But that's exactly what happens, for example, in Russia or Belarus. The opposition claims the election was rigged, the court dismisses these claims, and the government uses the law against inciting violence to silence and or jail the opposition. And it is nearly impossible to prove that the elections in the whole were rigged - in the best case they have a proof on a number of episodes that total in, let's say, 100k of votes, but that still doesn't prove the overall result is falsified.

Right, but in russian elections you can look for indicators of election fraud and find them by the dozen, and in the US you cannot. In russia, all of the party's officials are complicit stooges going along with the narrative that threy totally won by 92%, where as im the US even the VP is acknowledging his loss.

There are no markers or evidence of any kind. Nobody can even come up with plausible stories nevermind facts.

So should we really be making the comparison to two of the most obviously corrupt states on earth? Does that help the conversation or just muddy the waters?

The waters are already muddy. Remember that we are discussing this in the context of censoring speech, "are there plausible stories" can't be the deciding factor in that.

Right, but what I'm saying is that the grey areas in life can be resolved through examination of indicators, and "is there a plausible story" is one of them. It's stronger in some scenarios than others. For example, it's pretty much the only indicator you need to dismiss more outragerous claims like flat-earthers.

The simple question of "what would be the point" is enough to dismiss nearly all of that spectrum of conspiracy theory - wherein no reason that makes a modicum of sense can be given. "Hur dur, because control the populous" or something is generally the best that can be mustered, and asking how or why leads only to more dead ends.

Likewise, trying to come up with a story about why both his own party and the opposing party and a large number of his own base and the entirety of the opposition's base will lead to no plausible story.

I think using Russia or Belarus as examples is completely incorrect. And all this questioning has only solidified how secure elections in the US are.

Take GA for example. A large percentage of the election officials are Trump supporters. I don't know about post coup attempt, but leading up they said they would still vote for Trump again even after he started putting them in danger with his fraud nonsense.

Finally, if someone wants to 'rig' an election, the path is not directly through changing votes, it's through social engineering. That's what the Russia investigation was about in 2016, and what Trump attempted here through all the lies both leading up to and post election.

Uh, the Russia investigation had credible evidence and resulted in multiple arrests and convictions. It turned up multiple cases of collusion with russian operatives. They did not, however find enough evidence that there was an overall conspiracy to collude or that Trump had any clue what was going on in the larger scope.

I think you're replying to what you assumed matwood was going to say about the Russia investigation, rather than what matwood actually said.

> Russia investigation had credible evidence and resulted in multiple arrests and convictions

The comment I responded to mentioned elections in Russia, unrelated to Russian election interference in 2016.

And ... who knows, maybe Putin really won maybe not. After all he systematically crushes any real opposition.

The problem in Russia, the problem in all of these questions is the huge imbalance of power. Russia an Belarus is an autocracy. (Yes, it's again context, but using the word context is uselessly too broad, doesn't have explanatory power.)

So Trump claims they are persecuted, we can look at the balance of power. Oh, he's the sitting president. Well, then it's very-very-very unlikely that he's silenced, and it's more likely that he's trying to overextend his power, and he's simply facing pushback from various other social/democratic/other institutions.

When Twitter banned the SciHub account because it broke their Counterfeit policy people noted that in this case it was likely Twitter using its power too much to please Elsevier/India.

I was able to sympathise with BLM protesters because of the incidents of the past and also comparing police presence in capitol during the priest of BLM and MAGA goons. In case of MAGA goons, despites courts, a lot of which were conservative judges, and the republicans themselves not finding any evidence of election fraud which would change the result of election, they continue to try to overturn the result with force. They are acting in bad faith. The fact that more than 70 million people support this is the chilling part.

There are people that gather every year to celebrate aliens. If a fight breaks out at a ufo fair and people get hurt do we arrest everyone that said they saw a ufo? Do we take away their platform? Who decides where to draw the line?

A few of those arguments don't require evidence, since they were matters of law vs. matters of fact.

One of the arguments made was that laws passed by legislatures weren't followed, for example the deadline for mail-in ballots in PA, which was extended until 5 P.M on November 5 even though the law on the books is explicit that ballots postmarked after election day were invalid. The fact that a court upheld the view in contradiction with fairly plain language of the law caused some controversy.

The above doesn't mean "The election was stolen". It doesn't mean it would have turned out differently. But I think there is some room for debate. Even though Trump is aggrandizing the issue politicians do that all the time and aren't de-platformed for it.

The deadline for mail-in ballots was not based on delivery time, it was based on postmark time.

So there is absolutely nothing wrong with a ballot arriving after 5PM November 5th, so long as it was postmarked before the cutoff.

So the laws were followed, no contradiction, just a selective lack of understanding by a group of bad actors.