accusations by Trump of getting the election stolen from him.
Personally, I think there were shenanigans going on and we should be investigating them but I also feel like the hanging chads was a far bigger issue than the shenanigans that happened in 2020.
I don't believe the election was stolen but I also don't believe it's everyone's imagination that some shady shit was going on in places. I suspect that kind of crap happens every election.
Every election will have some shady stuff going on from all participating parties if it's big enough. But it's important to remember that every election has even more stuff going on that can look shady from the outside, but is absolutely normal on further inspection.
2020 was special because the sitting president (who has accused others of election and voter fraud against him in AFAIR every election he's been part of) has primed his emotionally invested base to expect fraud everywhere. They saw a bunch of things they thought were shady, part of which were caused by unrealistic expectations (e.g. "I can just show up and be Poll Watcher without registering beforehand"). If you are aware of shady going-ons that have not been investigated I'm open to hear them, but all the occurrences I've seen have been investigated and explained - but since many people aren't open to normal explanations, the fraud idea keeps and keeps on festering.
If every election has some shady things happen then it's not possible for every bit of shadiness to be explained as anything other than shadiness.
So was there shadiness or wasn't there?
A lot of it can be explained away, which is why I said the hanging chad issue was a bigger problem. but ALL of it? I don't think so, even at the time there were a few things that gave me pause.
> If every election has some shady things happen then it's not possible for every bit of shadiness to be explained as anything other than shadiness.
> So was there shadiness or wasn't there?
I didn't say that there was absolutely no shadiness, but I haven't seen evidence that there was more shadiness than in any other election. The "evidence" brought forth for Trumps position that I've seen hasn't held up to scrutiny.
> A lot of it can be explained away, which is why I said the hanging chad issue was a bigger problem. but ALL of it? I don't think so, even at the time there were a few things that gave me pause.
You're free to share them if you'd like. All I'm saying is that I'm not aware of evidence brought forward that holds up to scrutiny, which leads me to believe that there was no significant deviation from the norm - the simpler explanation is that being primed for months by somebody with a lot of sway, combined with the strong distrust in non-partisan media, has led to these heaps of non-evidence (again, as far as I've seen, I'm happy to be proven wrong).
Personally, I think there were shenanigans going on and we should be investigating them but I also feel like the hanging chads was a far bigger issue than the shenanigans that happened in 2020.
I don't believe the election was stolen but I also don't believe it's everyone's imagination that some shady shit was going on in places. I suspect that kind of crap happens every election.