As governor, Bevin is Kentucky's chief law enforcement officer. Why should the voters of Kentucky re-elect him, the Republican Secretary of State, or Republican legislators if they are unable to run a free and fair election? Presiding over an election allegedly riddled with "irregularities" is hardly an advertisement for his or his party's ability to govern the state.
3
Keep turning out the vote to crush the Republicans in 2020 it is our patriotic duty. Reach out to people to your community and encourage them with facts to vote.
2
If the internet knows my shoe size, the car I drive and what I eat for breakfast without me supplying any of that information, I find it curious that they cannot identify bots and remove those accounts.
4
It is not the Russians that we need to be wary of, it is the technology that uses what should be private information concerning ones readings on line to be used, with the help of computer analytics, to provide disinformation. The analytic programs are designed to encourage more extreme viewpoints with no reality check. The motive of the tech companies may not be evil but rather surly market driven. The problem is also how the disinformation is provided. It is performed in secret with no chance of rebuttal. the general public has no idea that their friends and neighbors are being misinformed.
The Russians are not needed to do this. They just showed us how easy it is to do.
1
How about a surge of support in every state Republican senate and house for paper ballots?
The internet has become a powerful weapon for people who hate democracy (the list is long in America, and prominently includes large sects of conservatives and evangelicals). It will take time to adapt our institutions and ourselves to its potentially toxic nature,
and there is serious danger that amoral opportunists like Trump and Zuckerberg (and they billionaire class they represent) will achieve what foreign enemies and domestic terrorists have failed to accomplish--the destruction of our way of government and life.
2
Same day registration,early voting,vote by mail and ballot harvesting tactics have open many opportunities for cheaters and has undermined confidence in the voting process. Political activists should not be involved beyond getting people registered before election day.
2
Voting irregularities? I remember Trump put together a commission to look into voter fraud after his election-talk about a sore winner. The commission was disbanded because they found nothing.
Encouraging the false idea that Republicans lose because they are cheated out of a win is extremely dangerous given Trump and other Republicans are talking about civil war if they lose elections or Trump gets impeached, and encouraging supporters to look to 2nd Amendment solutions should they not get what they want at the ballot box.
3
And who has opposed secure elections? REPUBLICANS! You reap what you sow. Maybe the Senate should agree to the $800 million instead of the stingy $250 million.
Trump might have Korea and Russia working to get him elected, but China, Europe, Latin America and Africa will be working against Trump.
Better to make the election secure so we don't have to worry about this.
1
Twitter dregs do not determine elections, votes do.
As a close election, there may be a closely monitored recount, but votes - not conjecture- count.
1
This is all a test to see how it would play if the federal legislature tried to pull the same thing in 2020 for Trump.
2
Is the solution to just shut down Twitter and Facebook? Honestly, these social media sites are taking down the US democracy before our very eyes because they cannot control the bad actors.
3
Can we please separate social media from politics? Twitter and Facebook are NOT the ballot box!
4
Surely there is some way to identify ‘Lord Kraken’. Find them and arrest them for voter fraud, and we can read news reports of them trying to convince the courts they were lying.
3
If Trump loses the election, I don't expect anything approaching a Civil War. I do, however, expect there will be an explosion of terrorist-style violence by gun-hoarding, Trumpist dead-enders who will furiously react to being left with no one approaching Trump's global reach to validate their racist, white supremacist agenda. In other words, Trumpism by other means.
4
Today's Republican Party cannot win on ideas. Consequently, they rely on hate, fear, gerrymandering, and voter suppression to maintain their grasp on power. They are not patriots, they are truly scoundrels.
5
The only defense against a 2020 "Presidential" challenge is an over-whelming victory for his opponent, both in the popular vote and in the electoral college. It is too easy to focus on one or two races, on one or two states, and then conflate whatever "evidence" one "finds" to challenge everything and every state.
4
In the age of cheap data collection and storage we might need a 12 digit citizen number, good for voting and employment. The duplicate use of a number could easily be flagged. A secure voting system in all states, with each ballot backed up with 2 paper copies (one for the voting place, one for the voter) would not be that expensive.
5
This is very much how it's going to be.
There is absolutely no way that Trump recognizes the 2020 election results if he loses. We have to be prepared for that, and I don't know exactly how to be.
5
Handcuffing and perp-walking by the Secret Service on Inauguration Day might do it.
5
@Phillip Usher
Yeah that might be it. It might be a secret blessing that nobody who works with the man seems to like him.
In 2020 the issue will be easily decided: if Trump wins, then there has been no voter fraud. If he loses, all the close calls for his opponent will be fraudulent. This has been a long time in the making, though, and hardly takes social media to support it. In 2000 the Supreme Court delivered the country into the hands of George W. Bush. We have been repairing the damage ever since, especially in the Middle East and at home in Americans' financial well being. It promises to extend long into the future.
7
Ultimately this comes back to our education system. Nobody should believe anything they hear from the internet unless they see evidence that it is true not trolling. Way too many people are ready to believe information supporting their favorite narrative without any attempt to evaluate its quality. With the current campaign to brake down trust in reliable sources of information (can you say fake news) more and more people will default to trusting things that "sounds right". The manipulation will only get worse.
5
The GOP's war on democracy, which includes: rampant gerrymandering, voter roll purges, active voter suppression, voter intimidation, and working with foreign nations to attack our electoral system -- would clearly illustrate their hostility to votes they can't actively rig.
Ergo, one should take their cries of "voter fraud" with a heaping teaspoon of salt. They are the ones attacking voting in America, the ones who try to make it harder for any non-Republican to vote.
They are also the first ones to cry foul when their efforts to hinder and harm our elections don't go their way.
The Democrats need to own this as a campaign issue, and make protection of elections paramount, along with expanding voter registration at every turn.
The GOP has clearly decided that they're not keen on elections they can't game. The Democrats need to make it clear that they support free and fair elections, and widespread voter enfranchisement -- if only to draw a very clear distinction between their political approaches.
8
In addition, the house bill to put security measures in place around elections, passed with bi partisan support, has been squashed by the Senate under McConnell's direction.
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/in-senator-mitch-mcconnells-legislative-graveyard-senate-republicans-block-commonsense-legislation-to-secure-our-elections-protect-americans-health-care-and-safeguard-pensions-earned-by-working-americans
I would not be surprised if--after the recanvass confirms his loss--Bevin continues to groundlessly claim fraud and demands to have the election decided by the Republican controlled state legislature. That is what his prototype and chief backer Trump would do under similar circumstances.
