January 6, 2021: Insurrection or “normal tourist” visitation?

[RedFromMI]

The actual facts (regardless of the left/right beliefs) are that there no significant voting fraud issues in the country today, and what little voting fraud occurs generally is caught after the fact. When that happened a few years ago in NC, they actually reran the election.

The Big Lie is just that - a big lie used to make voting harder, especially for the "other" side to maintain a R hold on minority power (which is actually what it is due to the structure of the Senate and the gerrymandering of seats into noncompetitive gimme districts for the most part). It also is used to make the R base angry that the election was "taken away" from them when in actuality the Rs lost the presidency and the two special elections in GA. The Rs cannot admit that they lost - so instead they charge that there has been fraud and the country taken away from them.

[old salt]

The U.S. may have happy feet when it comes to omicron. Picture is looking less rosy than earlier in Europe. A number of infectious disease and epidemiology experts are warning that we are not following the curves seen in Europe and South Africa. We are looking worse. It will be at least a week to a couple more weeks before we have a clear picture of how bad it will be.

Anyone checked in on what the flu is up to this season?

we've got omicron. it's like the flu.

If you are vaccinated.

Well, if the last month or so has taught us nothing else, we've learned that if you can stand in line for hours to get a test it's now safe to vote in person.

So again, why don't Republicans eliminate absentee ballots? Aren't you the least bit curious as to why they're not doing that?

Because --they have existed forever, there's a chain of custody, & they're not unsolicited.

You keep asking the same question. Why is there air, daddy ?

[old salt]

I referred to his comments on NPR, not Face the Nation.

you implied that I may have selectively quoted from the DW report.

Not having seen (or heard?) the DW News piece to which you refer I don’t know if you’ve left out a key portion of Pape’s analysis because it wasn’t included or because it doesn’t fit your narrative.

His Face the Nation appearance included all that he said on DW & more.
On DW, he was just empirical, not political. He did not address race or media.
He presented the data without political analysis or judgement.

[Typical Lax Dad]

The U.S. may have happy feet when it comes to omicron. Picture is looking less rosy than earlier in Europe. A number of infectious disease and epidemiology experts are warning that we are not following the curves seen in Europe and South Africa. We are looking worse. It will be at least a week to a couple more weeks before we have a clear picture of how bad it will be.

Anyone checked in on what the flu is up to this season?

we've got omicron. it's like the flu.

If you are vaccinated.

Well, if the last month or so has taught us nothing else, we've learned that if you can stand in line for hours to get a test it's now safe to vote in person.

So again, why don't Republicans eliminate absentee ballots? Aren't you the least bit curious as to why they're not doing that?

Because --they have existed forever, there's a chain of custody, & they're not unsolicited.

You keep asking the same question. Why is there air, daddy ?

We should try to have every eligible citizen vote. We need to figure out how to get a ballot in everyone’s hand and then have a National election day. Made it a holiday so everyone can vote.

[a fan]

Because --they have existed forever, there's a chain of custody, & they're not unsolicited.

You keep asking the same question. Why is there air, daddy ?

Simple, because your team keeps making the same complaint, and telling us that voter fraud is rampant in America. Here ya go......bolded.

The sentiment from the left is there is little to no voter fraud. On the right, there is a significant percentage who think cheating is endemic.

If you all don't mean it, and are "just funnin' ", stop whining and making stupid comments about voter security.

Or.....if you're serious about your claims of rampant fraud, make everyone vote in person. It solves every single fake complaint you make.


As usual: pick one, and I don't care which.

[PizzaSnake]

Because --they have existed forever, there's a chain of custody, & they're not unsolicited.

You keep asking the same question. Why is there air, daddy ?

Simple, because your team keeps making the same complaint, and telling us that voter fraud is rampant in America. Here ya go......bolded.

The sentiment from the left is there is little to no voter fraud. On the right, there is a significant percentage who think cheating is endemic.

If you all don't mean it, and are "just funnin' ", stop whining and making stupid comments about voter security.

