
On April 26 2026 01:00 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Weirdly, I'm with GH on this. Stop feeding the stupid. There's no progress being made in this cesspool. You win no points. You've gained nothing. Stop. I want to participate in the thread, but what you've all been doing...fucking yuck.
I've said this several times already but I don't participate in this thread because I think three time rapist voters will have a change of heart about literally anything, but so those same people don't have free rein to spread lies and radicalize anyone impressionable who happens to click on this thread.
If you have something you wanna discuss, go ahead and start the discussion, nobody who wants to participate in that is going to be afraid of interrupting the bad faith brigade.
On April 25 2026 01:18 Introvert wrote: Once again, as I asked Falling the other day, it would be great for anyone to provide an example of a currently enacted voter ID law they think is too restrictive. Apparently we can talk about anything except actual examples.
I'm not sure why you think we are not talking about actual examples as though we are dodging. There might be too restrictive laws at the state level and there might not be. But you are arguing about something no one else was talking about.
When Republicans say "We want X" That means they currently do not have it, right?
If it is something that Republicans want that they do not have, we should be looking at proposed laws that Republicans say would get the X that they want, right?
So then when criticism is levelled at the proposed laws (or executive orders) being pushed by Republicans as being too restrictive, how is the counter to look at some state law that is already on the book? It's a complete non-sequitur.
And when I looked at the proposed law, it is most certainly most restrictive than, for instance, the three tiered system that Canada has.
I was equally confused by Introvert's wording in that post. If Introvert had written it as "Setting aside the debate on hypothetically adding a photo ID requirement for a minute, are there any currently enacted voter ID laws/regulations that anyone thinks is too restrictive? If so, why?" then I think some people might engage. But Introvert's wording was weirdly accusatory, especially when a conservative was the one who brought up photo ID in the first place, and the rest of us were just responding. These quotes in particular were aggressive and confusing to me: "Apparently we can talk about anything except actual examples"; "What is happening here is either ignorance or willful conflating"; and "You could argue about OTHER voter integrity laws". I don't think I read anything over the past few pages that came off like we were all going to refuse to talk about current voter ID laws.
Introvert, since you brought it up, are there any current election rules / voter integrity laws that you would like to discuss? Anything you think could be improved upon?
My general suggestion would be to do what Florida does. Very secure, and very fast counting. They really turned it around after 2000. My main things are voter ID, not automatic mailing of ballots, and less then one month of early vote. Some states I think are doing 6+ weeks now? It's insane.
Ah, interesting! Three follow-up questions:
1. What's the downside of automatically mailing ballots out to voters?
2. Why would it be better to have fewer weeks available for early voting?
3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?
Mailing ballots to people and places that did not ask for them is an...invitation I'd rather not make.
Okay, that's fair. Would you be okay with an opt-in program, where a voter could choose to receive a mailed ballot if they preferred it? That way it's not automatically extra mail for every voter, since some voters might not want it, but it's available as an option for those who do?
Too long an early voting period means sometimes things happen before election day that voters might like to know. But once they've dealt with their ballot early they are less likely to bother changing it. Elections happen on particular days. It's not the 1820s anymore, you don't need that much time.
Shouldn't that be a choice each individual voter could make though? The government isn't forcing voters to vote a month early, right? If a person was truly undecided with a month left before the election, couldn't that person just decide to wait a little longer, if they wanted? The vast majority of all voters obviously know who they're going to vote for way in advance, so it sounds like a beneficial option for anyone who wants to send in their vote and have one fewer errand to remember and run in November. You're right that most people "don't need that much time", but if a person wants to vote on the day of the election, or a week early, or a month early, I don't really see a downside to being flexible there.
I haven't looked into any literature specially but from what I've read it seems like most people who study such things think it's a pretty good system. It is generous within the rules. Famously early voting within Florida is very popular. But you still have to go through a security process. They even report turnout exactly through the day each day (from what I recall) which gives people a very good sense of what is happening. They know how many ballots are to be counted before they even start (early voting ends a few days before election day in most places). Maybe California changed this but I believe they do not know, and it makes sense because they also allow ballots to be received after election day, which if you have a easy, long early vote period is not needed.