1
If a bunch of Republican ballots were shredded or the election was otherwise rigged how to Republicans sweep all the other statewide offices on the ballot?
3
People cheat on their taxes, they cheat at golf, they cheat at cards, they cheat on their spouses, they cheat on tests, they commit insurance fraud, they lie on their resumes, they jump turnstiles to get on subways for free, they perpetrate every type of scam imaginable, from romance scams to IRS scams. But the left wants everyone to believe that somehow, someway, Inexplicably, humans never cheat at the polls. This despite the fact that it is so incredibly easy to cheat at the polls, and despite the fact there is virtually no chance of being caught compared to all the other types of cheating. (And if somehow a person does get caught, the penalty is minuscule.) It makes no sense to believe voter fraud doesn’t exist when the above examples prove human nature will lead so many people to cheat whenever and wherever they think they can get away with it. It’s preposterous the left maintains voter fraud is a figment of people’s imaginations.
1
@David R-just because you seek to cheat the system at every turn, doesn't mean everyone else does. Further, every in depth study on voter fraud has concluded the amount of fraud that does occur is so vanishingly small as to have no effect on the outcome. But I guess since the right doesn't really have any ideas that appeal to a majority of Americans the best they can do is scream "fraud" when things don't go their way.
6
How in the world do these in depth studies of voter fraud that you reference Make any definitive statements when it’s nearly impossible to figure out if voter fraud has even occurred? If there were an in-depth study about bank robberies, that’s another matter, since you pretty much know every time a bank is robbed, and therefore can accurately study the phenomenon. So whatever in-depth studies you’re referencing are fairly worthless. But again, the left wants to push the narrative that voter fraud basically does not exist— that nobody even considers cheating at the polls despite the fact so many people cheat at nearly every aspect of life they where they can possibly cheat. At my polling station, I could easily vote multiple times in a single election if I chose to. I choose not to do that… just like I choose not to jump a turnstile to avoid paying my subway fare. But the fact of the matter is fair invasion in New York City is a massive problem… but again, somehow, someway, inexplicably, we are told nobody cheats at the polls. That just makes no sense.
1
@David R
Republican operatives have been working diligently to uncover such fraud. the number of illegal votes is not null. After spending much time and dollars only a small handful of illegle votes have been documented. Some of those illegal votes were made with innocent intent by people not understanding the laws.
To spend so much time looking and finding so little is relevant.
Republican politicians have been using false claims of voter fraud for years to stir up their voters with anger against Democrats. However, now with their ability to use social media these false claims are more effective. An important question is whether the Republicans can keep this under control because spreading lies the way they do to generate anger to win elections has the potential of exploding into violence. It is absolutely critical in a democracy that voters can trust the electoral process and if Republican voters are falsely led to believe that Democrats are committing voter fraud on a large scale things could turn really nasty.
4
It would be a more interesting article if the writers had acknowledged the actual voter fraud does sometimes occur and provided the readers with a comparison of credible allegations versus disinformation campaigns. When a losing candidate challenges the outcome of a vote it isn't always sour grapes. Real crimes did happen in North Carolina and Georgia to illegally influence the election. In NC a GOP operative was recently convicted and in GA there was a documented coordinated campaign to suppress the votes of black citizens.
6
1) Inoculate the public from this disinformation disease by talking about it.
Warn people that this type of abuse is ongoing by enemies of democracy, both foreign and domestic. This type of article is good. Candidates and popular opinion shapers from the entertainment and sports world (people like Oprah, Taylor Swift, LeBron James, Tom Hanks) should be featured in public service announcements letting Americans know to be ready for lies that are trying to fool them and rile them.
Prepare the public.
2) Educate the public about the rarity of voter fraud. Let people know about the safeguards in place and the difficulty and futility of one person trying to vote twice.
(the risk of prison, someone from the other party offsetting a rogue vote with another vote) Voter fraud is hard to do, illegal and stupid. That's why almost no one does it.
The only fraud is suppression.
3) Let people know that the voting process is a local thing run by Republicans and Democrats at the county level. About 3100 counties in the US.
All voting is local - both parties run the process and keep an eye on each other.
The system of casting and counting votes works.
4) Boost paper ballot mail voting like in Oregon and Colorado. Easy, convenient.
Boost automatic registration when one turns 18.
5) Mandatory 10 years prison for people like the one in this article who knowingly tweet or spread lies on social media. Publicize just one perpetrator and his punishment.
We'll see this nonsense end.
5
All this sounds great with the exception of # 5. There would be no way to even implement such a crazy idea short of repealing or drastically altering the first amendment. Which would be virtually impossible to do since the process of amending the constitution is extremely difficult at the best of times and impossible in times of division and partisanship. Even if it could be done it would create a dangerous precedent that could later be used against the press, activists and political opponents. No thank you
It's my feeling that this is a trial balloon to see how the Republicans can fan the flames a division around a close election. There are people taking notes and strategizing for the inevitable presidential election debacle - if the results are close. Republicans will fight to the last lie. . . And then break the law again
3
There are a lot of angry misinformed people in the good ole
US of A who pretty much believe anything thats fed to them and that goes for both sides. I hate to think whats going to happen if
the 2020 election is close.
2
This is disheartening and scary. Dear leader has spearheaded the use of disinformation to plant doubt in people's minds about the validity of elections. Where does this lead? Nowhere good that I can see. There must be a concerted and bipartisan movement to ensure that elections are properly managed, and that message needs to be made crystal clear to the public. Free and fair elections are the bedrock this country is based upon. For that ideal to be attacked is despicable, and if allowed to continue risks turning America into an unrecognizable mess.
3
Worth noting:
When actual voter fraud happens in modern times it is always in favor of the Right, which claims to hate it.
11
If Trump and the Republicans can steal a Supreme Court seat, stealing a governorship of Kentucky ought to be even easier, since the chances of an organized pushback are just about nil.
The Dems, bless 'em, keep being pushed around by a bunch of bullies. While Dems debate Bloomberg and give a self-identified Socialist a good shot at the Presidential nomination, the Republicans are organized to do everything in their power to obstruct and negate elections and accepted protocols of good government.
I wonder how long the majority political party will act so supinely in the face of these scorched earth Republican tactics.
3
A paper record is critical to the election process.
4
People who cheat always think they are victims of cheating. The same can be said for people who cry corruption all the time.
3
Bevin is employing the typical Republican playbook. If you can’t win fairly then try to steal the election!
5
Just what are “Republican mail-in ballots?” Ballots that have been opened, read, and then determined to be supportive of Republican candidates? Ballots from typically Republican precincts (where people dislike Bevin, anyway)? This is so obviously a hoax. Kentucky is in pretty bad shape.