Or.....if you're serious about your claims of rampant fraud, make everyone vote in person. It solves every single fake complaint you make.


As usual: pick one, and I don't care which.

Fer dog’s sake, please stop. Or, at least debate the real problem which is the lack of proportional representation due yo the number of electors and Representatives being “frozen” fir about 100 years.

Now that is a bigger problem than disenfranchisement due to some level of vote fraud (which has never been proven to have occurred).

[get it to x]

Because --they have existed forever, there's a chain of custody, & they're not unsolicited.

You keep asking the same question. Why is there air, daddy ?

Simple, because your team keeps making the same complaint, and telling us that voter fraud is rampant in America. Here ya go......bolded.

The sentiment from the left is there is little to no voter fraud. On the right, there is a significant percentage who think cheating is endemic.

If you all don't mean it, and are "just funnin' ", stop whining and making stupid comments about voter security.

Or.....if you're serious about your claims of rampant fraud, make everyone vote in person. It solves every single fake complaint you make.


As usual: pick one, and I don't care which.

You need to accommodate citizens who can't get to the polls for reasons beyond their control. It's a right you should be able to exercise. Are you saying you want the kind of "purple thumb" election like the first time they tried it in Iraq? You're pulling my leg, right?

[a fan]

You need to accommodate citizens who can't get to the polls for reasons beyond their control. It's a right you should be able to exercise. Are you saying you want the kind of "purple thumb" election like the first time they tried it in Iraq? You're pulling my leg, right?

No, that's not what I want.

But if I thought voter fraud was rampant to the point that my vote wasn't really counting---the way you are claiming the American right thinks?

Absolutely, I would want that! Without question, and without any hesitation. Because what the heck would be the point of convenience be if the vote I tried to send in was compromised? It's the easiest call I could ever make. YES I would want in-person-only voting if I thought fraud was rampant.

I find it laughable that anyone would claim that there is widespread absentee voter fraud WITHOUT also DEMANDING in-person-only voting.

These are clearly, obviously, not serious complaints.

[old salt]

Daddy still does not recognize (or acknowledege) any difference between absentee ballots, requested & returned via US Mail, compared to unsolicited mail-in ballots, sent to unverified mailing lists, collected by activist ballot harvesters, deposited at 2 a.m., in unmonitored drop boxes which may actually be abandoned cardboard box costumes. It's all a team sport to Daddy.

[ggait]

FFS Salty.

Even you know there’s no serious systematic fraud in the system.

As gop election law guru Ben Ginsburg tells us, election fraud is the Loch Ness monster. We’ve looked for it and it does not exist.

So all of your rando bleating about junk mail ballots and drop boxes is just code and gaslighting for trying to suppress the vote of those you disagree with. At least do us a favor and be honest about your objectives.

As you know, Fan and I come from the state with the recognized best voting system in the USA. By far. Which consists of 100% junk mail ballots and 75% drop boxes. It is awesome. Safe secure and convenient.

Only a rat forker would think such a fine system is a terrible problem. In fact, such a system should be massively replicated and expanded to all other states.

Unless, like you, you are too much of a fraidy cat to handle real democracy.

[Kismet]

Let me say, at risk of offending you (again?!), that It's all bullsh*t I think the focus on Capitol security is plainly intended to take the focus off the fact (1) that the President, with the complicit efforts of many Congressmen and Staff, incited a riot, and (2) the GOP thereafter voted (the same day), save for ten Congressmen and -women, for what the rioters wanted; and (3) that the GOP thereafter kowtowed to the Moron when they might have tossed him in the gutter where he and his family belong. Any parent understands establishing boundaries. Any person should understand that condoning the assault -- its impetus and actions -- will obliterate the boundaries, and that the boundaries are called "democracy."

I honestly believe we are closer that you think. You lean on blaming a party or group of politically infused people, I lean on blaming process...as it applies to protection. By profession, I am a fixer, problem avoidance is the end goal....regardless of influence, think N+1. In my world, this all transpired because of a failure in security; regardless of how many people where outside. LIke putting too many people on a deck and then it collapses; our deck in this instance had a fractured foundation on this day....WHY?

