Thank you, Tamar, for setting the record straight.

Of course setting the record straight is what you have been doing for decades, going at least as far back as the FoxPro betas, where you were always the #1 Doc Bug champ. :)

Hank

>I've been trying to stay out of this discussion since we're not supposed to discuss politics. But between these two answers, there is so much that is wrong that I can't stay silent any more.
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>>>>More frightening is for me that this is half of what brought a certain Austrian into power over here not even a century ago. I had always dismissed discussion about a coup / civil war in the states before, and the things happening early January were ugly, but not IMO not really a danger (yet). More like Munich Putsch attempt in the twenties than Machtergreifung in the 30ies.
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>>It's worth recalling that not so long ago, 300 were arrested after they invaded the Senate buildings to protest a Supreme Court nominee. Another 164 were arrested trying to break into the Supreme Court when he was sworn in, while Pence was threatened by another mob as he tried to leave the Senate. Some of those now rearing back in horror, were very pleased about these earlier "insurrections" or even could be considered to have instigated them- so by today's standards, at least 3 current representatives ought to be charged for inciting violence and insurrection.
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>The Kavanaugh protesters did _NOT_ invade the Senate buildings. They came in following the rules and they did not have weapons. They were arrested for peaceful protest in the building. (Full disclosure: my son was arrested in a Senate building during last year's impeachment. It was a non-violent act of civil disobedience, entirely unlike the Jan. 6 riot. Here's an article about that: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/478648-remove-trump-protest-in-senate-office-buildings-as-impeachment-trial. You can see my son on the left-hand side of the video in Garrett Haake's second tweet; he's wearing brown pants.)
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>There is a world of difference between non-violent civil disobedience and a violent insurrection.
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>>>>Certainly some votes were falsified (probable, as lots of people in small groups were involved), but there has been no clear evidence shown to be anywhere close to numbers affecting the outcome even in battleground states.
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>>The 10th rule of the House of God: "If you don't take a temperature, you can't find a fever."
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>>A more neutral media might ask how hard would it be for somebody who cares about national unity to perform a state examination of (say) 5000 votes. Let the complainant select sources and draw votes from a proverbial hat, then check validity. Unless the % of irregularity in this sample could have delivered a different result, now you can truthfully say there's no evidence that the election was affected by (whatever) and it's reasonable to go ahead and certify. Refusing to do this and then pretending the resulting lack of evidence disproves the claim, seems inflammatory. JMHO.
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>There was already tremendous oversight of this year's election. Several people were caught and arrested for attempting to cast ballots for dead family members. (All the cases I know of were people trying to cast extra Trump votes.) Beyond that, this is NO evidence of votes being falsified.
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>Is it likely there were some errors and some additional cases of individual fraud? Sure, because when you're dealing with over 150M votes, mistakes will happen and a few people will cheat. But there is simply zero evidence of any widespread fraud of any sort. This election was more scrutinized than any I can remember.
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>FWIW, the very conservative Heritage Foundation has a database of cases around election fraud. (Though they call it "voter fraud," much of what they track isn't actually voters committing fraud, but campaigns doing so.) It covers the whole US and goes back to the 1990s and they list only a little more than 1300 cases. Here's the link: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
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>I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the idea of voter fraud has been exploited by the Republican party for nearly 2 decades as a way of making it harder for people to vote, especially people who are more likely to vote Democratic. That includes people of color and young people. We're seeing another round of that in the wake of this year's election, despite the fact that even people in Donald Trump's administration stated clearly that it was secure and they saw no widespread fraud.
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>Tamar