6
All the more reason to turn out every vote against Trump.
4
I am in the process of watching the NYC Veterans Day parade, this is the first time I am not attending in person as I have with my military family in the past. I heard last night that the draft dodger was going to give a speech and knew that I could not be in the presence of a man who spent all his time ensuring that he did not have to bear arms for this country A country where democracy lives.
Trump can not stop putting his fat fingers in the faces of Americans who stand up for this country while he wallows in the gutter.
Kentucky lost because people can only handle one traitor in a high position at a time. Arrogance of the governor was a smack in the face of the reporter who I admire for keeping his composure as one insult at another was thrown at him. In civilized society there is no place for any high school bully to even hold an office in politics.
Bevin was just a pathetic white GOP and who thinks he is a little bully, Trump who is associated with the GOP do nothing individuals who do not even stand up for democracy.
On Thursday night Football the hosts allowed the Veterans as props for their TV show, just like Trump they were insulting to our veterans who were in wheelchairs sitting in the pouring rain and given little gift bags by a blond who didnt even brother to talk to them.
Draft dodger, ignorant politicians, TV stations all making money off of veterans. Trump a proud draft dodger acting as if he cared. A very shallow day in America
4
Are the Twitter abuses a bipartisan tactic or is it only the Republican Party?
Twitter needs to at least label the lies suspect. If Twitter can identify a bot, every such Tweet should be labeled "sent by bot".
4
In the upcoming fight for our republic - and make no mistake, it is a fight - be a Nathan Hale, not a Benedict Arnold.
2
It used to be that reliable exit polls would do a good job of confirming election results. During Bush’s stolen election election polls became so-called “fake news.”
Dollars to donuts it was a Bevin operative that tweeted the infamous tweet to cast doubt on the election. We have watched time and again as republicans commit election fraud. The republican party is a party of fraud, lies, and corruption.
7
Who needs guns and big armies to overthrow a country.
Apparently all that is needed is a twitter account and an uneducated populace.
77
Another example in which the pen is truly mightier than the sword.
6
Typical of sore losers. Don't forget how Trump challenged the 2016 presidential election before he discovered he had won a majority of the votes of the electoral college. It was talk about voter fraud before evidence that the Russians had helped elect Trump was revealed. Bad, immoral politicians, especially narcissistic ones like Trump, often claim that the other side is trying to throw an election the way they, themselves, would like to do. Even when Trump loses the popular vote by tens of millions in 2020 he will claim voter fraud, not his own incompetence or despicable behavior while in office.
5
Shutdown Twitter and Facebook a month before thru a month after an election.
5
The big boys who lied "wolf". I have real concerns about 2020 especially because the liar in chief not only refuses to address the real sullying by Russia in 2016, but instead has been actively eroding confidence in our system of government from a position of power.
5
Confirmation bias is hard to defeat. Human beings, in general, have a strong tendency to believe information that supports the opinions they already have, ignoring strong or irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
The only way I know to defend against confirmation bias is to 1) Educate people to recognize what confirmation bias is and 2) Continue to respond to as many false and misleading statements as possible with evidence and facts.
In my experience, responding to a person's erroneous beliefs by laughing at them and calling them ignorant, stupid or other derogatory names usually does more harm than good.
6
I fear this is the end of representative democracy as we know it, the inability to have fair elections with no one able to tell the difference between what is real and what is fake. We will have to restructure the way we choose our leaders in the face of disinformation and outright lies, bots, foreign actors ( the Russians) and dirty trickster
Now I know why Bevin didn't concede. But why anyone believes anything they read on Twitter is beyond me. It's like believing the scribbles on public restroom walls.
2
OK, social media, I know you didn't knowingly cause this, but you got a year to get it together and realize that your money making platforms are being used to spread insanity about our elections.
If you publish a statement -- and yes I'm using "publish" intentionally -- in which an unknown party claims anonymously to have shredded GOP votes, and tell readers we have the freedom to make up our minds for ourselves, how in the heck am I supposed to evaluate this claim? I don't know where it came from, I don't know who wrote it. It could be Tommy the junior clerk in the Louisville registrar's office, and it could be a wack-job in Florida, or a paid government agent in St. Petersburg. At least when the Washington Post publishes an anonymous quote, we have a named reporter and media business to hold accountable if that quote frames an outrageous lie.
If I'm in a crowded theater and someone yells "Fire!" but I don't smell any smoke, should I just keep watching the movie?
3
So glad to live in Vermont. Up here even most of the gun owners are "good guys" who might vote Republican sometimes - probably not for Trump - but who would never try to use violence to upend an election. Our Republican governor's top issue is civility in campaigns and in governance. Our elections are small, local, transparent and very fair.
I am scared for anyone living in a 2020 swing state. You should treat election day next year as another Y2K. Stock up on food and fuel and get some cash. Be prepared to stay indoors for a week or so....
5
3 years late Hillary Clinton is still saying the election was stolen from her. America continues moving forward. Trump not getting elected will not change that. Americans are stronger than any one President.
The only hope to avoid persistent allegations of a "stolen/rigged" presidential election in 2020 is for the Democratic victory to be overwhelming.
That means the electoral count must be near 3-1, and the popular vote difference to easily exceed 10 million.
Regrettably, right now, that scenario seems unlikely. But hope springs eternal.
1
This is why trump must lose in 2020 by the largest landslide ever recorded in a presidential election. So there are no hanging chads, no question about his loss, no SCOTUS intervention. Landslide, the only way to silence the fringe who will certainly contest any outcome where trump loses. Vote.
5
This is truly chilling. Right-wing trolls have adopted techniques the Russians brought us in 2016 and are applying them to the detriment of our democracy.
I am heartened, though, that there is a recognition of a problem and some understanding of its dimensions and consequences. The challenge now is to come up with solutions.
34
@J.C. Hayes : " coming up with solutions" ?! are you kidding ?!
in a country which does not provide health insurance to all, where lawmakers are interested in their own ( political and financial ) welfare; where the global environment desperately needs fixing but is presented( by the same politicians) as " not a problem " ; a country which can't solve its chronic ic immigration problems ( there are enough examples where that very same prob less have been solved . long ago)- the list is long.
WHO will solve problems here ? HOW would they solve it ?
a great many of us ", white, educated, east /west coast elites have stopped holding our breath. and for good reasons.
2
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the First Amendment guarantees people the right to lie, obfuscate, distort and deceive.
Apparently it guarantees bots the same right.
It has always been true that whoever owns the loudest loudspeaker, the most powerful amplifier, the largest number of TV stations has the power.