While I appreciate the response here, I don't think it addressed my question, which was "3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?" I asked that because one of your three "main things" was voter ID, and I still don't see any beneficial impact of it. I'm not aware of any evidence either - I'm pretty sure all 50 states have secure elections, regardless of their rules and requirements - and while I agree that it's great that Florida reports up-to-date turnout throughout the day, that's not the same thing as preventing voter fraud. Also, voter ID isn't even a key component in the ability to report up-to-date turnout. Florida would still run smoothly and transparently without voter ID... maybe even more efficiently, since removing a voter ID requirement would allow for faster lines (less time per voter is needed when you don't need to check ID). And since we know that there's no widespread voter fraud that needs to be prevented with any extra regulations, it sounds like voter ID is pretty redundant and not crucial for anything in particular.
If you want to vote by mail you should have to request it.
it's not about being undecided, it's about changing circumstances, or events, or statements that might cause one to want to change their vote.
All the things I listed are security measures. Given that, *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud (although it seems like local stories pop up pretty often, I think recently in NJ actually) you are asking for an effect you don't think you are even going to find lol. But as I said the other day, doing easy things that make it more secure make it harder to claim fraud in the future as well. And you prevent things you don't even know about.
Florida is a good example because none of those reasons you gave apply. Voting is incredibly easy, everyone knows how it works, and turnout in the state is super high. There is no trouble with long lines. I like the locked door example someone gave earlier. Everything hinges on there being no fraud, but also we're going to try and remove all the barriers to fraud. Seems pretty silly.
I'm fine with needing to request vote-by-mail. I don't think we're in disagreement there.
I don't think we'll see exactly eye-to-eye on allowing for very early voting, but I think that's fine: You're prioritizing a hypothetical need to change one's vote, and I don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. I'm prioritizing a hypothetical maximal schedule flexibility, and you don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. Whether early voting is 2 weeks or 4 weeks or 6 weeks isn't the biggest deal to me; it might become a bigger deal to me if I learn about any states where voters are insisting they need more time to vote early because of some specific reason.
" *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud " I think we're the furthest apart on the subject of voter ID. I'd be interested in hearing Florida's safeguard against a massive amount of locusts disrupting Election Day, or how Florida would protect against assassins stealing all their mail-in ballots. Because, *so far as we know*, there isn't an enormous amount of those things happening, but better safe than sorry, right? Why not have three locks on the door instead of one? That's how I feel you're treating this non-existent threat of widespread voter fraud, and given that this push for voter ID came from Trump and other Republican leaders fabricating bad-faith claims about election integrity, I feel more passionate about pushing back on this. They're purposely trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as previously discussed.
As I've said before, if every voter automatically receives a free, immediate "voter ID" upon registering to vote and before every election (like a paper receipt or an email confirmation or a QR code or whatever can be easily, instantly, universally given out), I'm actually fine with people bringing it on Election Day, but Republicans suspiciously aren't advocating for the most convenient voter ID options possible. And it's painfully obvious that even if national voter ID laws were implemented, Republicans would still complain about election security the next time they lost, and then there would be another made-up excuse. They'll never be satisfied until all their cheating guarantees wins every time, and we know this because voter ID laws aren't the only examples of Republicans trying to rig the system.
I know you don't want our conversation to descend into just talking about voter ID, since that topic has been beaten to death over the past few days, so I'll respect both of our time and just say I'm happy we found some common ground (mail-in voting is fine as long as you request it) and that one of our two disagreements can lead to a reasonable compromise (we should allow a period of early voting that's long enough to be flexible for most voters, and short enough that most voters won't be voting before they're actually set on a candidate).
Ok, if you'd like we can end on agreement but i must make teo small points.
