I wrote yesterday that I suspect election fraud was widespread in the midterms, but that — lacking evidence for it — I hoped we’d see some analysis that explores the question. The writer offers an early step in that analysis:
The CNN exit polls show substantial erosion of the Democrat voting base since the 2018 election. How can such substantial erosion be consistent with the lack of any significant Republican gain on Tuesday?
One must be careful not to confuse correlation with causation, obviously. Still, it is odd that so many people expected a Red Wave that never happened.
I bring this up not because of sour grapes, but because election theft on a grand scale is technically feasible in the USA and I believe it would best for all of us if election fraudt were less feasible. To make election fraud less feasible, I recommend:
- Improve the integrity of voter registration databases
- Require photo ID at polling places to be eligible to vote
- Require all votes to be cast on election day
- Eliminate mail-in voting except in special cases
- Require all ballots to be cast in hard copy
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Simple solution, go to Florida, Xerox their election law and procedures, and pass them in every state.
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AZ apparently also had long ballots, many things to vote on. Plus they are using pretty intense scrutiny of mailed in ballots as required by the GOP legislators.
But FL seems to have streamlined the voting. Yet, lacking a national standard for voting, the swing states will be at the whim of legislatures more than most.
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“… I suspect election fraud was widespread in the midterms, but that — lacking evidence for it…”
And so goes the same old song from the right: if we don’t win, they cheated.
The silliness is superseded by the effort to keep repeating lies until they become the “truth” for the vulnerable.
It is sad and shameful that no matter the lack of evidence the repetition of “massive fraud” and its nasty cousin, “we will never know”, continues to undercut the cornerstone of our country. Deliberately. With malice.
IMO, naturally.
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RE: “It is sad and shameful that no matter the lack of evidence the repetition of “massive fraud” and its nasty cousin, “we will never know”, continues to undercut the cornerstone of our country.”
The source article makes and provides data that supports a significant observation:
“The CNN exit polls show substantial erosion of the Democrat voting base since the 2018 election. How can such substantial erosion be consistent with the lack of any significant Republican gain on Tuesday?”
The observation is the evidence which you claim is lacking. How do you account for it?
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The leap from this sort of exit polling to massive election fraud is not even remotely reasonable. The fact that a polled voter is not particularly happy with the President, the economy, Democratic leaders or whatever does not mean they are ready to vote for a MAGA-Republican in the privacy of the voting booth.
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One should expect the results of exit polling to be consistent with the results of official polling. If they are not consistent, then the differences need to be accounted for.
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“One should expect the results of exit polling to be consistent with the results of official polling.”
Uh, what you and UNZ have somehow overlooked in your eagerness to hypothesize fraud is that the decline in the Democratic base is compared to polling in 2018. In 2018 the Democrats GAINED 40 House seats. In 2022 they appear to have LOST 6-8 seats. So, actually, the result IS consistent with the polling. Case closed.
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RE: “So, actually, the result IS consistent with the polling.”
Yes, the erosion of support for Democrats is real. The question is why the erosion didn’t deliver a Red Wave, as many predicted.
Direction is one thing. Scale is another.
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“Scale is another . . .”
The swing in outcome between 2018 and 2022 is pretty significant. How much worse do you think it should have been before you drop this silly massive amorphous fraud speculation?
What I find interesting is that even when the Democrats do badly compared to the past, they still kick GOP ass. Thanks Trump!
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Hell, polling hasn’t been accurate for the last several elections. You expect it to be magically fixed now?
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Voting stats will come soon enough. But I suggest that many conservatives and independents were not going to vote for the extremists…split tickets were not uncommon.
But if you are going to claim fraud based on suppositions and innuendoes, that is shameful.
Declaring “another stolen election” as a headline without a question mark or hard evidence is fraudulent, misleading propaganda.
Giuliani Gambit all over again.
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RE: “But if you are going to claim fraud based on suppositions and innuendoes…”
I haven’t done that. I have presented a hypothesis, one clearly identified as such.