Add to that now the most twitter followers.
2
Eliminating the electoral college system will bring greater stability to the presidential elections and will help us avoid the close calls that create legitimacy questions. Why do we insist on retaining a system that has given us presidents who did not win the majority vote and has the potential to create grave instability? Scrap the e-college!
4
@Roger G. I fervently agree. I'd rather know my president was elected by the actual majority of the country, even if it weren't my candidate. I think it would change the way politicians would have to campaign to be effective as well- every vote counts equally, not just the cliffhanger choices of one-tenth of our states.
1
This nightmare in Kentucky feels like the first spear in the heart of our democracy going into the future. The frightening reason is how do we "control" our free elections, if that very "control" is questioned over and over and over again. How can we
ensure that we won't be living with this hanging over our voting apparatus until the system fails; until Our Democracy fails.
So, what will we have then? And how far off into the future does Putin already have this calculated?
2
Watch closely. This will be the playbook for Trump and others to defy Democracy when they lose going forward.
3
After all the gerrymandering, disenfranchisement of potential voters, Citizens United and the uncontrolled flow of money to their side, administrations led by politicians who tell lies by the thousand, national elections where the popular vote is invalidated, and foreign influences favoring their party, should we expect anything better from the Republicans?
4
If Republicans lose, it was voter fraud. If they win, they would have won bigger, but for voter fraud. That's how they do. They have to convince their troops that thwarting the will of the people, through voter suppression and gerrymandering, is actually defending democracy. War is peace, ignorance is strength....
39
Who wants to take the bet that, if voting fraud did occur in Kentucky, it was fraud by Republican operatives a la North Carolina?
23
They're practiced at this.
If they can find a way to steal it, they'll find a way to steal it.
And if they can't they'll claim it was stolen from them.
Long long gone are the days when even Nixon would stand down rather than risk the union by contesting an outcome much more likely corrupt and much more consequential.
21
Donald Trump has taken the Republican play book to the next level. The R's and and Fox news have been priming voter for years. DT understands manipulation at a professional level and has been tuning it's effectiveness with the help of the likes of Putin, Steven Miller, Neo Nazi propagandists, and the whole of the Republican party. They have dropped all pretense that they are willing to destroy the truth as their means to gain and keep power.
The complicit social media platforms are one of the keys to their campaigns of spreading lies and destroying truth. With these as tools to misinform, confuse and divide voters. They effectively feed their supporters ideas to reinforce the core messages. "They are not like us." They are out to harm you." They cannot be trusted" We are the only ones who will protect you from them", etc...
Will the open hearings be enough?
I hope so.
19
I could not have said it better. Russia is winning the revolution.
1
@JDH No, the open hearings won't be enough.
We must wait until the results of the recanvas is complete before seeing what comes next. By law the recanvas is required before the vote is certified. I am confident the result will be certified. What ensues next will show the true character of Bevins and his supporters.
10
Washington needs to stay out of Kentucky. Recount the votes so Governor Beshear move forward on the mess that Bevin has created and send him packing .
14
New? A worry for 2020?
There was little doubt this is exactly what Trump planned to do in 2016, if he'd lost as expected. Hence the pressure on him (with outrage) to accept in advance any election results -- and also his refusal to do so.
Then of course when Hillary lost, this is exactly what Her team did. That plus an Election Night trial run of impeachment as inevitable, for which unrelenting drumbeat only the reasons given have changed.
We were already lost in this last time. It isn't just the other guy. It is the new normal.
We need to end this. To end this, there need to be serious penalties levied by independent investigations. And no, nothing in DC or this election today is "independent."
Remember the League of Women Voters? Why did we stop that?
A good starting model is Michigan's automatic recount of close elections based on paper ballots collected under each machine. Add to that some serious criminal penalties for false claims, as well as for any justified claims.
Let's get in some solid international inspection of our elections, some Western Europeans who run solid elections, maybe some Canadians (if they dare being so close). Invite someone do for us what Jimmy Carter has done for others.
This has got to stop. It is misleading to suggest it is only just a risk of starting next time, and only from the other guy.
8
It's time to write laws regarding the intentional spreading of disinformation. Without such rules, Democracy is at serious risk, and this should be concerning to all Americans regardless of political affiliation.
26
Disinformation is designed for the undereducated that are prone to fear, and attracted to reality TV, much like apes are to shiny objects.
19
If someone is making a claim of illegitimate voter fraud then they should go through the correct channels of government, with proof. Otherwise, we have opened the door to purposeful lies to question the legitimacy of the person elected.
Trump did this with the birther lies and it got him recognition and support from those less informed and upset that a black POTUS was in the WH.
The penalties for these unfounded lies should be great, using the laws of terrorist actions as a guide, because this is the terrorism of democracy.
16
what is frightening is that folks actually believe this stuff. I regularly gets stuff from a few on facebook that i just look at and giggle. I have given up responding to a number of them. To call them sheep is an insult to sheep.
14
The one thing that we can know with a high degree of certainty is that when either Trump or his acolytes makes an accusation, it surely is a reflection of their own misdeeds
The only exceptions to that general rule that I can identify are that it appears unlikely that Trump was born in Kenya and is a secret Moslem.
12
@LaGruel
Well, for years, the of-German-descent Trumps did pretend they hailed from Sweden...
6
The internet, for all of the good it might have brought us, has become an anything goes cesspool. It is now the primary tool for those who seek to destroy all they disagree with. The fact that one of our political parties, who must know that the internet is rife with misinformation, tries to use that to justify their attempts to retain power at all costs is truly frightening.
13
The 'conservative Right' will pick up on an article like this and put it in the same, ignored trash pile as everything else from the left. So-called (and I use both this qualifier and the original quotations to signal the great abyss between those who call themselves conservative today and actual conservative philosophy) conservatives will fashion, of course, on the apparent one-sided nature of the article. How can the left, they'll say, castigate Breitbart (for instance) for blatant bias when the 'fake media' is so clearly in the tank for liberals?
Of course, there's no 'liberal' equivalent of the kind of misinformation the right puts out. If it exists, it's haphazard and fueled by disgruntled former Republicans. It might be good for the Times to note that.
9
Thank you to those voters who represented the margin of defeat against Bevins.
They are readers.
15
Troubling times are ahead for 2020 vote - if anyone thinks there is going to be a peaceful transition of power with Trump, they haven't been paying attention.
Trump will need to be defeated in an incontestable manner or there WILL be cries of fraud.
8
I think the biggest problem the United States has is the Republican party pandering to and promoting anti government extremism instead of trying to unify the American people.
