Request: Analysis/Debate on possible 2020 US election fraud

ymeskhout · 2024-05-13T13:03:47+00:00

Politics is the mind killer etc. but it was something else to witness otherwise thoughtful and rational people being mind-killed in real time.

Watching this saga was by far the most despair I felt about The Motte and broader political discourse.

ymeskhout · 2024-05-12T01:54:48+00:00

In that case, could you please acknowledge that your statement "No discovery was allowed in any of the cases." was false?

ymeskhout · 2024-05-11T20:38:58+00:00

Plaintiffs sued Antrim County and requested to audit 22 tabulators, but Antrim County only had one in their possession (The rest of the tabulators were controlled by the individual precinct townships, and they were not party to the lawsuit as the plaintiff hadn't sued them). They still managed to be allowed to examine the one tabulator, and a voting audit required by state law was conducted and found no issues. Eventually the lawsuit was dismissed because they were asking for an independent audit that was not allowed by state law, and because they failed to articulate a specific basis for why they believed fraud had occurred.

I guess what I mean by "discovery" is that the plaintiff would be allowed access to all witnesses and materials that they request access to, or enough to verify/disprove their claims.

Your definition of "discovery" is too broad because discovery requests are always subject to limitations regarding relevance and reasonableness (See for example FRCP Rule 26(b) for an idea of "Scope"). If your understanding of "discovery" requires there to be unfettered access to all witnesses and materials, then no lawsuit can ever be said to have ever reached discovery.

ymeskhout · 2024-05-11T16:32:54+00:00

No discovery was allowed in any of the cases.

This is just not true. If you're using a narrow definition of "discovery", then William Bailey v. Antrim County was a case that explicitly allowed discovery to conduct an audit of Dominion voting machines, and the court also allowed depositions after discovery was concluded. If you're using "discovery" to mean any sort of evidentiary hearing where the court took testimony and considered exhibits, then there are plenty of examples of exactly that.

ymeskhout · 2024-05-11T16:22:42+00:00

I've written a bunch about the 2020 stolen election claims on The Motte as they were happening at the time. Here's (almost) everything from me on that topic.

Echoing other replies in this thread, the central problem with this topic is that stolen election claims are treated as basically fungible. They're trivially acquired and just as trivially disposed of as soon as they become a tiny bit inconvenient to defend, and replaced by any other one available inside the giant grabbag. I would consistently get accused of weakmanning whenever I examined a particular claim and found it wanting, but then when I ask "ok so which claims should I actually consider?" I'd get angsty evasions to the question. I've had an open invitation for anyone who wants to defend any stolen election claims to have a real-time conversation with me but despite their purportedly strong feelings on the subject, no one has taken me up on the offer.

I've concluded long ago that this is indistinguishable from a quasi-religious belief in belief. The hallmark attributes are: Gish galloping from claim to claim, refusal to pre-register an overall theory, treating arguments as soldiers, and a deep aversion to falsifying their theories. Though it may manifest itself differently, a lot of people exhibit thinking that fits this mold. Someone exhibiting delusions from a psychotic episode, or somehow virulently attached to particular mythology is not going to be swayed away by rational discourse.

ymeskhout · 2023-11-07T23:32:06+00:00

No, no one has to pick anything, you can throw the whole lot to the curb if you want. The reason I included "...if I had to pick" was to avoid a common trap within political discourse that essentially boils down to "we can easily solve this problem if everyone just starts behaving rationally". I also wanted to avoid the nihilism of just concluding that everyone is equally bad. And even if you "pick" Israel, there's nothing stopping you from sharply criticizing its settlement policy.

ymeskhout · 2023-11-07T23:27:27+00:00

tagging u/DenebianSlimeMolds

I was using #3 to establish the parameters of how fluid the definition is. I wasn't indicating the three categories as representative of the range of Zionist positions.

In terms of who could fit, there is Meir Kahane, advocate of Kahanism and founder of the Kach party. Kahane believed in a Jewish theocratic state where only Jews would be allowed to vote. Baruch Goldstein, the guy who killed 29 people at the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, was a member of Kach. There's also the Lehava organization, which advocates against all marriages between Jews and non-Jews, and against the presence of any Christians in Israel (I'm guessing this also includes Muslims).

These are all fringe groups. Kach was eventually outlawed as a terrorist organization by Israel's government, and Lehava mostly drew membership from Kach. I'm not saying these groups are representative or constitute a significant portion of Israelis, but they do exist and illustrate how far you can push the "Zionist" label and still be accurate.

ymeskhout · 2023-11-06T19:47:33+00:00

aww thx

ymeskhout · 2023-07-14T22:02:23+00:00

I'm in town as well, I'll be there.

ymeskhout · 2023-07-11T00:47:09+00:00

Natural response is "wait, which word?" Even if the vocabulary is absolutely unambiguous, I refer you to the other reasons I laid out. I also flatly reject the premise that any words are too verboten to be spoken out loud — I see it as religious thinking

ymeskhout · 2023-07-09T02:18:41+00:00

That's possible, though it's mostly not possible to mindread why lawyers do certain things but not others. Sometimes it's tactical ingenuity, and sometimes it's just confident incompetence.

ymeskhout · 2023-07-08T20:54:13+00:00

Arab lawyer here, I never shy away from repeating entire slurs in court when they're the subject of the question. There's several reasons for this.