I agree completely with you that we have bad apples that perpetuated this. Just think about all the operations that have taken place that protected us that we know nothing about....we planned them, maybe got lucky. We had intel that day and we failed to protect our own damned Capitol.

2 things can be true at the same time. Both need to be considered & fixed.
Reform the ECA. Give the CP what they need & let them do their job.

Please elaborate how you propose to fix the ECA to prevent a repeat of the January 6 spectacle.

While you're at it please explain how CO, UT and WA conduct essentially 100% mail elections and don't seem to have any issues and have been doing it for years without a peep from either you or anyone else. Ditto for AZ and CA who also both use a very high percentage of mail ballots mailed to every registered voter.

Lastly, how is it that only the Presidential election results seem to be dubious and not all of the other races on the same ballot (where GOP candidates did quite well) ?

[get it to x]

You need to accommodate citizens who can't get to the polls for reasons beyond their control. It's a right you should be able to exercise. Are you saying you want the kind of "purple thumb" election like the first time they tried it in Iraq? You're pulling my leg, right?

No, that's not what I want.

But if I thought voter fraud was rampant to the point that my vote wasn't really counting---the way you are claiming the American right thinks?

Absolutely, I would want that! Without question, and without any hesitation. Because what the heck would be the point of convenience be if the vote I tried to send in was compromised? It's the easiest call I could ever make. YES I would want in-person-only voting if I thought fraud was rampant.

I find it laughable that anyone would claim that there is widespread absentee voter fraud WITHOUT also DEMANDING in-person-only voting.

These are clearly, obviously, not serious complaints.

Voting has been in person on Election Day in Chicago until recently for many years. Need I say more?

[a fan]

You need to accommodate citizens who can't get to the polls for reasons beyond their control. It's a right you should be able to exercise. Are you saying you want the kind of "purple thumb" election like the first time they tried it in Iraq? You're pulling my leg, right?

No, that's not what I want.

But if I thought voter fraud was rampant to the point that my vote wasn't really counting---the way you are claiming the American right thinks?

Absolutely, I would want that! Without question, and without any hesitation. Because what the heck would be the point of convenience be if the vote I tried to send in was compromised? It's the easiest call I could ever make. YES I would want in-person-only voting if I thought fraud was rampant.

I find it laughable that anyone would claim that there is widespread absentee voter fraud WITHOUT also DEMANDING in-person-only voting.

These are clearly, obviously, not serious complaints.

Voting has been in person on Election Day in Chicago until recently for many years. Need I say more?

Yes. Because the Chicago nonsense actually proves their voting system works. Why would you, for example, give voters Walgreens gift cards to vote, as one alderman did....if you could instead, simply send in fraudulent ballots? You wouldn't. Why would you put heat on the Unions to get them to vote for Kennedy when you could simply juke the vote tally? You wouldn't.

It's all nonsense. And the reason that I know that YOU think there isn't voter fraud is that you just told me how important it was that your father be able to vote remotely.

Would you give two figs about your Dad's ability to vote if you thought the results were rigged? You wouldn't. It wouldn't bother you in the least if he could or couldn't vote if you thought the elections were pointless.

1+1=2. Right wing America doesn't believe what they're selling. It's all nonsense, sorry.

[Kismet]

You need to accommodate citizens who can't get to the polls for reasons beyond their control. It's a right you should be able to exercise. Are you saying you want the kind of "purple thumb" election like the first time they tried it in Iraq? You're pulling my leg, right?

No, that's not what I want.

But if I thought voter fraud was rampant to the point that my vote wasn't really counting---the way you are claiming the American right thinks?

Absolutely, I would want that! Without question, and without any hesitation. Because what the heck would be the point of convenience be if the vote I tried to send in was compromised? It's the easiest call I could ever make. YES I would want in-person-only voting if I thought fraud was rampant.

