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25 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

Lots of polls ask people which side they are on.  How many ask why?

 

 I've decided to be convinced that Biden and Harris are/were the most popular public choice for their respective offices, all the rational people say that.

Edited by tadmjones
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There are reasons why someone might win without being most popular, such as being everyone's second choice, or being perceived as having the best chance to beat the main opponent.  This applies to both popular choice and rivals dropping out.

I don't know how many people, if any, claim Harris was the most popular choice.  But she was certainly Biden's choice, for whatever reason.

 

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9 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

You moved the goalposts,, changing "most" to "more".

In a two man race the more is the most, but yeah my bad.  Biden got the most popular votes ever. Biden , by vote count was more popular, than Obama.

Edited by tadmjones
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On 5/2/2023 at 2:05 PM, necrovore said:

Most of the court cases brought by Trump failed because of judges refusing to look at the evidence on the grounds that it would be "catastrophic" for them to overturn an election -- on any basis.

Did the judges refuse to try the cases at all, or did they merely refuse to grant preliminary injunctions?  What exactly did they say?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Found some interesting articles via Zero Hedge. (Zero Hedge is an aggregator of news and opinion from many other sources.) I think these first two articles go together:

(1) what happened to the "red wave" in 2022? Basically the Democrats were able to mobilize "unlikely voters" who were ignored in the polls because of being unlikely, but this was mostly done only in certain states: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mystery-midterm-what-happened-red-wave

(2) how ERIC and CEIR are being used to "get out the vote" but only for Democrats: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/voter-registration-machine-flipping-states-blue

These go together because the second may be the mechanism by which the first is accomplished.

Also I found an article about voter fraud in Wisconsin: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/150000-votes-2020-election-not-tied-valid-address-wisconsin-election-watchdog. Curious that the evidence should "disappear" like it has.

(Note that due to a possible bug concerning links, I don't think I can edit this post if it is wrong...)

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6 hours ago, necrovore said:

. . . 2022? . . .

Perhaps the reactionary outlawing of abortion and bootlicking the modern witchdoctors by Republican candidates had something to do with it. Trump blamed failure of anti-abortionists to show up to vote.* And he blamed their boosting of "extreme" anti-abortion measures at the State level for backlash additional to the overthrow of Roe.

It is time (2024), as ever, to vote against any anti-abortionist candidates; at least don't vote for them.

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6 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Perhaps the reactionary outlawing of abortion and bootlicking the modern witchdoctors by Republican candidates had something to do with it. Trump blamed failure of anti-abortionists to show up to vote.* And he blamed their boosting of "extreme" anti-abortion measures at the State level for backlash additional to the overthrow of Roe.

It is time (2024), as ever, to vote against any anti-abortionist candidates; at least don't vote for them.

The article itself has something to say about that:

Quote

The problem is that the highly publicized Dobbs decision was handed down in late June and a draft of the decision had been leaked about seven weeks earlier, in the first week of May. The controversy was in full fury more than five months before Election Day and several months before voting in states offering early voting options. Any effect the abortion issue had on vote choices or turnout decisions of potential voters had more than enough time to be reflected in polling and election expectations well before Election Day or early voting. As such, like the many other existing stable conditions of the election, it does not explain the November surprise.

That being said, I do think the abortion issue is a giant footgun for the Republicans, and there have been articles to the effect that Republicans would get more support from the general public by dropping the issue.

It will be disappointing, and perhaps even alarming, if 2024 shapes up to be a choice between two dictators.

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1 hour ago, necrovore said:

. . .

That being said, I do think the abortion issue is a giant footgun for the Republicans, and there have been articles to the effect that Republicans would get more support from the general public by dropping the issue.

It will be disappointing, and perhaps even alarming, if 2024 shapes up to be a choice between two dictators.

As I recall across my lifetime, the candidates of the two parties spent most of their political campaigns sloganeering that the reason to voted for them was that they were not the other guy.

