But that's exactly what happens, for example, in Russia or Belarus. The opposition claims the election was rigged, the court dismisses these claims, and the government uses the law against inciting violence to silence and or jail the opposition. And it is nearly impossible to prove that the elections in the whole were rigged - in the best case they have a proof on a number of episodes that total in, let's say, 100k of votes, but that still doesn't prove the overall result is falsified.
Right, but in russian elections you can look for indicators of election fraud and find them by the dozen, and in the US you cannot. In russia, all of the party's officials are complicit stooges going along with the narrative that threy totally won by 92%, where as im the US even the VP is acknowledging his loss.
There are no markers or evidence of any kind. Nobody can even come up with plausible stories nevermind facts.
So should we really be making the comparison to two of the most obviously corrupt states on earth? Does that help the conversation or just muddy the waters?
The waters are already muddy. Remember that we are discussing this in the context of censoring speech, "are there plausible stories" can't be the deciding factor in that.
Right, but what I'm saying is that the grey areas in life can be resolved through examination of indicators, and "is there a plausible story" is one of them. It's stronger in some scenarios than others. For example, it's pretty much the only indicator you need to dismiss more outragerous claims like flat-earthers.
The simple question of "what would be the point" is enough to dismiss nearly all of that spectrum of conspiracy theory - wherein no reason that makes a modicum of sense can be given. "Hur dur, because control the populous" or something is generally the best that can be mustered, and asking how or why leads only to more dead ends.
Likewise, trying to come up with a story about why both his own party and the opposing party and a large number of his own base and the entirety of the opposition's base will lead to no plausible story.
I think using Russia or Belarus as examples is completely incorrect. And all this questioning has only solidified how secure elections in the US are.
Take GA for example. A large percentage of the election officials are Trump supporters. I don't know about post coup attempt, but leading up they said they would still vote for Trump again even after he started putting them in danger with his fraud nonsense.
Finally, if someone wants to 'rig' an election, the path is not directly through changing votes, it's through social engineering. That's what the Russia investigation was about in 2016, and what Trump attempted here through all the lies both leading up to and post election.
Uh, the Russia investigation had credible evidence and resulted in multiple arrests and convictions. It turned up multiple cases of collusion with russian operatives. They did not, however find enough evidence that there was an overall conspiracy to collude or that Trump had any clue what was going on in the larger scope.
And ... who knows, maybe Putin really won maybe not. After all he systematically crushes any real opposition.
The problem in Russia, the problem in all of these questions is the huge imbalance of power. Russia an Belarus is an autocracy. (Yes, it's again context, but using the word context is uselessly too broad, doesn't have explanatory power.)
So Trump claims they are persecuted, we can look at the balance of power. Oh, he's the sitting president. Well, then it's very-very-very unlikely that he's silenced, and it's more likely that he's trying to overextend his power, and he's simply facing pushback from various other social/democratic/other institutions.
When Twitter banned the SciHub account because it broke their Counterfeit policy people noted that in this case it was likely Twitter using its power too much to please Elsevier/India.