I find it laughable that anyone would claim that there is widespread absentee voter fraud WITHOUT also DEMANDING in-person-only voting.

These are clearly, obviously, not serious complaints.

Voting has been in person on Election Day in Chicago until recently for many years. Need I say more?

And it was all "in-person" voting in Chicago in 1960 too when Mayor Daley "delivered" the election to JFK, too.

[old salt]

Imagine what Mayor Daley could have done with mail-in ballots, bundlers, drop boxes, felons & non-citizens voting.

[old salt]

Please elaborate how you propose to fix the ECA to prevent a repeat of the January 6 spectacle.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... count-act/

How Congress can fix the Electoral Count Act

By Edward B. Foley, Michael W. McConnell, Richard H. Pildes and Bradley Smith
January 4, 2022

Edward B. Foley is a professor of constitutional law at Ohio State University, where he heads the university’s election law program. Michael W. McConnell, formerly a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, is a professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Richard H. Pildes is a professor of constitutional law at New York University School of Law who served as a member of the President’s Commission on the Supreme Court. Bradley Smith, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission, is a law professor at Capital University.

We are scholars of election law who span the ideological spectrum but agree on two fundamental principles to help avert potential political upheaval in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.

First, to avoid a repeat of Jan. 6, or worse, Congress must rewrite the Electoral Count Act, the outmoded 1887 law that governs the certification of the presidential vote. There is a pressing need for a clear set of rules to govern the certification of the presidential vote.

Second, this revision should be based on the premise that Congress is not a national recount board or a court for litigating the outcome of presidential elections. It is not the role of Congress to revisit a state’s popular vote tally.

This fundamental truth has been lost on both sides of the aisle since 2000. After that year’s election, and again after 2004 and 2016, some Democrats objected to electoral votes from various states on the inappropriate ground that the popular vote in those states, which served as the basis for appointing electors, had been corrupted for one reason or another.

In each of these cases there was no doubt that the single submission of electoral votes from a state was cast by the electors that the states themselves had appointed following their own rules. (Disputes about the legality of those rules can, of course, be challenged in court). In this context, any congressional objection to what the state had sent was out of bounds.

For the 2020 election, many Republicans similarly decided it was their role to second-guess the voting process in the states. This time the consequences were far more serious.

To prevent another such event, which could be launched by either party in an effort to control the outcome of a hotly contested presidential election, a revision of the Electoral Count Act should be based on the following guidelines:

Whenever there is just one submission of electoral votes from a state — in other words, no competing slates of electors — Congress should disavow any power to question those electoral votes on the ground that there was something wrong with the popular vote upon which those electors were appointed. As long as the state itself has settled on who won that state through policies established in advance of the election, Congress has no role other than to accept those as being the state’s electoral votes.

In a situation in which Congress receives conflicting submissions of electoral votes from different institutions of state government — something that has not occurred since 1876 and that we hope remains rare — Congress should incentivize states to identify in advance which institution is entitled to speak for its voters. If states do this, then Congress only has to count the electoral votes sent from the designated part of the state’s government.

If a state has failed to make clear which part of its government is authoritative in determining the popular vote, Congress could set a default rule (awarding power to the governor or state supreme court, for example). Or it could create in advance a nonpartisan tribunal empowered to identify which part of state government has a better legal claim for being authoritative under the specific circumstances.

Whichever approach Congress takes is less important than that the revised statute be unambiguous about how the matter is to be resolved. Uncertainty invites contestation at precisely the most dangerous point, on the eve of inaugurating the new president.

To be sure, there is no way to fully eliminate the risk that those with the final authority to decide on a state’s electoral votes might abuse that power for partisan political objectives. At the state level, election administrators might act for partisan reasons.

But there is now substantial judicial oversight of the voting process. To the extent there remain concerns that state supreme courts might also abuse their authority for partisan reasons, federal constitutional doctrines — and federal courts — also constrain potential state court manipulation of voting laws.