Republican states accept various forms of ID and I don’t see anything unreasonable about it. You csn just Google what Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc will accept. It is very convenient.
I think you are vastly undervaluing having procedures in place that help the electorate feel it is secure. Trump is all the focus but remember after 2016 for example polling said many dems thought Russia changed vote totals. And the cyber security of our elections infrastructure is important too. The system's legitimacy rests on both real *and* perceived fairness.
On April 25 2026 01:18 Introvert wrote: Once again, as I asked Falling the other day, it would be great for anyone to provide an example of a currently enacted voter ID law they think is too restrictive. Apparently we can talk about anything except actual examples.
I'm not sure why you think we are not talking about actual examples as though we are dodging. There might be too restrictive laws at the state level and there might not be. But you are arguing about something no one else was talking about.
When Republicans say "We want X" That means they currently do not have it, right?
If it is something that Republicans want that they do not have, we should be looking at proposed laws that Republicans say would get the X that they want, right?
So then when criticism is levelled at the proposed laws (or executive orders) being pushed by Republicans as being too restrictive, how is the counter to look at some state law that is already on the book? It's a complete non-sequitur.
And when I looked at the proposed law, it is most certainly most restrictive than, for instance, the three tiered system that Canada has.
I was equally confused by Introvert's wording in that post. If Introvert had written it as "Setting aside the debate on hypothetically adding a photo ID requirement for a minute, are there any currently enacted voter ID laws/regulations that anyone thinks is too restrictive? If so, why?" then I think some people might engage. But Introvert's wording was weirdly accusatory, especially when a conservative was the one who brought up photo ID in the first place, and the rest of us were just responding. These quotes in particular were aggressive and confusing to me: "Apparently we can talk about anything except actual examples"; "What is happening here is either ignorance or willful conflating"; and "You could argue about OTHER voter integrity laws". I don't think I read anything over the past few pages that came off like we were all going to refuse to talk about current voter ID laws.
Introvert, since you brought it up, are there any current election rules / voter integrity laws that you would like to discuss? Anything you think could be improved upon?
My general suggestion would be to do what Florida does. Very secure, and very fast counting. They really turned it around after 2000. My main things are voter ID, not automatic mailing of ballots, and less then one month of early vote. Some states I think are doing 6+ weeks now? It's insane.
Ah, interesting! Three follow-up questions:
1. What's the downside of automatically mailing ballots out to voters?
2. Why would it be better to have fewer weeks available for early voting?
3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?
Mailing ballots to people and places that did not ask for them is an...invitation I'd rather not make.
Okay, that's fair. Would you be okay with an opt-in program, where a voter could choose to receive a mailed ballot if they preferred it? That way it's not automatically extra mail for every voter, since some voters might not want it, but it's available as an option for those who do?
Too long an early voting period means sometimes things happen before election day that voters might like to know. But once they've dealt with their ballot early they are less likely to bother changing it. Elections happen on particular days. It's not the 1820s anymore, you don't need that much time.
Shouldn't that be a choice each individual voter could make though? The government isn't forcing voters to vote a month early, right? If a person was truly undecided with a month left before the election, couldn't that person just decide to wait a little longer, if they wanted? The vast majority of all voters obviously know who they're going to vote for way in advance, so it sounds like a beneficial option for anyone who wants to send in their vote and have one fewer errand to remember and run in November. You're right that most people "don't need that much time", but if a person wants to vote on the day of the election, or a week early, or a month early, I don't really see a downside to being flexible there.
I haven't looked into any literature specially but from what I've read it seems like most people who study such things think it's a pretty good system. It is generous within the rules. Famously early voting within Florida is very popular. But you still have to go through a security process. They even report turnout exactly through the day each day (from what I recall) which gives people a very good sense of what is happening. They know how many ballots are to be counted before they even start (early voting ends a few days before election day in most places). Maybe California changed this but I believe they do not know, and it makes sense because they also allow ballots to be received after election day, which if you have a easy, long early vote period is not needed.