16
True... and just who would be helped by their success?
1
Serious question: What of all the Republicans that easily won their elections? We're those races riddled with fraud too?
7
Can we all just agree as a starting point that anything not published on a *verified* Twitter account should be disregarded? Why are brief, anonymous online postings relevant to anything, ever?
6
@J
And a lot of those verified accounts too. Spuriousness & devious lies aren't limited to just those without the blue chit.
Get off social media. Nothing will happen to you if you close your accounts. As a matter of fact you may pick up the phone and have a conversation.
11
This election in Kentucky will be decided by counting—and recounting—ballots. The refusal of Matt Bevin to “concede” has no legal standing. It is all throwing up up dust and chaos, Trump style, to see what will happen.
The same is true for 2020. There will be no coup. If Trump loses the electoral college, whether he concedes or not, he will no longer be president when his term ends.
All such talk is meant to sow chaos, confusion, and above all fear, the very ingredients of Trumpism.
The answer is VOTES. Count the votes, the winner assumes office, the loser goes home.
VOTE.
22
Close to 50% of Americans wanted changed……well , they have it; welcome to the corrupt, immoral, unethical, lie mongering, alternate reality, false narratives, the promotion of fake news and witch hunts of the White House, the President and Republicans. We have a President and GOP that see themselves above the law and have no shame showing it; twisting the facts and creating rules which suit them. Their behavior is egregious and despicable; they collectively continue the lying rhetoric and seem to be proud of it. The Nation and the World have now witnessed what this Nation has become and the sordid behavior signals to the world that it is OK to distort truth and deceive. Our democracy has taken a turn for the worse and may never recover. My greatest fear for our Nation, the children and future is the irreparable damage to the country resulting from partisan politics and a divided people.
10
@A.A.F.
Close to 50% of actual *voters*, in any event. :)
At the very least, this is why we should try to take all of the easy hacking opportunities out of the election process.
We should all be voting on paper ballots, and even if they are scanned, they should all be then places in lockboxes under guard.
Yes, I know that paper ballots can be "lost" or "shredded" or otherwise tampered with. But it's still easier to manipulate an election in which there's no hard copy of anything.
12
I don't care how you do it, but there appears to be a need for regulation and censorship of disinformation tweets. This stuff needs to be halted now prior to the 2020 national election.
16
Important to keep in mind that this kind of propaganda is aimed at the persuadable and not so much the already convinced or the never convinced. It's a form of self-fulfilling prophecy for those who don't have settled opinions but want to be perceived as smart and possessed of "inside information" the news media isn't privy to.
Such manipulation is ancient, but the advent of social media -- the Wild West of modern life -- has exacerbated the potential audience persuadable. The danger, of course (and which many commenters have clearly stated) is that the source of the content can come from anywhere and can be spread through artificial means.
No one should be surprised that the current Republican Party is entirely comfortable with using this form of communication. It is a significant weapon of deception and disruption, two black arts that are core principles of the GOP's effort to retain power.
13
In developing and refining a research tool the researchers run what is called a pilot study to collect data on the effectiveness of the tool and how to make the process more robust and reliable for the real research. My hypothesis about this chain of events is that the GOP, expecting a nationwide/statewide defeat in 2020, ran a pilot study with this race, to see how to de-legitimize a close race and retain power. I hope the FBI and all investigative journalists get to the bottom of this obviously, well coordinated attack on this election and out who was behind this pilot study.
6
I just want everyone to know that I saw a number of flying saucers lifting off from fields just outside of Lexington, Kentucky right after polls closed. Each spacecraft featured a weirdly electronic message flashing "Vote Beshear." By my count, there were slightly over 5,000 of these spacecraft and after lifting off they seemed headed directly for Mars.
Can this be the alien invasion we've been warned about?
9
If it's so easy to detect bots, why does Twitter allow them? We need laws to keep up with the risks in election interference. We also need to hold accountable social media companies that are incented to boost their member counts.
12
There is a simple solution to the chaos and misinformation caused by media, social and otherwise; we simple have to hold platforms accountable for their content. If they post a lie, they get sued and, in turn, sue the poster. That will effectively end this nonsense and sooner or later, we will have no choice but to pass such regulation.
7
One question, if ballots were “shredded,” why did so many down-ballot Republican candidates win?
34
One of the few things that Hillary was right about:
There is a vast right-wing conspiracy at work.
24
In every election now for a decade I have heard absurd reports of "busloads" of what not flooding polling places. I am not getting this from Twitter, any social platform, or FoxNews. I learn of it through mainstream media. Media claims to have learned something from 2016.
So in the afternoon of the 2020 election when the busloads claims start, will the claims be parroted simply because they were made, or vetted before reported? My money is on parroting. We'll see.
2
My husband talks about this day and night. The idea that Trump will lose but not leave. Scares the living daylights out of me but this is the scenario we see in KY.
People- the most important thing we can do is get people to VOTE. We need a large enough win to be able to beat down the Trumpies.
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Excellent article; well-sourced & hard numbers. IMOVHO, Matt Bevin needs to put up or shut up, preferably the latter.
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Americans, abetted by our politicians and an echoing press, are ripe for being gaslit. We have to learn not to take these folks seriously, and being taken seriously while trolling is exactly what these weirdos want.
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This might be one of the scariest articles I’ve read and that’s saying something.
23
Is it worth noting that all of this disinformation activity, aimed at sullying the election and throwing the legitimacy of the results into question, is on the Republican side? Apparently fine with Bevin as well. Whatever it takes to win, that’s the idea.
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This is the first time I fear for America. I can see a country - if Trump is defeated in 2020 - in which the Senate and the House are occupied by opposition politicians whose only abiding belief is that the election was "Stolen."; a phrase echoed by FOX news and twitter trolls which will effectively split the country in two.
Gridlock doesn't even begin to bring focus on what this will do to all of us in terms of violence, ear splitting rhetoric and a weakened state which our enemies will exploit. In Russia, they are probably chilling the champagne right now.
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@ijarvis
What Trump taught the GOP (and the rest of us) is that there is not only no penalty for petulantly crying foul every time there is an outcome you don't like, but that you can actually benefit from the confusion and chaos that ensues.
It was alarming, but hardly surprising, how quickly all of these "principled conservatives" jettisoned all but the most empty rhetorical support for "the will of the people" in favor of going all-in on adopting Trump's tactics, including the most basic tenant: "if you're not cheating, you're not trying."
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@ijarvis We can overcome this by voting out the Republicans/Conservatives in the Senate as we did in the house
4
When my mother (now 81) was a child, all the bars and taverns were, by law, closed on Election Day.
