We're here at the last chance for him to turn back. We all know defying their decision, especially being 9-0, is the hill he wants to die on. He's installed his loyalists and commands everything necessary to be completely immune from his actions.

He has proven he will defy any order that he doesn't like, and we're at the point where he either backs down or pushes forward. His playbook is clear, and we know he won't turn back now.

If there's no due process for criminals, there's no due process for anyone. If they can disappear an immigrant, they can disappear you.

"We'll never be truly free until those in bondage have the same rights as you and me."

You know, I always find it interesting how people are so easily offended by things they disagree with that instead of simply ignoring it like adults or having the backbone to say "nah, I disagree and u shouldn't be posting things I don't wanna read" — they instead seek to remove the offending speech from discourse.

After all, I guess one doesn’t have to defend himself if opposing viewpoints aren’t allowed to exist.

Who’s the snowflake now?

Literally, then some of them claim to be first amendment absolutists..

Mmhm. It's selfish and narcissistic actions like that you can't fix because they are so ingrained. If someone thinks they are the best and nobody should go against them, then you have no choice but to remove them since they will never live up to an actual moral standard. They will lie, cheat, steal...whatever it takes to get what they want because in their mind, they are the only thing the matters.

When I see someone like Karoline Leavitt go out and tell the most brazen lies, sometimes I wonder if they actually know they're lying.

Do they know they're lying subconsciously and they just don't think about it? Are they consciously lying but justifying it?

But they must somehow know they're lying. The ones oppressing you with lies cannot themselves be so brainwashed with them to think it is the truth.


ICE just released a US citizen they had in jail for over a day for suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.

It's crazy enough that ICE can just do this to US citizens. The fear is that, soon, they won't be letting US citizens go either.

zapshe wrote:
But they must somehow know they're lying. The ones oppressing you with lies cannot themselves be so brainwashed with them to think it is the truth.

My personal opinion is that is exactly what is happening: they are so brainwashed that they believe wholeheartedly their lies are true.

zapshe wrote:
It's crazy enough that ICE can just do this to US citizens. The fear is that, soon, they won't be letting US citizens go either.

Well, that is the nature of a fascist dictatorship: anyone who disagrees or is on the list of "disagreeable" people, gets dealt with. What remains to be seen is how nasty being "dealt with" can get. Remember this is all from Putin's playbook: he has studied every word in the book of dirty tricks, and has written some chapters of his own.

The goal of Project 2025 in my mind is to make the USA just like Russia.

What Putin wants is for the USA and the rest of the world to be poorer, weaker, more isolated, and in more chaos. All this business with the tariffs could have the side effect of pushing other countries into trade relationships with China, which could allow China more influence, and China is friends with Russia.

The thing is: what to do about it? The longer this fascist regime is in power, the trickier it will be to get rid of them. Impeachment seems to me, to be too easy for Trump to wriggle out of. The death of Trump (one way or another) probably won't make any difference, someone else will be installed instead. Note that Trump is not really in charge, Putin is, through Trump's advisers.

Some of the things that need to be done, once this regime is gone:

1. Limit what can be done via Executive Order. Government by Executive Order plays right into the hands of a dictator. Major policy should be decided by Congress, not from a document 1 page long. This would also mean that one man would not have the potential power to screw up the domestic and global economies.
2. The Supreme Court should not have politically appointed members. Again, this strengthens a dictator's grip.
3. The "Brain Washing" aka Mass Psychology happened with Social Media, there needs to be some way to limit that.
4. Creation of a "department" like DOGE with an non elected person in charge, should be illegal.
5. Criminals shall not be presidents. Maybe this should have been number 1?

I am thinking of moving to Patagonia, to hang out with the Llama's and Alpacas :+D

2) so where do they come from? Do you want a 3/4 or something senate majority? No one would EVER be confirmed unless the nominee were able to somehow hide their agenda / beliefs / voting record / history. They already dodge the questions to avoid taking any kind of stance.

3) limit free speech? Sounds good to do "something" like flag false information (they try to do this but it is politically charged as well) but past that, what? And if they can somehow DO it ... for servers in the USA ... will we be like china and prevent access to foreign servers?

