181–190 of 275 posts
The timing of this information suggests that while it may be true, its very disclosure may also be meddling in foreign elections -- i.e. casting doubt on their legitimacy helps many within the US who are actively trying to propagate that narrative. EDIT: A word
> it's very disclosure may also be meddling in foreign elections As other comments have mentioned, this is more likely posturing in anticipation of an internal power struggle.
Is there any major power not trying to influence other countries' elections? The US CIA has done this, much more directly and brazenly, in South America for decades. Kind of funny when Americans act like buff shirtless Bernie memes are worse than organizing and funding coups
Salvador Allende was nearly 50 years ago. I think the US does a lot less of this now. IMO The Iraq War was the last colossal bullshit thing to date. Many Americans (self included) were against it and we're a few presidents removed from that shitty decision. Around the time of the invasion, Putin cited it as something that excuses his current behavior. But saying the US did something years ago does not justify one's o…
Sorry, a guy who reminded me of you called from 1973 and says that there's no evidence that the US was involved in the Allende coup.
> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…
It doesn't matter whether the Russians want a specific election winnner because many Americans want a specific election winner and have found bad faith discussions, easy talking points and mic drops are an excellent way to achieve those results.
> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…
I haven't seen a newspaper in 8 months. How is that working out for them?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Democrats are pretty much starting from the position that, due to demographics, the only way Republicans can gain the upper hand in national elections (or particular state/local elections) is through trickery and the assistance of foreign government meddling. WTF. Our voting system is so fundamentally broken and all any party needs to do to get a government majority without a popular majority is to push on the crac…
> For the presidential election, the electoral college makes it possible for a candidate to win the presidency with a mere 23% of the popular vote. _Possible_ does a lot of work for you here. You have to assume all the losing states vote at 0% toward the winning party and all winning states vote at 50%+1 for that to happen. Something that is absurdly unrealistic given that California only voted 65% Biden and 35% Trum…
However, the first-past-the-post issues you're talking about have very little to do with gerrymandering? EC / Senate politics are unrepresentative of population-majority preferences due to where people have decided to put themselves; House politics are unrepresentative due to how the districts for each seat are drawn. Gerrymandering is the political manipulation of the latter.
The timing of this information suggests that while it may be true, its very disclosure may also be meddling in foreign elections -- i.e. casting doubt on their legitimacy helps many within the US who are actively trying to propagate that narrative. EDIT: A word
I doubt russia has any interest in swaying results in democrats favour. If anything republicans have already said they would reduce sent to ukraine. To win, putin needs a few weeks or months of ukraine undersupply.
All that is to say it's kind of ironic. If I'm correct, the information that Putin helped the right by meddling, will be reduced and spun by many outlets to go from "there was meddling in our elections that helped the right" into just "our elections are untrustworthy".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Venezuela was 2 years ago.
The situation in Venezuela is much more complicated than "US bad, Maduro good, Guaidó = USA".
These things are all larger than some individual actor.
> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…
These should have bipartisan support. Things like paper votes for every election, random manual recounts to sample error rates and confirm they are low, funding improvements to security of voting infrastructure, etc.
According to Verified Voting (https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEqu...), ~5% of votes are made with un-auditable "direct recording electronic" voting machines, where the votes are held in memory rather than printed to paper. When you actually do pentests, it turns out that these machines are sometimes connected to the internet (even though best-practices are to not do so), and they have been demonstrated to be hackable by someone with a USB drive even when air-gapped. Any such tampering is undetectable if done well. It's simply unacceptable to use such technology for voting IMO, and we should pass laws mandating paper-trails and banning DRE voting.
One problem is that much of the worry about election fraud is motivated reasoning ("my preferred candidate didn't win therefore there must have been fraud; let me find evidence of fraud to support my theory"), rather than actual concern based on an objective analysis starting with the facts. I do wonder if we can still make some changes to the system that strictly improve security and require zero trust of the opposition party, without destroying trust in the underlying institutions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, their goal is indeed to have a specific election winner and to foment division. The IC has been quite clear that Russia had a strong preference for a Trump victory at least in 2016. [Removed a section on GOP preference for defunding Ukraine since this is not a party position, just a growing position within the party] Everything else you've said is true though - no reason to stick our heads in the sand about their…
> GOP's stated preferences for defunding Ukraine's defense The voting record shows their preference is to continue funding it. I don't know why your information sources are saying the opposite. Maybe they do it to polarize us.
Yes, it's a minority. However, in that minority are people who spout Kremlin talking points.