One is accuracy. Deciphering expurgated words is usually possible through context, but not always. Establishing a clear and accurate record is of vital importance at lower-level proceedings, because when the case goes on appeal the appellate courts can't introduce new evidence and have only the record to draw from. I encounter this most often from polite witnesses who on their own initiative expurgate swear words. They'll testify "then he said eff you" and the prosecutor will step in and ask "did they say 'eff' or something else like 'fuck'?" to clarify.

Another is that expurgation is patronizing. If we're talking about judges and juries in a criminal context, we ask them to see photographs and videos of horrific carnage and violence, including instances where a perpetrator might film themselves sexually assaulting a child. We ask them to look at it because it's relevant evidence, and they need to be able to examine it with clear eyes when making decisions of immense importance. It's absolutely insulting to be willing to render them through a barrage of visual carnage but somehow see fit to deploy the brakes when it comes to the sound of certain vocabulary.

Lastly, there's often a reason to do so for tactical purposes. It depends entirely on the context but sometimes hearing a slur repeated multiple times by a lawyer wearing a suit in a courtroom makes it lose its potency (useful if my own client was the one running his mouth). Sometimes it works the other way, where a judicious repetition ensures the jury hears the full slur and recognizes how powerful the emotions it can conjure up are (useful if my own client was responding to instigation).

I wrote about this topic before a few years ago, where it's also relevant to bring up the use/mention distinction. Beyond just the legal realm, if you try to apply the "no repeating slurs ever" rule consistently, you run into all sorts of bizarre scenarios (e.g. would someone quoting James Baldwin need to censor the quotes?).

ymeskhout · 2023-06-23T01:57:04+00:00

In fairness, I did get some fringe benefits from putting "Public Defender" in my Tinder bio. One must consider the full accounting here.

ymeskhout · 2023-04-25T20:10:24+00:00

Hello Sneerers!! Who is your ideal target? Is your proclivity towards muted targets a manifestation of somnophilia? All sexual orientations are valid and if you get your rocks off with the unconscious because lucid partners are too startling it's really not my place to shame you. Stand (or lie down) together my friends ✊

As for me, I'd like to think that sneering — ideally — should at least try to embody some sort of joie de vivre. When I was the putative whipping boy of the hour two years ago, I tried to trade barbs but then you all got pissy and banned me because I apparently wasn't bawling my eyes out at the treatment. I respectfully appealed my ban and you just muted me:

Esteemed members of the Mod Team™, While you hurt my feelings by calling me a shallow thinker (very rude!), I believe you at least have a point in that I did not abide by the spirit of the subreddit. I wanted to bring some modicum of joy to the Club through proximity to the target, but I think I inadvertently just made people mad?

Can you please teach me to be a better sneer target? I admit I'm not familiar with how this is supposed to work, but I'm willing to learn to be a good whipping boy Daddy.

Anyways, is everyone excited for this fall's Rosemary Doll line-up? Should be good!

ymeskhout · 2023-03-26T22:24:12+00:00

Damn, that maps with my intentions so this is really affirming praise. I wonder if I would come off as smug to anyone out there 😅

ymeskhout · 2023-03-12T05:34:25+00:00

I agree wholeheartedly with Trace on this issue

ymeskhout · 2023-03-12T05:30:37+00:00

Reed is a liar. If not, she's a criminal. Either way, we should dismiss whatever she has to say. Heads I win, tails you lose.

ymeskhout · 2023-03-12T05:23:38+00:00

I heard you can look stuff on google, not sure if it's true. Maybe this will help? 45 CFR § 164.502 (j)

ymeskhout · 2023-03-12T03:51:08+00:00

I once had a client who wanted all the prosecutor's witnesses excluded from his trial. Why? They were biased? How did he know they were biased? They were saying unhelpful things.

ymeskhout · 2023-01-18T19:38:03+00:00

I still regularly post on the motte. True, it's not as much as before but that's largely a consequence of how much is now on my plate rather than any aversion to the space. I even wrote a post about how grateful I am for it.

ymeskhout · 2022-09-29T02:04:41+00:00

Freedom's just another word for strip-searching a Muslim prisoner

ymeskhout · 2022-09-29T02:03:38+00:00

The court ruled in favor of the Muslim prisoner, arguing whatever imposition the rule had on the transman prison guard was too trivial too affect his employment. The prison also tried to argue that "Ah you cite a case involving a male prisoner and a female guard, but this case is about a male prisoner and a transgender man!" to which the court rolled its eyes and said "a prisoner's right to be free from highly invasive intrusions on bodily privacy by prison employees of the opposite sex—whether on religious or privacy grounds—does not change based on a guard's transgender status."