4) you mean like BATFE, an organization that taxes fundamental rights and prevents execution of those rights?

5) this is tricky too. It sounds great on paper, but do you mean felons? Any convictions? Traffic tickets? Statutory rape, perhaps? (BC). Willful mishandling of classified documents (Multiple)? Cocaine use (W)? Other?

-------------------
again, I do not like Trump nor agree with many, many things he is doing (moreso this time, his first term, other than the idiot wall, I largely am fine with).

But the voters are not brainwashed. Look at what is BEHIND what he is doing. DEI stuff? The people running these programs are excluding white men from jobs; they have even coined a phrase "people of color" that excludes one color, and the whole thing is ENTIRELY based off skin color, no DNA testing etc is done. When you are on your 10th "sorry, we were actually looking for minorities for this position" end of interview. When we use tax money to feed, police, educate, etc people who broke the law to get those services, by the multiple millions. DOGE? Something needs to be done, how much of our tax money is shipped to other countries as "AID" and I am not talking about food or disaster relief, but funding for programs that we need here at home. How much is squandered on schools filled with hate speech and 'be a liberal or fail' educational programs? Do you deny that other countries are taking advantage of us, making it difficult to sell made in USA products there but shipping their plastic garbage here by the megaton?

This is what his voters see, and more. How he is going about things is absolutely terrible, but the stuff he is doing is exactly what his base wanted in terms of the problems he is addressing. They want something done about illegals, the anti-white, straight, christian, and male bigotry (esp on the hiring scene/job market), government spending / big government, high taxes, and yes, ironic as it sounds, attacks on their rights (both sides attack the rights of the people in spades, and the followers of both sides ignore what their side does on that front by and large). And that does not even cover alienation. Imagine for a moment you are a white, straight, christian male. Now imagine you are largely liberal in your politics. Where can you go? Voting / being a democrat is going to be like a black gay jew joining the KKK --- everyone else at the party hates you for existing.

If we don't elect a live and let live moderate in the next few cycles, its could get a lot worse. Someone who can keep their hands off guns and abortions both, not raise taxes but fund the programs people need, treat all people as people and let it end there (no preferential treatment, no discrimination), and so on. But people like that don't run for office. The people who run for POTUS are the worst we can find, and have been since not long after WWII.

Note that Trump is not really in charge, Putin is, through Trump's advisers.

Exactly this. Whether they know it or not, they are Putin's palm. Trump doesn't even make any policies, just signs whatever his advisers are putting in front of him.

The only thing Trump came up with himself seems to be crazy tariffs.

4. Creation of a "department" like DOGE with an non elected person in charge, should be illegal.

DOGE is already illegal. It can't be created without congress, he merely repurposed an old agency, which is illegal.

It's also illegal to put Musk in charge of DOGE. In court his lawyers failed to argue Musk was not in charge of DOGE, because Trump kept publicly claiming he was.

2. The Supreme Court should not have politically appointed members. Again, this strengthens a dictator's grip.

This might be a good step.

However, I believe the biggest obstacle in this country is the two party system. By having just two major parties, you essentially force them to have radically different views, there is no overlap.

That means if you feel very strongly about a single issue (single-issue voters!), you are forced into one party or the other. You have no choice in terms of other nuances of political beliefs.


The two-party system is cancerous. Gerrymandering is cancerous. The electoral college is cancerous.

All systems designed specifically to undermine people's vote.


We also need term limits, age limits, and real accountability. We cannot have members of congress getting black mailed by their sexual deeds in order to vote in someone's favor - which is clearly happening. Taylor Greene openly threatened them on Twitter.

