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"The burden is on those who claim fraud..."

The burden is on anyone making a claim. Not just those claiming fraud took place. The burden is also on the officials running the election to convince me that they are honest actors who ran an honest election. And they have failed that basic criteria in several ways, namely by littering the streets and mailboxes with "mail-in" ballots and not checking IDs at voting centers. It doesn't matter if people can't prove fraud when the people running the election can't prove legitimacy.

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On 3/20/2022 at 6:09 AM, MisterSwig said:

littering the streets and mailboxes with "mail-in" ballots

Dangerous hyperbole.

The officials running the election had to run as fair an election as possible during a pandemic which made it dangerous to vote normally.  This had to include giving people safer ways to vote.  It's about a century since the last time this happened.  There is evidence that some of them made mistakes.  There is no evidence of a stolen election.

The claim of a stolen election is an arbitrary figment of Trump's need to prop up his pseudo-self-esteem.

 

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Dangerous?

The officials were supposed to see to a legal election and in many instances they failed , but for some reason not following the law in establishing a legal procedure is still to be considered following the law and having set the proper conditions for establishing a legal voting procedure. Hyperbole ?

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4 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

The officials running the election had to run as fair an election as possible during a pandemic which made it dangerous to vote normally.  This had to include giving people safer ways to vote.

There was already a safe way to vote. Anyone can request an absentee ballot. And voting in person wasn't dangerous as long as you followed certain precautionary measures.

I witnessed the mail-in ballot littering myself, so it's not hyperbole. Do you really need details? I live near condo complexes where the ballots were left outside the community mailboxes along the sidewalk. Also, I personally received ballots for people who don't even live at my address.

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5 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

There is no evidence of a stolen election.

Read this and please explain how there is no evidence of a stolen election. There is at least some evidence. But if you ignore the evidence and don't thoroughly check all the ballots, then you rely on the assumption that the process was legitimate, and I can easily prove that the process was not legitimate.

Also, consider that 2020 had the highest voter turnout since 1960, which I find suspicious on its face. I doubt that 5% more people actually turned out for Trump vs. Biden than Obama vs. McCain. Many old people were isolated in nursing homes during the pandemic. And the review in Montana found that twenty-eight envelopes from one nursing home allegedly had the same signature. Montana has a small population compared to other states, so I wouldn't be surprised if such election problems were greatly magnified in more significant voting regions.

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3 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Read this and please explain how there is no evidence of a stolen election.

This is evidence of incompetence, but not of stealing.

3 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

I doubt that 5% more people actually turned out for Trump vs. Biden than Obama vs. McCain.

Why?  Trump was controversial; this would bring out voters on both sides.  Fewer people were working because of the pandemic; this would make for greater election turnout.

***

You seem to be drawing a distinction between absentee and mail-in ballots.  Aren't they the same thing?

 

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In person voting provides a ballot to be marked by a verifiable voter requesting to vote by being physically present to mark a ballot. Absentee voting is a process that provides a ballot to a verifiable voter requesting to vote . Unsolicited mass distribution of ‘mail in’ ballots are not necessarily being provided to verifiable voters requesting a ballot , requesting a legal ballot is an exercise of enjoying civil and legal rights. Unrequested ballots are different in kind, they are essentially a tool to increase the possibility of successful fraud and malfeasance.

If you were to design a voting process/system that emphasizes ballot ‘security’ in that the ballot is a secure legal document with a verifiable chain of custody throughout the process , mass unsolicited distribution of legal documents without secure chain of custody procedures would be a dumb way to start , unless secure ballots isn’t your goal , or that the security is a lesser concern to your goal. Isn’t it the case that other modern democracies , in Europe and the UK , outlaw unsolicited ballots ?

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2020 CANDIDATE SLIDESHOWS
SEPTEMBER 11, 20203:22 PMUPDATED 2 YEARS AGO

Fact check: Clarifying Trump’s 80 million ‘unsolicited’ ballots claim

By Reuters Staff

9 MIN READ

With 54 days until the Nov. 3 presidential election, President Donald Trump said on Twitter ( here ) and Facebook ( here ) on Thursday that 80 million mail-in ballots were being sent to voters who had not requested them, calling the situation “unfair and a total fraud in the making.” While certain states are automatically sending ballots to their voters for this election, in many others, these still need to be requested.

