Posted on 11/25/2018 10:25:40 AM PST by Kaslin
The political climate in the United States has been perpetually explosive for what feels like generations. This sentiment was evident as voters went to the polls for the 2018 midterm election. As a result of this, the 2018 midterm had the highest voter turnout since 1914. Despite the passion exhibited by both parties this election, in the shadow looms a serious issue that can affect the very foundation of our democracy. That issue is the growing distrust in our election results.
According to recent surveys, 31% of American voters have “not very much” or “no confidence at all” in our election results. Furthermore, one-third of Americans believe foreign governments had influenced the outcome of the recent midterms. This can be partially attributed to the American media's narrative framing of the 2016 Presidential election as illegitimate, and partially decided by foreign entities.
There are a number of additional factors that also have contributed to the growing lack of faith in the electoral process. It is no secret that foreign governments have attempted on multiple occasions to influence American elections to suit their agenda.
In 1996, China attempted to influence domestic American politics by attempting to assist in the reelection of President Bill Clinton. Dubbed “Chinagate,” the scandal was born out of a United States Department of Justice investigation into fund-raising activities that uncovered evidence of Chinese agents directing contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee. In addition, just before this year’s midterm election, Facebook discovered that multiple accounts associated with the Russian based Internet Research Agency were engaging in a disinformation campaign.
We have seen more of this weaponizing of social media in order to sway public opinion. In August and October this year, Facebook discovered two more influence campaigns spearheaded by Russia and Iran. Some of the accounts involved in these operations were followed by nearly one million people in the United States and Britain. Twitter also reported accounts from foreign actors that engaged in disinformation campaigns related to the election.
At first glance, one might not think that these social media operations would have a minimal effect on the midterm election. However, when put into perspective, the reality is they could have a significant impact.
According to a survey done by the Pew Research Center, 68% of American adults get their news through social media with 43% through Facebook and 12% through Twitter. Browser hijackers, like the Google Redirect Virus, are designed to replace the information and stories seen on leading websites and apps including Google, Twitter, Facebook, and others. This can easily be leveraged to corrupt election results. If even a nominal portion of this demographic is influenced by foreign propaganda, these misinformation campaigns can potentially sway close elections.
These influence campaigns are not the only tools used to manipulate the elections. There have also been multiple reports of hacking attacks to disrupt American votes. These cyber-attacks employ the use of malware such as Trojans and Ransomware to target political campaigns or Denial of Service attacks to state websites.
And of course, there is the State of Florida. Machine recounts, “hanging chads,” Brenda Snipes, thousands of missing votes and the late submission of revised vote tallies have all worked to undermine the perceived legitimacy of election results in one of the most critical swing states in the country.
While all the aforementioned issues affecting our democratic process are serious, the long-term problem may prove to be a lack of trust with election results. Citizens may begin to question the validity of election outcomes and the resulting disillusion and disengagement may have more of a negative influence on our democracy than any foreign power could ever desire.
One might suspect that a loss of faith in elections is the end game of liberals, so that, once in power, they can ban elections entirely.
The intent of the Demagogic Party is to undermine support for the Constitution, so ballot integrity is what they attack, by calling Voter ID laws "racism" and "attacks on the Voting Rights Act", and through lawfare, and through their own ballot fraud. This has really come to the fore since the 2000 election, which Al Gore LOST, and there was a brief flurry of complaints from the Demwits about the Electoral College. Gore's campaign anticipated losing the popular vote and winning the Electoral vote, and had formulated position papers against that possibility. But their nationwide covert campaign of fraud failed.
Motor voter registration should have never been started.
Excellent point.
I know I’m losing confidence in their integrity.
Samuel Clemens’ later life cynicism was spot on.
When has Congress added 15 Dem representatives after election night? The Soros secretary of state program is working to nullify elections.
truth is I saw this month’s stories and about the past. There is a need for a lot of oversight of Palm Beach county in 2020.
Is that the only place of concern in Florida?
Voters with any brains are losing confidence in democrats in our elections. Democrats are proving to be thieves within the American election system. Thieves cannot be trusted.
I think they meant “provisional”.
That's the answer. Will it ever be adopted? ANS: No.
The only confidence I have in our election system, especially that of Kalifornia, is that they are manipulated by voter fraud and election rigging . Example in Kalifornia; the loss of republican congressional seats in highly republican districts and prop 6 that failed. It would’ve repealed the recent legislation of increasing the Kalifornia gas tax and vehicle licensing fees. If one thinks Gov. Gerry Brown is a communist, wait until they get a load of Governor elect Gavin Newsome.
Why is there no mention of illegal aliens voting in California? I’ve seen a very few brief reports, but it’s like they are deliberately ignoring the half dozen House seats that flipped after the election, all from Republican to Democrat. Were those the seats that provided the Dem majority? They are focusing on elections that couldn’t flip or that wouldn’t make much difference and completely ignoring the ones that did.
For that same reason; the urge to pander, Muslims are transforming parts of Europe into lawless areas ruled by Sharia and brute force alone. Scorching the earth without a bomb.
As discussed with Freeper reasonisfaith at post 67 at this earlier discussion today, we really should be pulling out the stops to prove the electoral fraud in the midterms. Some of this shouldn’t be that hard....
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3708215/posts
Yup. RATS think Bush 2 and Trump stole Presidential elections. Repubs think many seats were stolen by RATS in the latest midterms.
Not just the integrity of the elections. The confidence in the integrity of house and senate members is as low as it goes.
Beware you arrogant bastards; you are holding on by one toe to the edge of the precipice. That would be the same precipice that the democrats and republicans alike pulled us over in 1860.
Voter suppression, to democrats, means purging the dead, illegals, people with felony convictions, and people with no known valid address from the voter rolls.
Voter suppression is also clamping down on democrat activist groups that try to register out-of-state college students in a college state, or activists who “assist” people in nursing homes with mail in ballots.
Voter suppression to democrats is ending provisional ballot abuse, like storing envelopes with prevoted ballots and filling in the voter data for people who didn’t vote on the envelope after polls close. Then democrat election official operatives find some reason to open the envelope even though the signature doesn’t match the voter roll. Once the envelope is opened, the bogus ballot is mixed in with the valid ballots and it’s impossible to distinguish it from a real ballot.
Democrat Party: Hopefully.
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