While I appreciate the response here, I don't think it addressed my question, which was "3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?" I asked that because one of your three "main things" was voter ID, and I still don't see any beneficial impact of it. I'm not aware of any evidence either - I'm pretty sure all 50 states have secure elections, regardless of their rules and requirements - and while I agree that it's great that Florida reports up-to-date turnout throughout the day, that's not the same thing as preventing voter fraud. Also, voter ID isn't even a key component in the ability to report up-to-date turnout. Florida would still run smoothly and transparently without voter ID... maybe even more efficiently, since removing a voter ID requirement would allow for faster lines (less time per voter is needed when you don't need to check ID). And since we know that there's no widespread voter fraud that needs to be prevented with any extra regulations, it sounds like voter ID is pretty redundant and not crucial for anything in particular.
If you want to vote by mail you should have to request it.
it's not about being undecided, it's about changing circumstances, or events, or statements that might cause one to want to change their vote.
All the things I listed are security measures. Given that, *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud (although it seems like local stories pop up pretty often, I think recently in NJ actually) you are asking for an effect you don't think you are even going to find lol. But as I said the other day, doing easy things that make it more secure make it harder to claim fraud in the future as well. And you prevent things you don't even know about.
Florida is a good example because none of those reasons you gave apply. Voting is incredibly easy, everyone knows how it works, and turnout in the state is super high. There is no trouble with long lines. I like the locked door example someone gave earlier. Everything hinges on there being no fraud, but also we're going to try and remove all the barriers to fraud. Seems pretty silly.
I'm fine with needing to request vote-by-mail. I don't think we're in disagreement there.
I don't think we'll see exactly eye-to-eye on allowing for very early voting, but I think that's fine: You're prioritizing a hypothetical need to change one's vote, and I don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. I'm prioritizing a hypothetical maximal schedule flexibility, and you don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. Whether early voting is 2 weeks or 4 weeks or 6 weeks isn't the biggest deal to me; it might become a bigger deal to me if I learn about any states where voters are insisting they need more time to vote early because of some specific reason.
" *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud " I think we're the furthest apart on the subject of voter ID. I'd be interested in hearing Florida's safeguard against a massive amount of locusts disrupting Election Day, or how Florida would protect against assassins stealing all their mail-in ballots. Because, *so far as we know*, there isn't an enormous amount of those things happening, but better safe than sorry, right? Why not have three locks on the door instead of one? That's how I feel you're treating this non-existent threat of widespread voter fraud, and given that this push for voter ID came from Trump and other Republican leaders fabricating bad-faith claims about election integrity, I feel more passionate about pushing back on this. They're purposely trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as previously discussed.
As I've said before, if every voter automatically receives a free, immediate "voter ID" upon registering to vote and before every election (like a paper receipt or an email confirmation or a QR code or whatever can be easily, instantly, universally given out), I'm actually fine with people bringing it on Election Day, but Republicans suspiciously aren't advocating for the most convenient voter ID options possible. And it's painfully obvious that even if national voter ID laws were implemented, Republicans would still complain about election security the next time they lost, and then there would be another made-up excuse. They'll never be satisfied until all their cheating guarantees wins every time, and we know this because voter ID laws aren't the only examples of Republicans trying to rig the system.
I know you don't want our conversation to descend into just talking about voter ID, since that topic has been beaten to death over the past few days, so I'll respect both of our time and just say I'm happy we found some common ground (mail-in voting is fine as long as you request it) and that one of our two disagreements can lead to a reasonable compromise (we should allow a period of early voting that's long enough to be flexible for most voters, and short enough that most voters won't be voting before they're actually set on a candidate).
Ok, if you'd like we can end on agreement but i must make teo small points.
Republican states accept various forms of ID and I don’t see anything unreasonable about it. You csn just Google what Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc will accept. It is very convenient.