But the voters are not brainwashed. Look at what is BEHIND what he is doing. DEI stuff? The people running these programs are excluding white men from jobs; they have even coined a phrase "people of color" that excludes one color, and the whole thing is ENTIRELY based off skin color, no DNA testing etc is done. When you are on your 10th "sorry, we were actually looking for minorities for this position" end of interview. When we use tax money to feed, police, educate, etc people who broke the law to get those services, by the multiple millions. DOGE? Something needs to be done, how much of our tax money is shipped to other countries as "AID" and I am not talking about food or disaster relief, but funding for programs that we need here at home. How much is squandered on schools filled with hate speech and 'be a liberal or fail' educational programs? Do you deny that other countries are taking advantage of us, making it difficult to sell made in USA products there but shipping their plastic garbage here by the megaton?

This needed a reply of its own. I'm sorry, but this is completely Russian and right-wing propaganda on a plate.

DEI in companies can take many forms, the government has no real say in what a company does in this regard. DEI in the government is nothing like that, which is what Trump got "rid" of. DEI simply means they are allowing people of all backgrounds (gender, religion, class, veteran-status, etc..) the opportunity to be seen for the position - not hired just cause.

Imagine for a moment you're a boss and you only hire white men for office positions, then you realize it's a sausage party so you decide you'll hire a few women as well. That would be essentially DEI.

Now, did you lower your standards when you hired those women? No, you simply hired a woman who was also qualified for the position.

----

"much" of our money is NOT shipped to other countries as aid, except for Israel LOL. The aid we give other countries is a mere fraction OF 1% PERCENT of our budget. We give PEANUT money to these countries as aid.

In return, we have immense soft power which has allowed us to have military stationed all over the globe. We have fought diseases globally before they could ever reach us and become a problem. We have done so much for what amounts to change in our couch cushions. It is absolute insanity when people worry about "millions" of dollars, when the government is spending BILLIONS of dollars on things many of us would agree it should not.

If you're worried about the budget or overspending, worry about the spending that actually matters to the federal budget.

To put this in perspective, the ENTIRE BUDGET of USAID is 0.2% of the annual budget. This is not even how much we have given to other countries. These are jobs, government contracts, and much more as well. And the benefits are huge.

And they want you to focus on this agency, convincing you with lies that it is a black hole for money, all because they don't agree with it politically.

And why? Because Putin does not like having to deal with the U.S. in all global affairs. Putin hates being cock-blocked in his global efforts by a globally dominant U.S.

----

Other countries are NOT taking advantage of us in trade. If anything, we are taking advantage of other countries in terms of trade.

Trade is a huge topic than could never be distilled down to, "X is being taken advantage of". We are part of a huge global market, and we have access to cheap global goods. You do not know just how good our global trade deals truly are, it is clear you were sold a lie.

There are many reasons the U.S. dollar is a global reserve currency. We were stable and reliable. We have global dominance in military and economy.

You can choose to throw this all away because you hate cheap plastic from overseas. But this type of thinking is completely devoid from reality and any true understanding of global trade, and is exactly why with Trump policies we have meme images of the U.S. literally stabbing itself.

We are trading in a dollar bill for a quarter because one is just paper and the other is silver. It is complete nonsense.

Imagine for a moment you are a white, straight, christian male. Now imagine you are largely liberal in your politics. Where can you go?

There is no reason to feel you cannot be a democrat just for being a straight white christian male. Again, this is right-wing conservative propaganda meant to make you feel isolated.

Liberals are diverse? That's the issue? Really? How do you even argue this from a position other than Christianity and white supremacy? White straight man would feel uncomfortable being a liberal?

@jonnin

2) so where do they come from?

Look at Commonwealth countries, Judges are appointed by merit only; their job is to interpret the law; and they are supposed to be above the politics, not to allow something because it's what the president wants.

5) this is tricky too. It sounds great on paper, but do you mean felons?

Yes, my comment could use some clarification. Of course I don't mean someone should be disallowed if they smoked some cannabis once when they were 17. What I don't understand is how Trump could do some serious fraud to the tune of $40 million with the "Trump University" scam, settle in court for $10 million, then go on to be president? That would never happen in countries like the UK, for example. Remember Trump has been ripping people off his entire business career. Trump University was a historical example, what about his current convictions? That should have precluded him from running for president.

jonnin wrote:
Do you deny that other countries are taking advantage of us, making it difficult to sell made in USA products there but shipping their plastic garbage here by the megaton?

