General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The 2014 US Elections Manipulated? [View all]Ford_Prefect
(7,895 posts)Members on both sides need to believe in it for themselves and for their constituents, without reference to any particular election event. That seems rather obviously a cornerstone of faith in the local as well as national process.
There are whole histories of other methods for adjusting how the vote got tallied and who got counted long before the electronic option. That it happened in other eras and under other conditions argues that it works for those willing to use such methods to guarantee winning an election. Only the process has changed. Indeed we are seeing the return of many of those methods as embodied in the recent gerrymandering of voting districts under Republican legislatures and governors abetted by compromised state judiciaries. Which is not to mention the entire range of legalized dis-incentives regarding who is qualified to vote, when, where, and how.
We know it happened in Florida and Ohio previously. We suspect it has happened in other places and elections. I can understand that the math taken alone can seem not quite hard enough proof. That same math should be a warning that the system needs transparency and uniformity it currently lacks.
In no other western country is there a methodology of voting for national office so easy to manipulate.
Your contention is that it has not happened because you don't accept the evidence as sufficient. You see it as essentially circumstantial, if I understand your position.
My contention and that of others more qualified to speak is this: Show me irrefutable evidence that it cannot have happened. I would like to believe in the process as genuinely representative. A phrase from cold war days seems quite relevant to me here: Trust, but always verify.
The degree to which Republican operatives have gone to improve their chances of winning seems to make clear that IF such methods exist they would certainly be used to advantage.