By contrast, if Congress has the final say, it is virtually guaranteed that partisan political calculations will overwhelm any good-faith legal judgments. Nor are courts likely to play any role in overseeing the way Congress “counts” electoral votes.

Congress committed in the original Electoral Count Act not to second-guess a state’s vote when that state sends only a single slate of electors. In recent decades, that commitment has become dangerously frayed. Congress needs to update and clarify the act to produce a statute that does not invite abuse by its own members.

[Kismet]

Imagine what Mayor Daley could have done with mail-in ballots, bundlers, drop boxes, felons & non-citizens voting.

The point was he likely did it without your red herring....which is exactly why your absentee ballot rants here are nothing more than that. 6-7 states do essentially ALL ballots by mail and to date there have no credible cases of significant fraud (except by Republicans in NC).

You ignored the second question - if all these unsolicited mail ballots contained boatloads of fraud how is it that nobody ever mentions the results of all the other races on the SAME BALLOTS where Republicans actually gained seats in the House.

[old salt]

Imagine what Mayor Daley could have done with mail-in ballots, bundlers, drop boxes, felons & non-citizens voting.

The point was he likely did it without your red herring....which is exactly why your absentee ballot rants here are nothing more than that. 6-7 states do essentially ALL ballots by mail and to date there have no credible cases of significant fraud (except by Republicans in NC).

You ignored the second question - if all these unsolicited mail ballots contained boatloads of fraud how is it that nobody ever mentions the results of all the other races on the SAME BALLOTS where Republicans actually gained seats in the House.

Al Franken & others.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/pe ... oter-fraud

https://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/v ... 037b8.html

https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political ... n-ballots/

[Kismet]

Imagine what Mayor Daley could have done with mail-in ballots, bundlers, drop boxes, felons & non-citizens voting.

The point was he likely did it without your red herring....which is exactly why your absentee ballot rants here are nothing more than that. 6-7 states do essentially ALL ballots by mail and to date there have no credible cases of significant fraud (except by Republicans in NC).

You ignored the second question - if all these unsolicited mail ballots contained boatloads of fraud how is it that nobody ever mentions the results of all the other races on the SAME BALLOTS where Republicans actually gained seats in the House.

Al Franken & others.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/pe ... oter-fraud

https://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/v ... 037b8.html

https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political ... n-ballots/

Quoting Ann Coulter's opinion and the Murdoch NY Post is laughable. Both Franken and the Post article refer to elections BEFORE the alleged fraudorama in 2020. Not to mention citing only two articles is not evidence of rampant voter fraud in mail ballot elections - You can't just Google your way out of this by citing such material and then declaring rampant fraud.

I think it is fair to say that there is some activity in many elections that is not on the up and up but is it significant enough to change an outcome is the real pertinent question.

If the Presidential election results were fraudulent why aren't all of the other races on the same ballot also fraudulent?

[Typical Lax Dad]

Imagine what Mayor Daley could have done with mail-in ballots, bundlers, drop boxes, felons & non-citizens voting.

The point was he likely did it without your red herring....which is exactly why your absentee ballot rants here are nothing more than that. 6-7 states do essentially ALL ballots by mail and to date there have no credible cases of significant fraud (except by Republicans in NC).

You ignored the second question - if all these unsolicited mail ballots contained boatloads of fraud how is it that nobody ever mentions the results of all the other races on the SAME BALLOTS where Republicans actually gained seats in the House.

Al Franken & others.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/pe ... oter-fraud

https://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/v ... 037b8.html

https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political ... n-ballots/

Quoting Ann Coulter's opinion and the Murdoch NY Post is laughable. Both Franken and the Post article refer to elections BEFORE the alleged fraudorama in 2020. Not to mention citing only two articles is not evidence of rampant voter fraud in mail ballot elections - You can't just Google your way out of this by citing such material and then declaring rampant fraud

If the Presidential election was fraudulent why aren't all of the other races on the same ballot also fraudulent?

I like this article: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/04/63566830 ... speaks-out

OS wants to suppress voting.