I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me, and there's probably no legal mechanism to enact such a measure, but it might be a huge public service for certain social media outlets to shutter their operations from the start of Election Day on the east coast until the polls close in Hawaii... at least until the day comes when they can confirm that content posted on their platforms is, um, actually true.
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@D Price
When your mother was a child, wasn't prohibition in effect?
@Moehoward
Prohibition ended in 1933. Likely his mother was born in 1937 or ‘38.
In Texas, liquor stores were closed on Election Day until current times. It is a local county decision. Fortunately, it’s quite rare now.
@Moehoward
Nope. She was born in 1938. Prohibition was repealed 5 years earlier.
2
Antidemocratic, authoritarian people have no shame, because in their warped opinion only weak people know shame. People euphemistically called "conservative Republicans" are so scared that their way of life is under fatal siege (much like southerners before the Civil War) that they will do anything to win, including trying to destroy democracy.
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@Mister Ed : Remember the T-shirt that Trump fans were wearing during his first campaign? "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat". And they mean it. They want their strongman, their Big Daddy 'tellin' like it is' and 'shakin' things up' and 'shoving it to the Libruls'. These people are serious. They don't understand democracy (though they think they do - but that's just about 'guns and god'). They don't respect democracy much less find it 'sacred'.
Yep. They'd rather be Russian. Wonder how they will feel when they find out Mr. Putin honors no Second Amendment.
4
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." -proverb, likely from Mencken
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@Charlie
Yes but it's complicated:
https://www.courthousenews.com/the-stupidity-of-the-ages/
1
Recounts/re-canvassing are the reason we need a paper ballot that is verifiable and can be read by humans.
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The question is: which billionaire is telling Bevins not to go unless they drag him out kicking and screaming?
5
If Democrats were so good at stealing elections, wouldn’t they own more political real estate?
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@Frank great point!!
The right is trying to create a commotion so they can allege fraud and throw the election in the lap of the state legislature with hand picked committee members who can reverse the election.
23
If I, as a live person, try to post too frequently "on another network," which is to say something like three shares in ten minutes, my ability to post is "temporarily suspended" or I get a "sorry, there's a problem, please try later" error message. There are much smaller topic-specific boards I belong to which limit my posts to one per minute, or one per two minutes, or longer. (I know this because I know how they are configured, not because I have that much to say.)
Why isn't Twitter doing the same thing? I know, they'll still be overwhelmed by bots in Very Large Numbers (or should I say "Bigly!") but at least things might be a little bit slower.
21
In my own little town in NJ we have a Facebook group and there was a thread discussion on the fairness of the vote. Poll workers like me tried to dispel false claims but Fox News watchers know what they know and refuse to listen to reason- it’s like a cult. A dangerous cult.
As a first time poll worker I was proud of the whole process to ensure every citizen had the opportunity to vote. Mail in voters were immediately provided a provisional ballot. People who tried to show ID were asked to put it away. It was a wonderful day to see democracy in action and a pleasure to meet my neighbors.
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@Deirdre Thank you for your service and your comments.
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If there's one thing The Right have proven over and over, it's that they cannot lose gracefully and are willing to do anything to win, including lying, cheating and stealing.
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@IZA most of them can’t win gracefully either
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@IZA I agree but I would like to remind everyone that there have been a few candidates on the left who don't lose gracefully either like Stacey Abrams. Thankfully not as many as on the right, but this is a problem across the spectrum.
What I wonder is, given the Teapublican dirty tricks, what if this was a false flag operation by Bevin supporters to cast doubt on the loss because they anticipated the loss. The speed with which bots picked up and spread the claim lends credence to this explanation.
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@Dave I think that’s pretty much what the article suggests. That tweet makes no sense coming from the victorious side, as it obviously was meant to be disruptive of the final tally.
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Isn’t it beyond time to declare war on disinformation? Even if everyone agrees, the question remains: Who will be the General?
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@Matt Nisbet
Why General Electric, of course.
With Colonel Saunders as his aide.
I believe Elizabeth Warren is campaigning for that job.
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A twitter account really. Imagine this type of information can turn an election into an investigation. I truly believe, no offense to the people who use twitter and similar social platforms, that the companies during an election ban such statements unless proven to be correct. Unfortunately we live in a world where disinformation is overwhelming and simply cause chaos and ends up costly a lot of money.
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Voter fraud has always been a risk on election day. The change is in the insecurity felt by most Americans that their vote counts. A simple system in place to text the voter that his/her vote has been counted verifying the vote is not in place. Some states say to call to verify that your vote was taken. A blackout of media days before election day can also be implemented but doubtful any party would agree to that. Most now realize their vote will be needed in this next election even with the outrages electoral votes that cheapen our voting for President. Most people are oblivious to the system.
5
The problem isn't that there are disinformation campaigns. The problem is that people are susceptible to them.
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@Rob you mean to say that people are gullible, plain and simple.
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@Rob I disagree. A useful analogy might be how children, known to be gullible and vulnerable, are protected by law and custom from false or dangerous information. And sadly, how often the widely supported effort to protect children fails. Still, we don’t say: “it’s the children’s fault”. We continue to try to enhance the paradigm of protection, because anything less is irresponsible neglect.
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And whose agenda is served by policies that work against education? Whose platform glorifies ignorance and characterizes educated people as the other? We didn't get here overnight.
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This and the Madagascar story on page 1 portend danger indeed. Who would've guessed that the process of voting would itself become the Achilles heel of democracy? Just one more way the internet has enabled the worst in human nature.
23
We need to require all voting machines to have an auditable paper trail, one that humans can read without a machine. Florida’s “hanging chad” punch card ballots were bad - but the machines with no paper trail at all are worse.
Either hand-counted paper ballots, or paper ballots that can be machine-scanned if necessary, are essential for everyone to retain faith in our elections.
23
My state has started using machines where you make your choices on a touchscreen which then prints out a scannable paper ballot. Then, after checking to make sure it’s correct, you feed the ballot into the scanner.
Along with the two pieces of paper that are printed out to verify my name and address that’s a pretty solid paper trail. There’s are records confirming that I voted (only once and in my precinct) and who I voted for.
With this procedure, I’m quite confident in the integrity of our elections. It makes in-person voter fraud close to impossible and leaves a record that can be hand counted if necessary. It’s a system that relies on actual human beings using pieces of paper. If the scanners are connected to the internet it might be possible to hack them but you can’t create the hard copies inside them; a discrepancy between the digital tally and paper ballots is easily resolved.
