every single election in the US is subject to a complete audit after the fact. counting quickly and verifying accurately after the fact are not mutually exclusive.
If you're an American, you'll be all too aware of what a mess the US electoral system is, subject to varying rules across thousands of jurisdictions, large and small, and involving now prolonged "early voting", "absentee voting" for a wide variety of reasons, mail in ballots only for some states, little or no ID verification for some states, outdated voter rolls, legal "ballot harvesting" etc.
Growing up we used to politely nod at the common belief that the 1960 presidential race (Kennedy vs. Nixon) was decided by Mayor Daley's corrupt intervention in Chicago. And, of course, the wild 2000 Gore vs. Bush race decided in Florida further eroded hugely trust in the electoral system. And etc. etc.
Considering how close you came to a coup and how the elected president could spend months trying to destroy democracy while also personally using his power and influence to try to sway local officials, it doesn’t seem like the complete audit isn’t really helping. Especially when 40%+ of the population thinks those audits are manufactured lies from main stream media.
How is the coup narrative so pervasive? There was no institutional support, nobody got killed except for a rioter, they all cleared out promptly by curfew. By all indications it was a riot and a pretty mild one at that given the previous summer. How is that a coup?
We know what rioters are capable of when they actually want to overthrow govt: look at the autonomous zones and capitals that got ransacked in the upper north west (Seattle, Portland, etc). Those were over weeks where cops weren't allowed into entire city blogs, they declared themselves autonomous, and people were killed to that ends. They also received tons of institutional support from media, politicians, and wealthy people.
I don't get how any honest assessment takes the actions by the partisans in DC as a coup. At LEAST the other riots were coups too, or more truly, only the leftist partisan riots can be considered attempted local coups given their stated goals and actions.
If you remember how the narrative evolved in real-time: in the preceding months the talking point was "only leftists riot", then on the capital riot and following days, the dominant narrative was "SEE! right wing people ALSO riot". Only days after that did the language start to coalesce around "actually this was was a COUP", and even then it was seen as hyperbolic even on reddit. Now it's been repeated so many times it's just taken as fact.
Even a successful coup is possible with no one getting killed;
> they all cleared out promptly by curfew
Because the coup attempt had already failed.
> By all indications it was a riot and a pretty mild one at that given the previous summer. How is that a coup?
“Coup” is not defined by intensity but by objective. The overtly intent was to use intimidation and/or violence against government officials to coerce a rejection of the electoral votes from sufficient states to allow the sitting President to extend his term nothwithstanding having been defeated in the election, at the instigation of the sitting President. It is a textbook autocoup attempt by its goals and ultimate instigation, which failed because the rioters were held back long enough for members of Congress to escape, but not by a wide margin.
Was it a hastily conceived, poorly coordinated, amateurish autocoup attempt? Yes, absolutely. Does that reduce its severity as a crime? No, no it doesn’t.
> I don't get how any honest assessment takes the actions by the partisans in DC as a coup.
It was a coup attempt, specifically an attempted autocoup. It wasn't a coup, because it failed.
> At LEAST the other riots were coups
No, none of those were coups, or even coup attempts. (The “Autonomous Zone” might be viewed as a hyperlocalized secession attempt, but that’s a distinct thing from a coup, seeking to separate territory from the control of an established government, not unlawfully take or extend control of said government.)
Why did the "coup" fail? We've all seen the videos, police never really showed up in force, army never showed up, national guard never showed up. It ended because...people went home. If it were actually an attempted coup, why didn't they dig in? Why didn't a single politician back them?
You just seem convinced of a coup and nothing will shake you. What did they do that was wholly different from a regular riot? Even on the inside they're just taking photos and walking around.
I think you are oriented for defending the American election. I think a better way to orient is to compare how Taiwanese elections are run to how American elections are run.
My assertion is that Taiwanese elections are much more simple and therefore much more understandable and much more trustable. American elections might be cheaper per capita.
If we are choosing a method of elections that is more complex and results in less trust, why are we doing it that way?
In many places in the US you cannot bring your children with you to vote. So many people rely on public schools as day care so that they can vote. In places that cancelled school on election day recently (people vote at schools often, and there were security concerns after recent shootings), the voter turnout was lower in segments of the population that statistically are less likely to have family/partner available to watch children, or the means to pay for childcare.
I think it is fair to restate that your argument is: "Because there are classes of people who cannot vote because children are restricted in voting areas, election day should not be a federal holiday."
I am having a little trouble taking that in good faith. For one, the evidence presented is not of a holiday shared by everyone (friends who could watch kids, partners who also have jobs, etc).
That's before asking if it's right that children cannot be with you to vote or if that could be done better. That's before asking if there was higher turnout in other groups, like underpaid teachers.
That really wasn't my argument at all. In so far as I had one. The US system has so many more severe issues that a holiday seems minor and it is somewhat complex as an issue. Letting a parent bring in five children probably does create concerns as well.
Other than bankers and people who work for the government (like teachers) few people get government holidays in my experience. There is a surge of temporary daycare workers for those days so parents can still go to work. Poorer parents dread those days. Public school, especially post pandemic has turned into free childcare and little more due to teacher shortages.
Early voting seems like a good thing to continue to me.
Fixing the issues that make your vote irrelevant at the national level unless you live anywhere but a very short list of places would be much higher on my list than a holiday. The gerrymandering is painfully obvious on the voting maps.
How hard an election is to rig is not the issue,itshow obviously unriggable it appears to the losing voters. That's the (well, an) important thing the American system is missing.
I disagree. There was no evidence of fraud in 2020, yet the losing party at 80-90% rate still believes it was stolen. At that point, there's nothing that can be done to dissuade.
I thought there was evidence of fraud in 2020, but the problem was that the "evidence" was bogus. One of the complaints I remember was that the results swung sharply from one side to the other at some point in the reporting process, but that of course was because the initial results were from in-person voting, and the mail-in/drop-in votes were counted last, so when those results were added, then suddenly the "blue" candidates were winning, because the red voters tended to vote in-person far more than their blue counterparts. The red voters somehow refuse to believe this however and think the election was rigged.