I think you are vastly undervaluing having procedures in place that help the electorate feel it is secure. Trump is all the focus but remember after 2016 for example polling said many dems thought Russia changed vote totals. And the cyber security of our elections infrastructure is important too. The system's legitimacy rests on both real *and* perceived fairness.
On April 26 2026 00:31 Geiko wrote: I and others here believe that there is no widespread fraud in US elections. We have provided some amount of evidence to back up our claims. You can nitpick the methodology of the studies, say that you can't compare x and y etc. but at least we have provided some evidence.
Now either:
A) you believe there is widespread fraud in US elections and in this case, please post your evidence for that belief. Please note I said "widespread". Examples of small local frauds are not relevant as these are to be expected in every system (even in Switzerland as you stated).
Literal entire elections having to be invalidated and redone is not something to take for granted.
That is not something that just has to happen sometimes. We have different starting points of what's acceptable. "Widespread" just means "yeah but at least it hasn't happened for a PRESIDENTIAL election yet." So comforting.
I know no modern cases in France or Germany or Ireland of elections being thrown out due to cheating.
The minute you allow that, you need to prove everything else was valid again. Reason is the minute the 3rd District's election gets discovered to have been swayed by fraud and invalidated and redone and that comes out in the news, everyone in the 2nd and 4th Districts is wondering whether this voting thing is a scam or not and what the point is. A Congressional District. An election for a seat. In Congress. No big deal, because it's not "widespread." Having a hard time taking this seriously. If 10 Congressional seats had to have their elections redone would that be widespread enough for me to get European permission to care, or would it be a great success of election oversight that they found all 10 and there's definitely no more, pinky promise?
You do not want to have to hold redo elections because in redoing a close election you get different turnout and can get a different result anyway. You should want the issue to never get that far.
On April 26 2026 00:31 Geiko wrote: B) you believe there is no widespread fraud in US elections and in this case, please explain how making it harder and more expensive to vote for everyone is a reasonable idea.
So dramatic. It should not be, and doesn't need to be, more expensive to vote. Nobody said otherwise. Having ID is not bankrupting democracies out here. Or maybe try and picket most of the rest of Europe for not being cheap enough to vote in because they require an ID.
It should be hard to vote more than once, and to vote as people other than yourself.
"Widespread" just means "yeah but at least it hasn't happened for a PRESIDENTIAL election yet." So comforting.
No, not widespread only means that it is probably not zero and if it exists it is not significant/ outcome determinative. And I am arguing 'not widepread' because I have no desire to argue that there is 'not one instance of fraud'.
1) because that's unreasonable standard for any system and definitely an unreasonable standard to require an overhaul of an entire system. 2) I have no interest in making an argument using absolute terms like 'always' and 'never' which can be overthrown by finding one counter-example from some county in the 80's. 3) It can't be that widespread when the best examples I've ever come across were Republicans/ MAGA trying to prove the system was fraudulent... and then got caught. And the only other examples that get trotted out in the wider public is the crazy conspiracies from Trump and MAGA with boxes being shipped in- but the evidence is doctored videos that clips out that the boxes were in the building all along.
On April 26 2026 00:03 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Voter ID works fine in Canada.
Which is what I've said from the very beginning. If they want robust Voter ID laws, just borrow ours. It works great. But that's not what the party of Trump wants or pushes. They want and push to limit access to mail in ballots because they got bad feels when Trump looked like he was winning and then the mail in ballots favoured Biden (as expected.) And because MAGA felt bad, they felt there was fraud and then fell for a bunch of fraudulent 'evidence' proving their feelings.
On April 26 2026 01:00 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Weirdly, I'm with GH on this. Stop feeding the stupid. There's no progress being made in this cesspool. You win no points. You've gained nothing. Stop. I want to participate in the thread, but what you've all been doing...fucking yuck.
I don’t know what gain you were expecting. The critique that we’re getting nowhere implies a realistic expectation that the activity could have gotten us somewhere. We’ve made exactly as much progress as we would have in the best case scenario.
EPT
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