Yeah it was crazy.

Sorry for the late response. Disasters happen!

I will not vote for the democrats and no argument will convince me.

I do want to participate in the electoral system and am not forced to vote for people or parties I have no interest in.

You aren’t going to convince anyone with the most important election rhetoric. If a person isn’t already saying it along with you then they’ll be driven away by those words.

I’m not throwing away my vote. It’ll be counted just like all the others. I know this from being involved in the process of elections.

I’m not concerned with what the fascist want.

If the democrats want my vote they can adopt a platform I support, actively pursue it to some real material ends and maybe I’ll cast a ballot for them in two years or four years.

Hey, in case you’re not familiar with it, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is a communist party, not some right wing formation like the tea party or whatever.

So nothing about my support for that party would make me a supporter of trump.

I’m voting party for Socialism and Liberation in November and you can too.

They’re running on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to Israel.

No word on their position with regard to Israel’s war with Lebanon, but I’m confident it’s one that I’ll support.

here’s hoping i showed enough civility to not catch a ban.

Im making this reply to help you better respond to people, not to start a fight:

Hey, just a heads up, your cfr link directly cites Adrian zenz, the person many people don’t trust to make even handed statements about China, directly twice.

The vox link sources statements from him several times. I tried to just quickly parse what was what but I came up with seven different statements.

The bbc article seems to reference zenz in six different claims.

I wasn’t able to give these articles a deep read, or check if the other sources also pull from that particular controversial figure or his organizations.

lol that half the comments are libs getting btfo because there is currently a defacto ban on refugees from gaza.

i agree that we need to build trust in the process. I think the right way to do that is to go ahead with a hand count. if they’re conspiring to cast doubt like you’re saying, it’s the way to put a stop to that line of thinking.

be realistic here, georgia was the subject of allegations of tampering last time around and just because of that there will be allegations this time around. it would have been better to prepare earlier but the unserious move is to wait till election night to start the hand tally.

Okay, like I said, there are insane bigots.

What is going on?

there are insane bigots.

I do not see evidence that this group is pushing forward a bigoted agenda in deed.

I am open to being wrong. If you have evidence of it, I want to see.

I don’t think that a hand count in a state whose election results were called into question last time is a crazy move.

I think suspicion of a conspiracy to use a hand count to slow the process down to the point that the election is decided by the house is not a good reason to prevent a hand count.

I feel like I’m missing something critical here, but it doesn’t seem like you want to resolve people’s concerns or build trust because you believe those concerns don’t merit addressing and that it’s not possible to build trust with the people you see as your enemies.

Okay let me get this straight:

There’s a group of people who don’t believe you can trust the elections. They think there’s a big conspiracy to manipulate them and have taken positions in the board of elections in order to make sure it’s done right (whatever that means).

You and others think that theyre the ones involved a conspiracy to manipulate the election, and have occupied those positions in order to further their plot. You and others believe that they’re going ahead with a hand count, the method used when an election is in contention and its results need to be verified, so that the process will slow down and their candidate will be appointed by the house.

You don’t think that trust can be built with that group and that they should be purged from office and the ability of those positions to verify and certify elections should be removed.

You think the best response to a conspiracy minded movement which doesn’t trust the elections and has occupied the positions in government ostensibly tasked with election security and veracity with the stated purpose of making sure there is no manipulation is to force them out of those positions and take away that power.

This is “put battery operated speakers in stop signs that remind schizophrenics to take their medication” level thinking and I’m here for it.

I’m sorry for not replying to you sooner, I couldn’t find any examples of people lying to claim fraud in that article.

I read it a bunch of times and it’s very possible that I missed it, so point it out if you think so.

That’s why I didn’t get back to you till now.

I’ve really tried to not argue from the standpoint that hand counting is ontologically good, but that there’s a reason why in this case, in this election, under the conditions that Georgia is and will be under, hand counting is a better choice.

In a bunch of comments up the chain I say as much and I’ve been trying to stay consistent with that.

I’m really not willfully trying to avoid the point.

How so?

If you can’t build trust with a group what do you think is the way forward?

Okay, you and the Georgia board of elections disagree about the 2020 result.

What is the right way to go about building trust in the election process in that circumstance?

Is it to just tell the people who think there was manipulation to sit down and shut up or is it to go ahead and prepare for the inevitable accusations of manipulation?

What im trying to make clear here is that I think that the board of elections is making the right call, even if they don’t think hand counts are inherently better like I do, and even if they’re nefariouslly planning to drum up unfounded accusations of manipulation, because they’re making the call that has the most opportunity to build trust in the election process back up.

How should it be?

Again, I don’t see anyone saying that they’re planning to lie in order to claim fraud.

I’m also not entirely convinced that a hand count can be manipulated as easily as you’re suggesting based on the election work I’ve been involved in.

This honestly seems like one of those times that a stopped clock is right, a person truly believes there is gonna be fraud or recognizes that there are gonna be claims of it and pushes to prepare for the worst.

Let me flip the script on you:

Georgia was the focus of a lot of claims of election fraud last time around. If your goal was to build trust in the election process there, wouldn’t you want to go ahead and be prepared for the worst, a hand count?

It also provides a level of transparency to refute those claims if there is no fraud.

In the future there will be more contested elections. If you want to stop hearing people claim voter fraud then we need to start practicing clear and open processes now instead of pushing those people to the sideline.

Most elected officials don’t take office until January. The window between the election and Those people being seated is two months and some weeks no matter what. If the count is done in two hours, two days or two weeks, there’s still two months and some weeks to drum up a fraud case.

They would have had to recount the whole state of Florida to get the correct result (gore wins), not the counties they were recounting, so bush v gore was decided correctly. Maybe not for the right reasons, but it reflected reality.

What I was referencing was that it’s pretty silly to think that the plan would be to herd the house into choosing the president when it’s easier to influence five or six judges and it worked before.

I don’t know what people think or plan.

I’m interested to see if people have been discussing how to use the election process to disrupt the election itself though.

I also don’t think it’s a big deal if a hand count takes longer. Like I said before, provisional ballots aren’t finalized for weeks after the election so what’s the big deal?

Where are you seeing someone saying that?