The Democrats this time will surely be keeping the abortion issue salient, which is not a puffed-up issue, like which public restroom to go to, but a real one, coming down to metaphysics and theory of individual rights. Close to 20% of we voters, on either side, have taken it for our decisive issue in any Presidential or Senate race for decades, even when the Parties had not emphasized it in the general election.

I surely wish one of the Presidential nominees would make a balanced federal budget their top issue in the 2024 campaign (and not in some plan for a mythical ten years down the road that never comes). We can be pretty sure, however, that most of the campaign money in the general election will be spent on smearing the opponent, and mostly with simply name-calling.

It was not so long ago that there was intelligence on both sides in at least the Presidential television debates. In that, I think a really good debate would be between Nikki Haley and Elizabeth Warren. Wrong as either is, they are intelligent and good debaters. 

However much the leading candidates for the nominations at present would like to take steps towards dictatorship (or however much they simply turn a blind eye to the circumstance that their policies contribute to that drift), they and most of their followers qualify only as proto-fascist, not themselves would-be dictators. Proto-fascist was the term Ayn Rand applied to the George Wallace campaign for President in 1968, for specific reasons she spelled out, and it is the term right for the attitude and some positions bannered by Mr. Trump and some factions among his supporters. On the Democrats' Left side of American politics in recent years, their idea of socialist ideals (mostly mere slogans in the case of the Representative from Queens) is enormously scaled back from what left-socialism in America meant in the first seven decades of the last century. Today's watered-down "let's help suffering people and the environment and feel virtuous" (with other people's money, and truly not virtuous even if the money had been their own) is hardly the old American democratic socialism.*

Edited by Boydstun
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On 5/22/2023 at 6:09 PM, necrovore said:

(1) what happened to the "red wave" in 2022? Basically the Democrats were able to mobilize "unlikely voters" who were ignored in the polls because of being unlikely, but this was mostly done only in certain states: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mystery-midterm-what-happened-red-wave

(2) how ERIC and CEIR are being used to "get out the vote" but only for Democrats: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/voter-registration-machine-flipping-states-blue

These go together because the second may be the mechanism by which the first is accomplished.

It is the Republicans' responsibility to get out the Republican vote.  If the Democrats did a better job, this does not make a stolen election.

 

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14 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

It is the Republicans' responsibility to get out the Republican vote.  If the Democrats did a better job, this does not make a stolen election.

The Democrats are doing it dishonestly in this case. They represent ERIC to the states as non-partisan, but that isn't true.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 11/21/2020 at 4:25 PM, tadmjones said:

it is beyond obvious that the “media” colluded with Biden’s campaign

Are you claiming that news companies were in contact with the campaign to coordinate on behalf of the campaign? That the new companies and the campaign had oral or written conversations in which they shared information, strategies and plans?

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On 6/10/2023 at 7:22 PM, tadmjones said:

It seems the top founders or driving individuals in the organization are leftist activists.

You say "the" top founders, so I would take that to mean all of the top founders. Which particular founders are you referring to? And none or, or very few of, the top founders were not leftist activists? And, didn't some of the originally participating states have Republican controlled or Republican leaning state governments? Were those Republicans involved in ERIC also leftist activists?

/

The video at your link is instructive. The ERIC executive was completely honest and forthcoming, with nothing to hide, by saying that unregistered people tend to be poor, minority and young. And, if I recall, he was willing to stipulate that most of them are Democrats. So, merely by virtue of statistics, increasing registration will yield a higher proportion of Democrats. But it is widely agreed upon, as a matter of principle, no matter your party preference, that it is a virtue of democracy to increase voter participation. So in that sense, one party can't reasonably fault the other party for striving to increase registrations, and it is not unfair partisanship to strive to increase registrations. If the situation were reversed, it would not be unfair partisanship if it were the Republicans who were the ones so very motivated to increase registrations. Of course, either party would be more inclined  to increase registrations when it would benefit the party, which is a partisan motivation. But it's not unfair. Usually, it is considered in the interest of democracy to increase registration, and doing that will favor one party over the other. That's not unfair or nefarious or whatever else.

