"Refuting" Trump

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I have no idea how widespread voter fraud is. Off the top of my head, I'd probably be ready to believe some number between 100,000 illegal votes -- that's only a couple of thousand in each state! -- and a few million. Certainly the number of illegal votes wasn't zero -- no law is enforced that well!

Is the true number around 3 million, as Trump has been claiming? I just have no clue: that seems high to me, but really, how would I know, unless I conducted a ton of research into the matter?

One thing has struck me as very curious, however: CNN keeps saying that Trump's claim has been "debunked": But every time I follow one of their links, it just goes to another CNN story, one that also simply says the claim is false. So, CNN is saying, "We confidently can assert Trump's claim is false! Why? Well, because we asserted it was false earlier this week as well!"

Maybe Trump is off by a factor of ten: I don't know. But it would nice to see some evidence for this besides repeated claims that his estimate is way off!

Comments

  1. Olivier Braun3:56 AM

    I also noted the CNN headlines saying "False claims" from Trump, etc. and in the shows the assertion that Trump lies about vote fraud. What strikes me is the deliberately negative covering. To say that the claim is false, or that Trump lied, CNN must know if there was or not voting fraud. And that, nobody knows before the investigation is concluded.

    The true story would be that Trump thinks that there was voting fraud, based or not based on any evidence.

    As Trump would say, "dishonest media".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lord3:20 PM

    If there were the slightest evidence, don't you believe it would be headlines?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah11:27 PM

      "Slightest evidence" of what? *Some* voter fraud? We know for sure that there is *some* voter fraud, simply because there is a motivation for it to happen, and no law enforcement is ever perfect. The *only* question is what the number is.
      And the liberal press would very much like to convince people that number is at the low end. Because illegal voters vote Democratic. So I believe that the problem is almost surely greater than the liberal press would have us believe.

      Delete
    2. gcallah11:30 PM

      And in any case, this wasn't what my post was about: it was about the circularity of linking to articles by your own news outlet saying "Trump is wrong!" as evidence that Trump is wrong.

      Delete
  3. Bharat8:22 PM

    This is the only evidence I've seen so far, and while it doesn't back Trump's 3 million claim, 800,000 is a pretty large number. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/26/hillary-clinton-received-800000-votes-from-nonciti/

    ReplyDelete
  4. Josiah Neeley8:26 AM

    I saw an analysis that looked at voter turnout by Congressional district. Districts that had higher proportions of non-citizen residents had lower turnout, suggesting that non-citizens weren't voting in great numbers. I would link but google has failed me in this regard.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah5:41 PM

      I really don't know what the right number is. My only point is you can't show Trump's claim has been debunked by pointing to *another* piece in which you claim Trump has been debunked.

      Delete
  5. Ken B2:32 PM

    "Proof on reverse side of card."

    ReplyDelete
  6. Silas Barta4:44 PM

    I was surprised at how flaky the voter authentications procedures are when I moved to California. You literally just tell them your name, and you get that persons ballot. No voter card or ID required; you don't even have to ask for it by e.g. address.

    It is pretty trivial to take someone's vote; you just have to know the name of someone on the list, ideally someone who will not be coming later. But even if they did, are they really going to break out the detective squad to hunt me down based on the camera image? Somehow, I doubt it.

    ReplyDelete

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