Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 July 16

= July 16 =

Seizing voting machines
What is the big deal about Trump wanting to seize voting machines? The votes had already been cast and counted. Unless it is to prevent future elections? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:24, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Seizure requires a warrant, which can only be issued for "probable cause", that is, a reasonable suspicion, supported by evidence, that the machines had been used to commit a crime. Like the attempts to have the DOJ declare that there was evidence of widespread fraud, if successful this would have played into the narrative of team Trump of a stolen election. --Lambiam 07:03, 13 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Trump was wanting the military to seize the voting machines, so that would be illegal, right? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 23:50, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The never-issued executive order stated it was issued by the authority vested in the President by . It called for "federalization of appropriate National Guard support". The President of the US can, when unable "with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States", call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard (10 U.S. Code § 12406). The draft executive order did not in any way state, though, that the seizure could not be executed by the DOJ, a failure that any lawyer would use to argue for it being illegal. It would ultimately have had to be tested in court by Clarence Thomas and suchlike. --Lambiam 07:26, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
 * With the advice and consent of Ginni. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:08, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

OK, but back to the point of "why"? The votes had already been cast, counted, and verified by each state. What would be the point of seizing the voting machines at that time? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:08, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * In furtherance of the conspiracy theory that the voting machine counts had been altered, by deceased dictators, extraterrestrials, or whatever. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:18, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Trump claimed the machines had been tampered with and supposedly wanted to prove this so he could argue for already certified votes to be ignored. He is still trying to overturn the election result 18 months after Biden took office. See Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. His opponents probably feared he would use control of the machines to falsify evidence of tampering. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:15, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * It depends on your opinion of Trump. If you like Trump, he was trying to secure the voting machines before criminals could undo whatever they did to change votes. If you hate Trump, he was trying to create a conspiracy when none exists. All in all, it is just politics, so asking why is like asking why two toddlers fight in a sandbox that is more than big enough for both of them. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 11:27, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * "...whatever they did to change votes." For which no evidence was ever presented. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:28, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * By "no evidence", I assume you mean "very little evidence." Most websites note between 400 and 500 possible instances of voter tampering out of more than 25 million votes cast. It is not a case of "absolutely no evidence of any kind at all." It is a case of negligible one-off cases that had no real effect on the results. But, again, this is just politics. The purpose is to polarize voters, not fix problems. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 13:58, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * There was no evidence of voter fraud on the level that Trump intimated. The 400 one-off cases you mention are not equitable to claims of a widespread fix that swung the election in favor of Biden. 🌈WaltCip - (talk)  14:05, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm sure every election has little bits and pieces of individuals trying to vote fraudulently. The ones fully exposed so far have been mostly by Republicans. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:33, 15 July 2022 (UTC)


 * But he promised. He said he had all the evidence and that it would be released "very, very soon". This was in early 2021. We all know that when a president does something, it's not illegal. That was clearly established by Trump's honourable predecessor Nixon. Therefore presidents and ex-presidents cannot lie, and when he says he has all the incontrovertible evidence, he is telling the truth. We have to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume the delay in releasing all the evidence must have something to do with personal issues over which he has no control. Such as the dilemma over which golf course to patronise. Hang in there, folks. Biden's gone a million. Any day now. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  18:33, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The draft executive order cites a "forensic report", produced by Russell Ramsland, that claimed to have found "that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results. The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors." Never mind that a hand recount of the votes in the district examined in the "forensic report" (just one district) established the accuracy of the machine count. It is true that too many politicians intentionally and purposefully lie to the public, but the fact that this is prevalent should be a reason to insist on more transparency and more accountability, not to shrug it off as "just politics". --Lambiam 19:13, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, now I understand. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 22:20, 15 July 2022 (UTC)