You may be correct that “many conservatives and independents were not going to vote for the extremists,” but the question at hand is: Why did Democrats do better than expected, given the observed erosion in their base?
The answer that the erosion was offset by a conversion that no one foresaw and is not reflected in the exit polling data makes little sense to me.
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“I have presented a hypothesis, ”
You have presented whiny fertilizer because the red wave you wanted had less force that the blood I pissed after surgery last year.
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“ If the vote count is honest, then the conclusion is that we must write off the American people as beings too stupid to survive as a free people.”
There in lies the problem if the author is representative of right wing thinking. Attributing fascism to MAGA pales in comparison to dismissing Americans as “too stupid”.
Those who were proud to be “deplorable” might now have add “stupid” from their own pundits. Now that’s a real vote getter.
Imagine a salesman telling you that you are too stupid to buy his product. To paraphrase Zig Ziglar, that salesman will have skinny kids.
And fewer Congressional seats.
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“ANOTHER” stolen election? When was the other one?
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2016 perhaps.
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2000
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RE: “2016 perhaps.”
The Hillary Gambit.
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Nah. A Republican won that one (never mind all the help from Russia). Elections aren’t stolen unless Republicans lose… and Governors can’t “find” 11,780 votes.
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So how is fraud “on a grand scale” feasible in the US?
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Hugo Chavez uses Jewish space lasers to hack voting machines made in China?
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Or Republican zealots gaining illegal access to voting machines, a much more likely venue for fraud.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/illegal-attempts-access-voting-machines-didnt-stop-jan-6-insurrection
https://news.yahoo.com/county-gop-chair-coordinated-voting-024004393.html
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It has been a while since I lived in Florida, but back in the 80’s nearly everybody voted by mail-in ballot. The retirees there weren’t about to inconvenience themselves by standing in a line. And, as soon as those ballots arrived, they were verified and counted. There was no waiting until election day to begin counting.
On the other hand, that didn’t prevent election diddling.
I had a friend who worked at an inner-city library in Miami. When one of the black ladies she worked with went to vote, she was told her name wasn’t on the register and she could not vote. Most people would have accepted that and walked away without voting. But this lady was a librarian… from an inner-city library. She snatched the register from the poll workers hand, pointed out her name, showed her ID and said, “Now gimme a damn ballot.” She got to vote. But she never knew how many black voters were turned away that day. I suspect most of them were.
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And the big worry is that someone would walk in and state they were someone else. And know their address as well as gambling they have not voted yet. For one vote and a possible felony.
Virtually all fraud is on the other side of the polling tables and registration restrictions. This includes gerrymandering, too.
As it turns out, all the nickel and dime technical hoops to jump through (put a date on slot 3, column 1 of envelope 2 in Roman numerals…) to make voting less accessible may have helped the Democrats by energizing them. Or even discourage some of the MAGA as well.
The old joke from the James Crow days:
John Smith, a Black man in Mississippi, went to the polls to vote. He was not a learned man, but he knew he had to vote. When he arrived, he had all his ducks in a row, including receipts for poll taxes. The registrar handed him a sheet of fine print from a legal document as a literacy test. He looked at it for almost a minute, but could not really read well. Finally, the poll worker asked him if he knew what it said.
John answered that he did. The worker said “well, what does it say?”
“It says John Smith isn’t voting today.”
And those were the “good old days” for a big chunk of America.
More subtle now, but the intent is not far off.
IMO
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Totally agree. Real voter fraud happens when a candidate calls a governor and says “find 11,780 votes for me.” (Makes you wonder how many of those calls didn’t get recorded and how many of those governors “found” the requested votes.)
But those aren’t the perps who go to jail. The ones who go to jail are the released felons who are told they can vote, but it turns out they can’t. Their one vote sends them to jail while the would be 11,780 vote thief walks free.
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Can the perp who demanded 11,780 votes be charged with 11,780 felonies?
Seems reasonable.
He could plea bargain down to a few hundred maybe.
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