Obviously, Unfair Elections Undermine Democracy

Was the 2020 US election unfair?

Unfair

It is fair to state that the Twenty Twenty US Presidential election was the most unusual in modern times.

Going a step further and saying it was unfair requires convincing, but upon consideration of the Covid pandemic alone, unusual should be accepted by all. Throw in the mass mail-in voting and it rises to most unusual.

Is America a democracy?

Of the people, for the people, by the people.

Abraham Lincoln‘s words capture the heart of democracy.

Leaders can come from any family. The nation serves those governed, and its citizens control the transfer of authority.

Simple.

Humble.

Democracy addresses the tendency for power to corrupt, and the United States is arguably the best example for this.

America is an experiment.

The US explores many facets of democracy at different levels of government, from direct democracy at the state and local level to election of representatives at all levels.

Throughout it all, fair and balanced are common ideals.

This system needs the faith of the people. Unfairness, real or imagined, undermines this.

The branches of government need checks and balances to address the constant creep of corruption.

Is representative democracy still a democracy?

The citizenry has the bandwidth to handle local issues tactically and national issues strategically.

Direct democracy then, can make sense at the state and local level. It does not make sense at the national level.

Representative democracy allows citizens to choose individuals who can dedicate themselves to complexity beyond the day to day cares of a neighborhood.

Control and responsibility remains in voters hands. If those elected fail, they can be replaced in the next election. It is strategic control, but it is still control.

Voters are the generals. They are responsible for success or failure of their nation, much like a military general is responsible for any operation under their command.

Is the electoral college unfair?

Geography matters. American is properly called the United States of America. Each state is a half-nation with a degree of independence by design.

Fifty different ways to govern under the guidance of the US Constitution. It offers choice and experimentation unmatched elsewhere in the world.

If one state is unfair to a citizen, they can move to another.

The United Nations and the European Union understand that voting power should not be based purely on population.

The electoral college is both fair and unfair.

It is a compromise. It treats voters as both individuals and as groups.

House and Senate, the masses and the land, cities and the countryside.

Humans are social animals. Individualism matters, but so does the community. By extension, a nation is a community of communities as much as it is a population of individuals.

Different regions have different realities. The needs of the city often to not match the needs in the country.

Farmers need protection from the city taking their water. Concerns must be heard, or violence will rear its head.

American is a democracy in progress. Never to be finished, it doesn’t need to perfect. The continuing attempt is enough.

2020 Election Irregularities

There is a line for any complex human undertaking. On one side is an understandable margin of error. A carpenter can build a house with this level of mistaken measurement. The other side is when it undermines trust and threatens outcomes.

The house of democracy cannot be a safe home for the people if its irregular foundation corrupts structural integrity.

Did irregularities undermine trust?

Yes.

When people do not trust the democratic system, they are less likely to vote and more likely to violently resist said system because it will be seen as oppressing them rather than a part of them.

Did irregularities change the election outcome?

Maybe.

Given the diversity and quantity of evidence presented and the attitude of those against Trump, it is easy to believe that it did.

Voter Fraud

Much like with the more general term irregularities there is a line with fraud. The question is not if there was fraud. The question is if there was enough fraud to undermine the integrity of the election, and further, if there was enough fraud to have changed the election’s outcome.

While it is clear that the 2020 election was unusual and unfair, and it can be easily argued that it was significantly irregular, saying fraud overturned the election is a hard sell.

Regardless, given trust was undermined and widespread evidence was presented, better investigations should have been done, and they should have had goals of independence and transparency in pursuit of truth.

There is still time for an accounting

A compromise could be to pursue an election review now while continuing to accept Biden as having won over Trump no matter what investigations make clear.

Biden should be impeached

But, not for election meddling.

He should face a trial that judges his potential corruption related to deals between his family and foreign governments for personal profit by using his public office.

Perhaps, he will be found innocent as Trump has been repeatedly. Either way, concerns will be heard, which is a requirement for democratic peace.

Conspiracy to steal the Election

The victorious cabal celebrated with an accounting of efforts made to spoil the election against Trump and in favor for Biden.

They have not been shy in patting themselves on the back within this Times Magazine article:

“The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy. …

Their work touched every aspect of the election.

(A confession disguised as a parade.)

They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding.

(Process be damned. The ends justify the means.)

They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.

(Historic, by definition, means unusual.)

They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.

They executed national public-awareness campaigns

(An effort the CCP must appreciate.)

that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. …

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures. …

The meetings became the galactic center

(Organized enough to be held accountable as a group.)

for a constellation of operatives across the left who shared overlapping goals but didn’t usually work in concert. The group had no name, no leaders and no hierarchy, but it kept the disparate actors in sync.

In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others. (Gupta has been nominated for Associate Attorney General by President Biden.) …

Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. It was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night. …

Most analysts had recognized there would be a “blue shift” in key battlegrounds– the surge of votes breaking toward Democrats, driven by tallies of mail-in ballots– but they hadn’t comprehended how much better Trump was likely to do on Election Day. …

So the word went out: stand down.

Protect the Results announced that it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.” On Twitter, outraged progressives wondered what was going on. Why wasn’t anyone trying to stop Trump’s coup? Where were all the protests? …

Democracy won in the end. The will of the people prevailed. But it’s crazy, in retrospect, that this is what it took to put on an election in the United States of America.

What is gaslighting?

There are four lights!

The cabal described in the Times Magazine article presents an election that was unusual, unfair, and irregular.

At the same time, they prevent people from expressing concerns about the election.

Big tech and corporate media control low information citizens.

Accused of being Q, unfair

unfairAll conspiracy theories are not created equal. A simple fact, just because one theory is wrong does not make all wrong.

Much like gamers with concerns were lumped together during the so-called “gamer gate“, people concerned with the election are lumped in with QAnon.

This is unfair.

A fascist-like alliance united by TDS

Putting aside the unusual circumstances, irregularities, and fraud, it was an unfair election because there was a fascist-like alliance of industry, media, academia, and government to undermine President Trump’s reelection.

Critical theory < critical thought.

The Capitol protest was not an insurrection.

The protest was mostly peaceful. A small minority of protesters went into the Capitol Building. A few of those could be described as insurrectionists.

Describing the event as an insurrection is an exaggeration larger than calling Covid lethal.

A few dying from Covid does not mean all will die from it. A few Capitol protestors attempting overthrow of the US Government does not mean all protestors there did.

It was cathartic to watch the Capitol besieged and invaded—The most powerful humbled, a visual of the government fearing its people.

People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Defunding the police set the stage.

The local authorities in Washington DC who responsible for the Capitol Building’s security failed in their duty.

This was in part because of earlier Antifa/BLM protests.

Some insurrectionists are elected officials.

The mayor of Portland, Oregon and one of the city’s council members crossed a treacherous line.

Both deserve their day in court to evaluate the degree that they used their public offices to ferment open rebellion against the United States.

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