CNN reports, aggressively inserting the view that the [60% of Republicans who think the election was stolen] who were polled are wrong...
What is perfectly clear, however, is that Republicans’ lack of faith in our current election infrastructure is a direct result of Trump’s historic efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 results.It’s “perfectly clear” why people have this opinion? This is a news article, reporting a poll, and it’s making an absolute assertion about why human beings believe what they do. That doesn’t inspire confidence. It makes people suspicious, perhaps paranoid.
As the old saying goes, 'it isn't paranoia if they're really out to get you.' The ongoing case in Georgia has found 400,000 ballots that lack legally required chain of custody documentation; it's over 66,000 illegal ballots found in Michigan; Arizona is about to conduct an audit in its most populous county.
Yet the government official in Georgia asserts that there's nothing wrong, and those 400,000 ballots shouldn't be questioned.
"We've never found systemic fraud, not enough to overturn the election," Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said in December. "We have over 250 cases right now ... but right now we don't see anything that would overturn, you know, the will of the people here in Georgia."
That's kind of the question, Raff. What was the will of the people of Georgia? I notice that he filed papers to ask the judge handling the review not to allow auditors access to any of the actual ballots. He wants the audit to look only at the electronic 'images' of ballots cast. If you want to restore confidence in the elections being fair, putting up road blocks to audits and reviews is not the way to get there. Neither is aggressively talking over the people who are convinced that your side cheated, as CNN is doing.
Sixty percent of Republicans in Georgia is on the order of a third of the population of the state. That's not a percentage you can afford to ignore with a charge of this gravity. You need to prove to them that things are above board if you want the system to remain stable.
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This relates to current major media claims that skepticism about major-media reporting has become a part of "the Republican Brand". Republicans are, by this claim, a party that opposes a "free press".
Under the assumption that the "free" press is a for-profit business, how well do we suppose that making adversaries of half the potential market is going to work out?
As might be easy to forget, I'm not myself even a Republican. I wouldn't count in the 60% of Republicans because I'm a lifelong Democrat (although that may well have to change given the current trajectory; I'm thinking of establishing a wing of the Pirate Party here in NC).
The reason I think the election was stolen isn't (as CNN asserts) because Trump says so; Trump said a lot of things. The reason I think it was stolen is that it looks exactly like a stolen election given the markers I was taught to appreciate as an election monitor in two third world countries.
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