 
 
 
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at MBS International Airport, in Freeland, Michigan, U.S., September 10, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Voting by mail has a long history of reliability in the United States, serving as the primary method of voting in Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Hawaii, which automatically send registered voters mail-in ballots. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, California, Nevada, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. have introduced the same procedure for the 2020 vote ( here ) .

Benjamin Hovland, commissioner of the independent, bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC,  here , www.eac.gov/about-the-useac ) echoed to Reuters via phone that “in more states than ever, election authorities will automatically send a ballot to each registered voter.” 

According to Reuters’ calculations, there are an estimated 44.2 million registered voters, or about half the number mentioned by President Trump, in the 10 states and jurisdictions automatically sending out ballots for the Nov. 3 election.

Reuters found this number by adding up the latest available voter registration statistics for Colorado ( here ); Hawaii, ( here ); Oregon ( here ); Utah ( here ); Washington ( here ); California ( here ); Washington, D.C ( here ); Nevada ( here ); New Jersey ( here ); and Vermont ( here ). 

“On the states where these ballots are sent automatically, those were state-legislated decisions to make those policies,” Commissioner Hovland said, adding that “those states have implemented security measures on their respective mail-in processes.”

For the remaining states not sending out proactive ballots, Hovland noted “votes still require an affirmative request from the voter.” The millions of voters in these states would have to actively solicit or request a ballot.

 

It is possible that Trump’s 80 million unsolicited ballot claim stemmed from an Aug. 14 analysis from the New York Times ( here ), which stated that experts predict “roughly 80 million mail ballots will flood election offices this fall.”  

The president first mentioned this figure during his Labor Day press conference on Sept. 7, referring to “the issuance of 80 million ballots, unrequested” as “the dirtiest fight of all”  ( here ).

Linking the high volume of “unsolicited” mail ballots to voter fraud, he said, “People are going to get ballots; they’re going to say, ‘What am I doing?’ And then they’re going to harvest. They’re going to do all the things.”

The claim feeds into a narrative echoed by President Trump that mail-in voting, expected to nearly double due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will increase voter fraud ( here ).  

After weeks of repeatedly raising concerns about mail-in voting, Trump on Aug. 4 called Florida’s election system “Safe and Secure, Tried and True” and urged voters in the Republican state to vote by any means, including by mail ( here).  

Experts say that election fraud is very rare in the United States, where nearly one in four voters cast a mail-in or absentee ballot in 2016 (here).  

There are multiple layers of security in place for mail-in ballots, also known as “absentee” ballots, including the Electronic Registration Information Center ( www.ericstates.org ) and adherence to the National Voter Registration Act’s list of maintenance procedures ( here , here). 

 

The National Conference of State Legislatures provides information on home voting, including a section on security features in place here .  

Measures to counter voter fraud include hand-marked paper ballots, signature verification, examining and processing ballots ahead of election day to allow for more verification time, up-to-date address information, security cameras during storage, and many more (see Security Features of Voting by Absentee/Mailed Ballots section here bit.ly/33vUvBA ).

Further information on security measures to ensure ballot integrity can be found here .  

Commissioner Hovland told Reuters these sort of unfounded claims “ignore the repeated calls of elections professionals, both Democrat and Republican, that say this is a safe, normal process with procedures in place to ensure the process upholds the integrity of an election.”

The Reuters Fact Check team has previously debunked several viral claims linking the use of mail-in ballots to voter fraud: here , here , and here . 

VERDICT

False. 80 million “unsolicited” mail-in ballots will not be sent to voters ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Ten states and jurisdictions are proactively sending out ballots, some for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic, for an approximately 44.2 million registered voters in total.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here . 

 
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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

Nothing in this latest link about elections, Politifact, or Factcheck.org.

True but the information in the link should make one scrutinize their estimate of "Reuters" as a 'fact-checking' body.

Do you think unsolicited ballots should be considered legal documents to be used in the voting process ?

I would imagine a legal argument could be convincingly made that requesting a ballot is the mechanism that lends legitimacy/legality to a specific ballot by virtue of the capability to identify the requestee and verifying the requestee is a 'legal' voter.

Whereas distributed , unsolicited ballots when cast become quasi-legitimate and incorporate inherent deficiencies to establish and maintain chain of custody, hardly a scheme that benefits security in an election and whose only purpose is to increase the pool of ballots cast.

