American Politics Discussion Thread

[BING_XI_LAO]

Apparently a Georgia audit still verified signatures on the envelopes by themselves, since you can check for fake signatures and you can check that #ballots = #envelopes.
But then again - even with valid envelopes, wouldn't it have been possible, if you have a clique of fraudsters operating in locked offices at 2am, to systematically replace the "wrong" kind of ballots with the "right" ones, after their removal from the envelopes. It's the kind of theory that feeds off those long, long delays.
I hardly know anything about this kind of thing, but I imagine that for a truly investigable election, you'd need names attached to votes and to be able to call up a random selection of voters and ask them if they really voted that way.

[Mjmd]

I imagine random selection is part of it; auditors love random selections trust me. Also, counts of elections are always done with multiple people present including representatives from each party. One of the conspiracy theories down in Georgia is because they were evacuated temporarily.

[BING_XI_LAO]

So about this Mar-a-Lago raid... I was pretty angry about it when I first posted here hence the rant about the JFK assassination. I assumed they actually had a plan, but maybe it's a case of Brandon gonna Brandon.

It seems to have turned into a damp squib? Especially that nuclear stuff, that sounds overbaked and grasping at straws.
Apparently they did take two valid passports, and some say that's a hint toward an indictment, so is this going to come to anything? And if there are charges, will they go through bodies controlled by midterm election outcomes?

And now Trump says they sent him the two passports back. So why take them in the first place? I'm no more an expert on what an FBI raid should look like than on administering an election, but isn't this a half-baked clusterfuck?

[Mjmd]

You have to remember its not like they had time to go through 27 boxes of documents while serving the warrant. If Trump had has passports with other documents they may not even have known they had.

I know the whole "the took his passports he is in trouble thing" has been circulating on the internet, but honestly people get overhyped pretty easy.

[Charriu]

Apparently a Georgia audit still verified signatures on the envelopes by themselves, since you can check for fake signatures and you can check that #ballots = #envelopes.
But then again - even with valid envelopes, wouldn't it have been possible, if you have a clique of fraudsters operating in locked offices at 2am, to systematically replace the "wrong" kind of ballots with the "right" ones, after their removal from the envelopes. It's the kind of theory that feeds off those long, long delays.
I hardly know anything about this kind of thing, but I imagine that for a truly investigable election, you'd need names attached to votes and to be able to call up a random selection of voters and ask them if they really voted that way.

This is actually why mail-in and standard voting is more secure. To achieve this kind of fraud that swings elections you need more and more people. The more people you have the less likely they keep this a secret

[GeneralKilCavalry]

So about this Mar-a-Lago raid... I was pretty angry about it when I first posted here hence the rant about the JFK assassination. I assumed they actually had a plan, but maybe it's a case of Brandon gonna Brandon.

It seems to have turned into a damp squib? Especially that nuclear stuff, that sounds overbaked and grasping at straws.
Apparently they did take two valid passports, and some say that's a hint toward an indictment, so is this going to come to anything? And if there are charges, will they go through bodies controlled by midterm election outcomes?

And now Trump says they sent him the two passports back. So why take them in the first place? I'm no more an expert on what an FBI raid should look like than on administering an election, but isn't this a half-baked clusterfuck?

Step 1, get warrant to search for highly classified documents.
Step 2, find said documents.
Step 3, in order to maintain integrity of evidence, take everything covered by the warrant in boxes.
Step 4, find passports.
Step 5, return passports.

Nothingburger

[Mjmd]

Lez Cheeney losing sucked up a lot of the media attention.

But Rusty Bower speaker of AZ house of representatives lost as well. Republicans who stood up and helped preserve our democracy the last time controls were pushed are almost all gone. Do we think the ones who replaced them will hold the line the next time Trump or another on-high republican asks them to overturn an election? 

One of the ways its easy to identify the 2020 as a coup attempt is that a lot of republicans have told us it was a coup attempt including Bower.

Here is a Guardian article with a lot of the interview they did with Bower.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022...epublicans

[Gustaran]

Republicans who stood up and helped preserve our democracy the last time controls were pushed are almost all gone.

That is the problem and why I personally think the US democracy is going to become completely dysfunctional in the future. Some people think when Trump is gone, the problem will be solved, but I believe Trump is only a symptom.

A two-party-system can only work if both parties are willing to cooperate and adhere to unspoken democratic rules. The GOP have shown they have no interest in that. Many people that supported the insurrection are still there and incredibly a large part of the GOP base are fine with that.
Accountability has gone out of the window. Which GOP politician is going to care about rules when it's much easier to do what you want and claim all action taken against you is fake news or a political hit job by the radical left as long as your base will happily believe everything you say?

At the same time, the general US public doesn't really seem to care very much either. The only way to force reform and make it clear dismantling of democracy will never be accepted would be a landslide GOP loss, but lo and behold: Republicans may very well win the House. It's a bit difficult to argue that an insurrection is political suicide if it leads to a win in the next election.

This is a very interesting article about possible future scenarios:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...se/670580/

[superdeath]

Every GoP/republican person ive talked to all state that the insurrection was nothing but a democrat false-flag operation. None of them support what happened, they just think that they are being targeted and falsely accused BY the democrats.

[T-hawk]

Some people think when Trump is gone, the problem will be solved, but I believe Trump is only a symptom.

I'll agree with this. The haters are already trying to spin up a "DeSantis is worse than Trump" fear machine, on no grounds whatsoever.

At the same time, the general US public doesn't really seem to care very much either.

They don't care about stuff like Jan 6th or the FBI raid because it doesn't affect their lives. What they care about is the Democratic fuckups that do: runaway prices and inflation, consumer-hostile energy policy in the name of climate alarmism, schools controlled by the unions while failing the kids and parents (why VA flipped governors), masks and vaccines forced on toddlers, jobs and travel lost over blatantly illegal vaccine mandates. Swing voters don't care which party makes more heinous headlines, they care about which one is fucking up their daily lives, and all of that (except abortion) points in the same direction.