You are changing the topic. You responded to my assertion that Trump’s lies about a stolen election is the single most divisive lie in our political history by explaining how it is justified by what Marc Elias did in court and because Hillary is still complaining about 2016. Am I misunderstanding your point?
Regarding Hillary’s claims, I’ll point out again (we do tend to repeat ourselves, don’t we?), that the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee documented the consensus findings of all of our intelligence agencies that Russia intervened in a number of ways in the 2016 election in an effort to help Trump win. That is not a hoax, that is an accepted fact. Did those efforts tip the election to Trump? That can’t be proven true or false.
Speaking from personal experience, we know that Roger Stone asked that the DNC emails hacked by Russia be released mere hours after the p**sygrab tape went public and it absolute was an effective distraction from what would have taken down any other candidate in any other circumstances. I followed each release of those hacked emails very closely and they likely impacted my decision to vote third party.
Were I Hillary and I knew that my opponent asked for and received assistance from one of our two biggest global adversaries, I’d be complaining about it as well. It is complaints based upon established facts, unlike nearly every single claim made by Trump, which are currently supported by no facts.
The fact that republicans continue to either deny Russia’s involvement or minimize the implications of it is another reasons Dems should keep discussing it, given the fact that Trump remains the front runner for 2024.
Expressing concerns with the voting process and recommending proposed solutions is in no way equivalent to insisting that wide scale vote fraud took place across multiple states and that the elections was stolen. As I pointed out above, it’s the difference between saying what could have happened versus what did happen.
Trump insisted he won the popular vote in 2016 and had Mike Pence chair a committee to go find the fraud. It quietly disbanded after finding nothing. If Trump was so concerned about election integrity, why didn’t he propose legislation when the Republicans controlled the Senate and House in the first two years of his term?
Trump didn’t express sober and thoughtful concerns about voting integrity, he started insisting that the only possible way he could lose the election was through massive fraud and he started saying that months before the election. That alone is an outrageous and divisive lie given the pandemic, his controversial (to put it kindly) style and the fact that he didn’t win in a landslide in 2016. As I documented above, Trump has said almost nothing about 2020 election integrity that has been true or proven. It’s lie after lie after lie, and he knew it and his legal team knew it.
His lies about election fraud are a big part of the reason this country was so divided at the end of his term, it was the primary reason J6 happened (look at the testimony of the hundreds of people who pled or were found guilty in J6 cases) and it’s part of the reason our political system is so broken now.
You are ignoring the facts presented to you and responding with opinions. You keep saying that Donald Trump lied when he complained of a stolen election. I ask you, when Hillary Clinton says the 2016 election was stolen from her repeatedly for 7 years and counting, is she lying as well? It is a simple question. The answer does not begin with "Trump."
I'm not going to just disagree with you, because that doesn't change anything. Instead, I'm trying to get you to look under the hood with me at how these things come to pass. I'm probably summarizing too much complex material that I don't have time to write out and you don't really want to read.
You say that Trump lied about election issues in filing numerous suits. Was it okay for Marc Elias and Perkins Coie to file multiple lawsuits in multiple states prior to 2020 to bypass state laws and compromise election security standards? Was it okay for Stacey Abrams and Brad Raffensperger to secretly agree to change legal voter registration requirements, without informing the legislature? Should they be prosecuted?
If you actually read my posts in this thread, you would know that election legislation was proposed, passed and signed by President Trump during his term. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon questioned the veracity of giving billions to states to improve their voting systems without attaching specific performance requirements to the funding.
From a quote I posted in this thread, Wyden wanted paper ballots completed by hand (in contrast to Georgia's system), routine audits of election results, and to follow basic cybersecurity standards. Was Wyden out of line? Was he lying to the Senate Rules Committee?
Was Wyden out of line when he observed in sworn testimony to the Senate Rules Committee that the New York Times published a story revealing that ES&S, the largest voting machine manufacturer, was selling devices that came pre-installed with modems and remote monitoring software?
Should it be illegal for voters and candidates to seek detailed information behind election results or should that be the norm? That's what all those failed Trump lawsuits you mention were about. They weren't all disproven in court, but rather the courts repeatedly found reasons not to allow discovery of election materials, often using archaic, outdated and obscure legal principles.
Should a major law firm in the United States brag about protecting government officials from lawful scrutiny of government activity? Should the accused be allowed to pick and choose what evidence the plaintiff can see?
Are you aware that most states only allow election contests to be filed within a week of certification of the election, but election fraud cases against individuals can be filed years after the fact?
To be more clear, I don't think any politician is doing anything meaningful to clean up our elections. There are huge vulnerabilities which lead to corruption, no matter who wants to admit it or avoid it. Most could be fixed with simple legislation. Nobody on either side is proposing or passing it. Why not?