Edited by tadmjones
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Bottom line for me is that some think that Trump should be president. I don't. The gridlock we have in Washington is far better than the streamlined hyper spending we would have had with Trump. The Supreme court selection is unfortunate but most likely there would not have been a changeover if Trump had been elected.

Elections have been stolen from us a long time ago and perpetually the case. Once you are in a corrupt system, living with the corruption means there are stolen elections and yet we go by the rules. I would go a along with making it better and better but again, I prefer the Gridlock we have.

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1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

 

Do you think unsolicited ballots should be considered legal documents to be used in the voting process ?

If a state's way of conducting elections is to mail a ballot to each registered voter and to let each registered voter mail it back, and appropriate safeguards are used, then yes, those ballots are legal documents to be used in the voting process.

 

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On 3/22/2022 at 2:45 PM, Doug Morris said:

You seem to be drawing a distinction between absentee and mail-in ballots.  Aren't they the same thing?

No. You have to request an absentee ballot, and in some states provide a reason for the request. Mail-in ballots were automatically sent to every registered voter. At least that's what happened in Los Angeles.

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On 3/23/2022 at 8:07 AM, tadmjones said:

Whereas distributed , unsolicited ballots when cast become quasi-legitimate and incorporate inherent deficiencies to establish and maintain chain of custody, hardly a scheme that benefits security in an election and whose only purpose is to increase the pool of ballots cast.

It's a scheme to radically increase the opportunity to steal an election through fraud. And once you start googling cases of mail-in fraud, you realize that some people got caught trying to take advantage of that opportunity. But how many didn't get caught? If there's a 40% chance you'll get away with murder, what is the chance you'll get away with election fraud?

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On 3/22/2022 at 1:03 PM, MisterSwig said:

the ballots were left outside the community mailboxes along the sidewalk

Is this the fault of the people running the election or the fault of the post office?

On 3/22/2022 at 1:03 PM, MisterSwig said:

I personally received ballots for people who don't even live at my address.

Is this the fault of the people running the election or the fault of voters who messed up the address on their registration?

 

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1 hour ago, MisterSwig said:

It's a scheme to radically increase the opportunity to steal an election through fraud. And once you start googling cases of mail-in fraud, you realize that some people got caught trying to take advantage of that opportunity. But how many didn't get caught? If there's a 40% chance you'll get away with murder, what is the chance you'll get away with election fraud?

What percentage of 'success' do you need in a swing state , or within specific districts in specific states? The larger the pool of total ballots 'cast' the more opportunity.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/24/2022 at 9:40 AM, Doug Morris said:
On 3/22/2022 at 10:03 AM, MisterSwig said:

the ballots were left outside the community mailboxes along the sidewalk

Is this the fault of the people running the election or the fault of the post office?

I blame the election officials for instituting a crappy process. What did they expect would happen with the post office trying to deliver a mail-in ballot to everyone.

On 3/24/2022 at 9:40 AM, Doug Morris said:
On 3/22/2022 at 10:03 AM, MisterSwig said:

I personally received ballots for people who don't even live at my address.

Is this the fault of the people running the election or the fault of voters who messed up the address on their registration?

Definitely the fault of the election officials for keeping people on the register when they don't even live at the address anymore.

 

On 3/24/2022 at 10:19 AM, tadmjones said:

What percentage of 'success' do you need in a swing state , or within specific districts in specific states? The larger the pool of total ballots 'cast' the more opportunity.

I don't know, that would be an interesting study. It depends on how much cheating went on, which is hard to calculate if you don't look at the mail-in ballot policy and the signatures closely. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona were very close races, but I'm not sure whether they automatically mailed ballots to everyone. Presumably this is something that could be discovered. It looks like in Pennsylvania, for example, you had to request a mail-in ballot. This probably reduces the likelihood of cheating, though I wouldn't guess by how much.

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For our new episode we interviewed Michael Niren, a longtime Objectivist who learned from John Ridpath in Canada. We discussed Objectivist rhetoric, and methods of outreach to non-Objectivists. Check it out!

 

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  • 3 months later...

The root of all Rationalism, I say, is acceptance of the primacy of possibility over existence. Truly rational possibility aims to trace potentials. Potentials and actualities are one of the divisions into which existence is exhaustively divided.  –S 

Edited by Boydstun
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