What we can’t seem to get a handle on is the disinformation spread by social media that sows suspicion. Nor can we silence those wish to cast doubts on the process.
3
@John M
Indeed, those machines, made by the same company that makes ATM machines, that can provide you a receipt.
1
I don’t know why Twitter is still allowed to exist. It serves no useful purpose that I am aware of, closely followed by Facebook. Get rid of them both until after the 2020 elections. There - multiple problems solved!
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Is there not a recount provision in Kentucky's election laws? Typically a recount should only be required if the margin is a specific number (i.e., margin is less than 1% in a statewide election) unless there is verified North Carolina fraud.
2
@hal
There is, but not an automatic recount. A candidate who receives more than 25% of the votes can request recanvass/recount, but at their own personal cost.
Apparently not.
Probably not much that we can do for now on bots and trolls, but let's concentrate on the repetition of such claims by elected officials. Maybe we just need to have personal fines imposed on such people, since they are abusing a bully pulpit that came with the office. Maybe Mr. Bevin would have been less likely to repeat drivel if it might cost him $1 million. And the money that comes from the fines would go toward public funding of elections to minimize the effects of corporations, SuperPAC's, etc
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There are plenty of Republican donors that will just pay the million to have the misinformation repeated.
13
@John Duffy
I'm someone who values my personal online anonymity, but I'm at the point where I wouldn't be against requiring all online platforms to require proof of identity before allowing someone to open an account. (Perhaps they could still allow aliases, but share the real info with people investigating possible criminal activities.) It might not be possible to do much about someone posting "something smells fishy about this election," but making factual claims about someone the poster claims to have actually done or witnessed is different.
I can't pretend I've thought through all the consequences, but if the person who posted the original tweet faced actual charges, I suspect he or she would never have hit "send" it in the first place. It would also limit interference from abroad.
As in so many other areas, we're seeing how easily the limits of self-regulation by industries can be stretched to the point of impotence. I don't expect the GOP to do anything about it, as it's gotten them to where they are today, but I suspect the vast majority of Americans would support some common-sense changes to the wild west ethos that currently governs basically anything that happens online.
12
@John Duffy There aren't enough courts and judges to hold people accountable. The justice system is way overloaded with no relief in sight.
1
Perhaps this and much more. These people, urged on by Trump, have a proclivity towards violence. Never forget Trump's incendiary behavior at rallies in the 2016 campaign. Real people were hurt. His reaction to Charlottesville was even a better demonstration of our dangerous tilt to authoritarianism.
30
We saw it in 2016 and it will be a blizzard in 2020. The conservative conspiracy about voter fraud turned out to be more fraudulent than actual voter fraud but that didn't stop the bots and trolls from putting out misinformation in 2018 and so far, same result, the claims of voter fraud are fake news but it doesn't stop conservative sites from spreading it like fertilizer. On liberal sites, it is voter suppression conspiracies. Alas, no conspiracy there, just another day of legal gerrymandering and legally removing qualified voters from the registers who failed to verify their registration.
9
@tom In many instances, the removing of qualified voters has been done in an unlawful manner (here in Florida, and in Texas, as examples). That is voter suppression. Also, reducing the number of days for early voting, ending voting on traditional "Souls to the Poles" days, and having insufficient voting stations in minority precincts are also voter suppression. These are not conspiracy theories of liberals.
9
@JosefK "Souls to the Polls." Reminder too self to refrain from posting until after coffee.
1
“If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism, they will abandon democracy”.
David Frum
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@Demosthenes And they've shown some of this in North Carolina, in Michigan, in Wisconsin,in Kentucky.
People, wake up. The GOP DOES NOT believe in the Constitution. They are doing this on purpose to dismantle America and our government.
9
When you post something you know to be false why can’t there be a penalty for doing so?
Our libel laws are not even close to being capable of dealing with this, add to that a business model that rewards this kind of behavior and you’ve got our current mess.
Used to be I couldn’t write a letter to my newspaper and expect it to be published unless I provide proof of my identity. Why is anonymity assumed to be a right on the internet?
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@Johnny
I think some people have legitimate reasons to want anonymity online - many workers might fear retaliation from employers, or some in the LGBTQ community might fear for their safety - but I think a reasonable middle ground might be for the platforms to require this information in order to set up an account (with the stipulation that it might be shared in the event the account is investigated for something illegal, which the post referenced in the article should be if it isn't already).
11
@Johnny
I don't see that false statements like the examples given can be made illegal if there are other less onerous ways of dealing with it.
See the Supreme Court Case "United States v. Alvarez". The verdict was (correctly) strongly supported by the NY Times.
1
Democracy is under assault. We generally recognize hostile foreign intrusions aimed at undermining our democracy as war-like acts. If that is true, then disinformation campaigns of domestic origin should be recognized as treason and social media companies that enable this activity should be recognized as enablers of treason. There is an urgent need to create a legal framework to deal with this new threat. If attacks on democracy continue to go unchecked, we will soon be living in North Korea.
26
Track down this tweeter. Expose him and prosecute him for attacking our democracy. Of course this won’t happen. The first amendment protects people like this. Or, on the other hand, is it like shouting fire in a crowded movie theater....
8
@LAM
The First Amendment does not give one carte blanche to say things that one knows to be false. There are certain situations where there can be severe legal consequences for speaking a damaging untruth - if a lie effectively infringes on others rights and causes financial damages one can be sued. If a lie endangers others or leads to physical harm it can be a criminal offence. Falsely reporting a crime, is itself a criminal offense.
Someone falsely saying "I just shredded a bunch of ballots" with the intent of sowing doubt about an election, as happened in Kentucky falls into this category - or it should. Damaging lies are not universally protected by the First Amendment.
The catch in these cases is that people who are smarter than Mr. Wannabe Ballot Shredder won't say things nearly so stupid and disprovable - they'll stick with "I overheard" and "I saw" - and thus maintain plausible deniability. The First Amendment *does* protect people who say things that they believe to be true(or cannot be proven to be demonstrably false).
2
If you base your vote on what you read on social media, you probably shouldn’t be casting a vote to begin with.
44
@Sue
So very true but try to convince those people that they are not "informed."
4
@Sue That’s not a possible option, and probably shouldn’t be. Voters as a whole are most likely becoming more discriminating. But importantly, this article is about what happens after a vote when, with all perspectives included and with no evidence of voter fraud, a “conservative” loses. Conversely, for example in a NC ninth district Congressional election in 2018, when the Democratic candidate contested the result, there was clear fraud by a paid bundler of absentee ballots. That bundler was successfully prosecuted, another election was held and won by a different Republican, and the Democratic candidate graciously accepted defeat.
