Yeah, a lot depends on where you live. Check out these lines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmMobN4AVw And they’re far from the worst! I just did a search on “four hour voting lines” and it happened in Chicago, New Jersey, UC Irvine, Northeast Ohio …and that’s just the first page of search results.

One reason people might be annoyed by this is because it sounds like you don’t realize how many people had to wait in four-hour long lines.

Anyhow, turnout wasn’t abysmal, it looks like be down a bit from 2020’s record numbers.

Do you think the Director of CISA – who Biden appointed (and has done a great job) and Trump will almost certainly fire – lives under a rock and wants Trump to take office? Because here’s what she said:

https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/statement-cisa-director-easterly-security-2024-elections

What’s the evidence you find “literally incontrovertible”?

The comparison is apt though:

• In 2020, almost all non-partisan voting rights organizations and election experts (as well as most Republicans, despite losing) were saying that there was in fact no evidence of widespread election fraud. So conservatives claiming election fraud were seen as conspiracy theorists who were spreading disinfo (either intentionally or because they really thought there was evidence).

• In 2024, almost all non-partisan voting rights organizations and election experts (as well as most Democrats, despite losing) are saying that there was in fact no evidence of widespread election fraud. So …

Sure, if it’s somebody you know or trust who’s saying this, then it’s not disinformation; agreed about helping them contact election officials and/or other authorities, and if you think it’s useful to amplify it, then I’m not trying to talk you out of it.

If it’s not somebody you know or trust, then amplifying it is quite possibly helping out a disinformation campaign.

And in any case, amplifying individual claims is very different from the unsupported claims about “millions of missing votes”, and that’s what I am trying to talk people out of.

It’s true that downballot Dems ran ahead of Harris in most states. Why do you think it’s statistically unlikely? Polls ahead of the election showed downballot Dems were more popular than Harris. Republicans focused most of their negative campaigning on Harris. Biden’s very unpopular and she didn’t try to distance herself from him (I’m not saying that she should have, I’m just observing that she didn’t). Sexists and racists were less likely to vote for Harris.

I talked about that in the article:

Don’t get me wrong, multiple voter suppression techniques actually were used to keep people from voting – purging voters from rolls, felon disenfranchisement, 6-hour lines, texts with false information, voter intimidation, voter id laws, signature challenges, etc etc etc. But that’s not what these conspiracy allegations are focusing on.

And I also discussed it in terms of the goals of people pushing these conspiracy theories:

focusing attention on an alleged fraud that didn’t occur is a good way to divert attention from all voter suppression that really has occurred and has been steadily ramping up ever since Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voing Rights Act – and got even worse this year after Republicans blocked legislation that could have provided voters and election officials with more protection.

Thanks, glad you appreciate it!

Yeah. Funny how that works!

Thanks much for the detailed response … I didn’t realize the purpose of this community. Somebody had suggested I post the draft here, which I did, and now I realize that their suggestion was a snarky trap that I fell for 🤣. Oh well, joke’s on them (as well as me), I got good feedback on the draft here.

Agreed that there are structural problems with AP; I wrote about this in And it’s about the protocol, too. But even though software improvements can help, the underlying problem’s cultural.

I intentionally didn’t phrase it in terms of allyship (in fact I’m pretty sure the word “ally” doesn’t even appear in the article) … still, I don’t think white folks (me included) can stop being white, nor should we – we are who we are, and that’s okay. I do think we (again including me) can make more of an effort to deal with our default attitudes and behaviors, and try to use our privilege for good.

Thanks for pointing that out! But, I got enough pushback on the wording of point 2 that I changed it to just “Think before you post”

Yep, very similar dynamics.

Thanks, it’s a great example, and good to hear they got banned quickly! It’s a great point that when moderators are proactive most people don’t see the posts so think there’s less racism than there actually is.

Thanks for the pointer.

Good point, thanks. I seem to recall another one as well – although both were widely defederated so I suspect most people on those instances didn’t wind up seeing them.

Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback! The revised draft will talk about Lemmy as well. I’ve talked about the software aspects in a lot of other posts (Mastodon and today’s fediverse are unsafe by design and unsafe by default, for example, and there’s a section on it Don’t tell people “it’s easy”, and seven more things Kbin, Lemmy, and the fediverse can learn from Mastodon so don’t want to go into it here, but maybe I’ll add a link!

Weak moderation on many instances – including large ones like mastodon.social – is a big problem, but I wouldn’t say it’s the biggest. Black people even on well-moderated instances get plenty of racist abuse – the moderation tools are horrible, and basic tools that peopl on Twitter have to protect themselves don’t even exist. Agreed though that many fedi instances do have stricter rules and make a real effort to enforce them … that’s a good thing!

Well said. Can I quote you in the revised draft?

With that domain name, who could have predicted?