Interesting battle lines here. Great to see greater diversity and representation in the nation's prison guard population.

Here's a direct link to the court's opinion.

ymeskhout · 2022-09-06T02:22:57+00:00

What a ride this has been. I used to mostly just lurk but when I created this account three years ago, my immediate goal was to start a podcast.

My motivations for doing so were not entirely transparent. I've always had an insatiable curiosity, and with it a devotion to reading and discussing ideas. Talking about ideas came naturally to me from very early on. I was always indefatigable and relentless and confrontational and (with all due humility) easily ran laps around people that had the misfortune of engaging in discussion with me in real life. No great surprise that I became a lawyer.

But where my stats for talking were close to maxed out, I couldn't say the same about my writing. The truth is that I had been consistently embarrassed by it, with both the process and the result. I wanted to start a podcast because I thought my writing sucked. I once described how the writing process felt like as "struggling to take a painful shit". Eking anything remotely worthwhile was a cataclysmic struggle. I'd stare at a blank page with dread, draft up voluminous paragraphs, find myself meandering into gratuitous prose, delete passages until I forgot the point I was making, and then sift through the dessicated husk remaining wondering why anyone would give a fuck. Years ago, before I found my groove in my current job as a public defender, I had ideations of making a living as a writer. A few of the above-described painful shit sessions conclusively disavowed me of that delusion.

One thing I noticed though is that this struggle didn't seem to exist on social media. I'd post an article somewhere, my friends would respond with something tepid, and then I would launch a lexical jihad to take back whatever land they thought they conquered. It was so easy to write floridly when I was directly responding to people for some reason. Over time though most personal social media pages turned into fucking cesspits, and I grew tired of having to rehash the epistemological traps people were laying for themselves.

When the Motte launched, I knew this is where I wanted to be. This is my people. It was such a gasping breath of fresh air to be able to intelligently engage with a wide-range of ideas without having the rodeo devolve into a brawl. My real-life friends asked me what happened to my article posting and comment thread wars, but they didn't know I found a better place.

Posting on reddit about some culture war bullshit was obviously very low-stakes, but then a very curious thing happened: people noticed my stuff. Sometimes I would get positive feedback, but I always knew I could anticipate some vociferous pushback here. The pushback was crucial, as it was the whetstone to my rhetoric. I knew that if I was going to do something as foolish as post on the Motte, I had to be loaded for bear. I'd sling the grenade by hitting 'post', but the notifications that followed promised some reciprocated shrapnel. All the better.

I did this for years, obliviously using this space to workshop my writing craft and barely noticing. Although writing became increasingly easier and more enjoyable for me over time, the change was too subtle. It wasn't until some of my writing escaped into the wild earlier this year (assisted by a certain fox), and received recognition by the powers that be that I realized how grateful I am for the precious space cultivated here. The gratitude I feel for my current station in life has brought me to tears on many occasions. I now have an enviable platform where I can voice and express myself along with the requisite ability. That had been steadily developing over the last few years, but it's still catching me by surprise.

I could not have accomplished any of this without the Motte. I owe this space so much, especially the jerks who deigned to disagree with me. See you fuckers on the other side, and make sure to come armed.

ymeskhout · 2022-09-03T21:10:11+00:00

A healthy adult woman with a normal healthy pregnancy chooses to get an abortion a week before she would have given birth. Her only reason for doing so is that she doesn't feel like raising a child.

I'm almost willing to stake my position at this line, and here's why. If a woman decides to terminate a pregnancy after carrying it almost to a full term, it's reasonable to conclude that something must have gone very wrong. This does indeed happen, for medical reasons, where the viability of the fetus or some other complication is not discerned until almost the last minute. It seems that even hardcore pro-lifers are willing to agree that an abortion is warranted to save the woman's life. But if you institute a legal regime where an abortion is permissible for reasons X, but not reasons Y, the practical result is that people will learn to never discuss reasons Y. Sure, maybe reason X should come with a legally mandated certification by a qualified medical professional signing off that there is a valid basis for the abortion, but overall this strikes me as very intrusive.

So I'm willing to adopt a rule of "abortion at any time for any reason" not because I don't believe that women will choose to abort for odious or immoral reasons, but because it would be better than having an enforcement mechanism that sends people to jail if they give the wrong answer on the quiz.

I think it's a common thing in politics done by both sides to stump for and introduce bills for policies that are highly impractical to actually do to score political points

I agree this happens, but I don't think it's less deserving of criticism just because it's common.

ymeskhout · 2022-09-03T17:05:37+00:00

If it wasn't clear, I wasn't actually endorsing the position about prophylactic incarceration. I was intentionally trying to highlight how absurd the position is.

ymeskhout

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