3
The failure of the Trump followers to recognize the difference between a closely concocted lie and Trump's willingness to use any lie to his advantage when the issue is one which in the long run hurts them is truly the saddest result of our political process. Our democratic republic depends on the people being smart enough and cynical enough to distrust the liars whether in person or any media
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@Franklin
If as you say our democratic process DEPENDS on the people being smart enough, then we truly are in peril. Too many of the people, probably most, apply neither attention nor critical thinking to the electoral choice process; they vote based on emotion, name recognition, and myths. This was bad enough historically, but wide availability of misinformation facilitated by social media and powered by bad actors at all levels has made the situation much worse, and not only in the United States. It's a worldwide phenomenon.
16
@Franklin Perfect in message for blind folded DJT followers for whatever selfish reasons. With ugliest informations on his resume like multiple bankruptcies,law suits,Trump University & Charities(most recent one on name of veterans)to scam the students and donors and even his impeccable leadership with arrogance and disrespect for laws,disabled people,gold star families,hard working US citizens in agencies like FBI,CIA,Army and in many public sectors while praising worst foreign leaders and asking them to help him by interfering in US election process-if all such nonsensical attitudes not enough to open up their eyes,what else laws abiding citizens can expect from them.
Just pray the god which is the only authority help us to ride through such situations in search of truths and integrity from our leaders on both sides.
Anonymity encourages bad behavior. This tweet was the equivalent of shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater. Its intent was to foment chaos and thus cannot be protected speech. Twitter and other social media platforms must eliminate the possibility of anonymity in their user base. With an appropriate search warrant, users like louis@overlorddraken1 need to be tied to real identities with real physical addresses so that law enforcement authorities can take appropriate action. The alternative for Twitter is to install a sufficient time delay to allow all posts to go through an AI filter that weeds out tweets of an incendiary nature. Twitter is, after all, primarily infotainment, not news.
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@Jack
Agree.
I don't understand why when we ordinary people want to post something or sign in to a new site we are often asked if we are a "real person" and not a "robot." And then we're shown pictures with e.g. a bus that if we don't click on the right ones we aren't allowed in.
Why isn't the software of Facebook, Twitter, etc. more discerning as to which users are "real people" as well as where they are coming from (Russia?) and what their IP address is and whether they've been thrown off the site before for security or other reasons?
These software developers can put into their code all kinds of tactics in order to stop the misinformation intentionally spread by bad players. It's one thing for a true "friend" or "family" on Facebook that you disagree with to send you a Trump ad and it's another if you get one from a bot.
3
The current Republican long game is to cheat in every way possible before an election: gerrymandering, voter suppression, outlawing same-day registration. But even with all of this, when they STILL lose, they blame it on 'voting irregularities.' These guys can't lose with grace. It's truly disgusting, this ego-driven desire to hold onto power at any cost.
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@Real Thoughts
...and sadly, the Republican voters fall for it every time.
Either they are easily led, or they are as morally corrupt as their representatives.
15
And add to it, McConnell has buried the House bills, many passed with bipartisan support, addressing security around our elections . Latest was HR2722. Why? Seems a no brainier. Unless...
1
We need new laws that make it very expensive to engage in online propaganda aimed at voter fraud . Prison, and fines are the only thing GOP operatives understand since laws and decency mean nothing to them.
Funny how when Democrats lose this kind os stuff does not happen. Dems do not enact shadow laws stripping the elected official of powers like a recent Southern state. Always the former Confederate states that engage in voter fraud and suppression. Never hear about Maine or Vermont doing this.
53
This has been the Republican play book for a long time. Break elections until no one has faith in them, so they can walk in, take over and never leave.
When are Americans going to realize that Republicans have been morphing into a Stalinist dictatorial regime that will persecute and prosecute other Republicans, just as much as everyone else, who want a voice but are not members of the inner circle.
Justin Amash can tell you about this. Mitt Romney can whisper about this. Susan Collins can hold her tongue about this. And the rest of the Republicans think they are at a grand keg party or will hide like they did during Senator Joseph McCarthy. These are dangerous times for democracy, not to mention the future of the planet.
125
I intentionally don't know much about Twitter because it seems to be such a cesspool but it seems that there are a lot of fake accounts.
Overlordkraken1 claimed to be engaged in a felony crime of destroying ballots. Those who retweet this kind of stuff seem untroubled by the absurdity of the claim.
How many real people do you know who would confess crimes in writing that would land them in prison for a long time?
36
And now, just this weekend, I hear coming out of Alabama about rigging of a competitive event, where Crimson Tide fans are demanding a re-count of the final score of the LSU-Bama game. They say that they have alternative facts to prove their case. Liberal CBS Sports, with a bunch of mainstream, liberal announcers are trying to destroy everything great about ‘Mercia!
9
Unfounded accusations of election fraud are exactly what we can expect from the GOP in 2020. Wherever a Republican loses a race, they’ll blame it on Democrats shredding ballots or a band of illegal immigrants George Soros hired to sneak into the US and vote for the Democratic candidate. And it’ll all be Hillary Clinton’s idea, which the Republicans would be able prove but for Hillary orchestrating Benghazi as a cover to destroy her emails. Ridiculous. Just like the malarkey coming out of Kentucky.
54
@Julio Wong --exactly--nonsense pours out of their mouths. Republicans have become ridiculous in all of their stances and the twists and turns they take in front of us are amazing to see!
9
Disgusting behavior by Bevin...no other muddying of the water. He is one of the period in the Republican Party, even after being beaten they will not admit it. Trump now demands full support that his call to the Ukraine was not illegal, immoral, an abuse of power and impeachable. And he is supported by all those Republicans who have no morals either and are ready, willing and able to demand that Hunter Biden testify when he is not the problem, but was their victim. When nothing has been proven to be illegal, etc. Despicable beyond belief. This Trump Administration and his supporters.
16
@JHM
From what I know, HB didn't do anything illegal.
But that doesn't mean he shouldn't have taken a highly-paid position he was completely unqualified for with an international company if he cared at all about his dad's reputation.
The reason something like this has so little trouble turning into a big story is that is really does just strike people as corrupt. And that's because it is. Dems would have a lot more credibility when it comes to corruption if they'd just stop doing the maybe-legal-but-still-totally-slimy nepotism and self-dealing.
1
People have always believed what they want to believe. It is a human condition. To discard one’s belief based on evidence to the contrary is never easy. Social media makes it harder to abandon one’s beliefs. Without doubt, the 2020 election will be one for the ages, and not in a good way.
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