And to bring it back to ERIC, if it became the case that increased registration favored the Republicans, and ERIC's interest in registration then waned, then there could be an argument that ERIC is insincere and unfair. But, again, the mere fact that at this time increased registration favors Democrats is not an argument that ERIC is insincere, unfair or nefarious or whatever.

Edited by InfraBeat
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The insincerity is their claim to be an organization for the purpose of 'cleaning up voter rolls'. It is their functional aim to identify eligible and unregistered potential voters and adding those numbers to the rolls.

I think there are literally dozens of ineligible voters who have been removed from state rolls since their inception a little over a decade ago. It's a scam to use state funding to target recruitment for potential new voters. The bloated voter rolls continue to grow and that largess was used to enhance their ability to facilitate fraud by printing and mailing out millions of ineligible ballots.

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1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

The insincerity is their claim to be an organization for the purpose of 'cleaning up voter rolls'. It is their functional aim to identify eligible and unregistered potential voters and adding those numbers to the rolls.

At the top of their home page, they state explicitly that increased access to registration is among the purposes.

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

I think there are literally dozens of ineligible voters who have been removed from state rolls since their inception a little over a decade ago.

Source?

Meanwhile, The Tampa Bay Times reports:

"From 2013 until February 2023, the center’s database of states’ combined voter rolls flagged more than 35 million voter registrations that appeared to be out of date because people had moved or died or were registered twice. Election officials used that information to remove outdated registrations.

Its successes were evident:

In Alabama, the secretary of state said ERIC helped find 222,000 voter records of potential cross-state movers plus tens of thousands of voters who had died or had duplicate registrations.

In Florida, ERIC data led to the discovery that 1,177 voters appeared to have voted in Florida and in one of the other member states, in the same election.

In South Carolina, an election commission spokesperson said ERIC death data led the state to remove about 24,000 voters since 2020."

Do you dispute that? You would have to in order to avoid contradiction with you claim that there have only been dozens of detections.

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

It's a scam to use state funding to target recruitment for potential new voters.

Whether state funding should be used is another question. 

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

The bloated voter rolls continue to grow and that largess was used to enhance their ability to facilitate fraud by printing and mailing out millions of ineligible ballots.

Proof of that claim?

/

My point stands, the link you posted goes to an article in which there is video, presumably to discredit ERIC. But it doesn't discredit ERIC.

Edited by InfraBeat
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And I'd still like to know:

Which particular founders are you referring to? And none or, or very few of, the top founders were not leftist activists? And, didn't some of the originally participating states have Republican controlled or Republican leaning state governments? Were those Republicans involved in ERIC also leftist activists?

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This piece doesn’t outright call it a scam, but insinuates if reforms aren’t forthcoming it may as well be.

https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/maintaining-accurate-voter-registration-rolls-the-need-rehabilitate-the
 

( Haven’t checked to see if it’s okay to read , maybe check USATodayor Snopes before reading)

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Does that article support your remarks?:

* "I think there are literally dozens of ineligible voters who have been removed from state rolls since their inception a little over a decade ago." [And how do explain the discrepancy between that and the Tampa Bay Times article?]

* "The bloated voter rolls continue to grow [...]"

/

My point stands: The video in the article you linked to does not discredit ERIC. ERIC is actually in a good light in that clip.

/

As far as I can tell, if certain articles correctly describe his resume, David Becker, the main guy, is on the left. But that is not enough to support the claim that "the founders" ("the" meaning all of them) were leftist activists, or even that the founders were predominately leftist activists.

So I'm still interested in knowing:

Which [other] founders are you referring to? And none or, or very few of, the top founders were not leftist activists? And, didn't some of the originally participating states have Republican controlled or Republican leaning state governments? Were those Republicans involved in ERIC also leftist activists?

 

Edited by InfraBeat
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The Heritage.org report cites the fact that ERIC does not audit or release reports on auditing of the their internal IT operations, though they do release independent yearly audits of their finances.

How can you claim the article(s?) that stipulate that ERIC reporting/output/data was responsible for accurate voter roll maintenance of various states is/are true?, given the black box nature of the operations the article can only speculate, not state fact.

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