Yes, I deny that other countries are taking "advantage" of the USA, sorry but the whole idea is a nonsense. The truth is that western countries cannot make products as cheaply as they can in Asian countries. If they could, people would buy them. One does not have to buy plastic garbage: if they didn't, it wouldn't be imported. Also cheap does not necessarily imply poor quality. This trade "imbalance" being a bad thing is also a nonsense. For example New Zealand imports some US cars, and the US imports NZ wine to greater value than the cars. Does this mean the USA is being ripped off? Of course not: both are happy with the price, and both have a product they wanted. If either side were unhappy with the price, they would buy elsewhere. This is why blanket tariffs are crazy: the idea of a tariff is to perhaps encourage one to buy elsewhere, but the tariffs are for every country, then there is no where else to buy, so all it does is push up inflation, thereby weakening the economy - exactly what Putin wants.

With the DEI stuff: Imagine you are employed at an organisation that has a variety of genders, races, religious beliefs, sexual orientation etc; now imagine a lot of those people were taken away, so that there only white males left; would that organisation be weaker? I would argue that it would be. But whoever implements that DEI policy has to be very careful not to overdo it, merit still has to be an important factor. In my mind it boils down to being anti-discriminatory, rather than over doing inclusiveness.



With voters being delusional: When someone says "Trump will fix everything", and the crowd goes wild, doesn't that tell one something about their state of mind?

The thing is that Putin probably has a whole team of people who have spent years studying the entire US system, then figured out how to push everyone's buttons; find the best way to screw everything up. So that's where the mass psychology come in, and this is how it works: First send a message to someone who ideally doesn't have much in the way of critical thinking, the first message is 80% true, with a couple of half truths; as time goes on send more messages with less and less truth, and more lies until the person fully believes in the regime. This has been a subtle campaign going on for years.

It's one thing to go about how bad the situation is now, but what to do about it? Something has to be done, the longer it is left the harder it will be.

zapshe wrote:
However, I believe the biggest obstacle in this country is the two party system. By having just two major parties, you essentially force them to have radically different views, there is no overlap.

I agree. I reckon the best situation for democracy is minority government. Say one party wins as little as 35% of the vote, the other parties less than this*. What this does is force compromise, especially in the senate. It works even better if one of the parties, or a block of independents, are sensible and central on the political spectrum; thus giving rise to best policy.

* The situation I have seen in real life is one where the government is 1 or 2 seats short of a majority, and the independents have 10% of the seats, so there is effective governance with compromise. What would be bad is where Party A has 35%; Party B has 30%, sees themselves as being the opposition, and always votes everything down; there are other parties who often side with Party B; so this makes the government ineffective some of the time. Having said that, 95% of legislation is passed by all the parties without any drama, it is just that sometimes an opposition party will choose a battleground, mainly to get themselves on the news to make a point of difference.

Merit for judges sounds good. But who judges the judges? What merit? Someone has to decide this guy is better than that guy. Presidential appointment is terrible and causes nothing but trouble, and lifetime appointments are also being gamed.

For the record the tariffs are dumb. But I still don't agree there is no problem. At the very least, a country with strong labor laws can't compete making the same thing against a country with few/no labor laws. That is probably 75% or more of the reason we can't make the stuff as cheaply as others. I mean I am for banning import from countries with prison labor & child labor, but we don't have the backbone to do that.

there is no scale to being a felon, its binary, or in some cases (but not here) 3-4 states (eg, violent felons or other subcategories). If being a felon disqualifies running for office (and, it should) then about 1/2 the presidents from my lifetime were a problem before election and closer to 2/3 or more after a single term. Trump is the worst, sure. But you can't make it a judgement call and single him out.

DEI: I firmly believe that if we simply hire based on merit, diversity will follow. I also believe that unless 'race' can be defined scientifically, instead of just snap judgement based off skin color/hair/accent, these programs have no merit. And I also believe that white people are diverse: lumping them all together in one group is racist and wrong. A big old dumb redneck like me, an aussie, a russian, and some dude from scotland. All the same? DEI says yes -- the cultures and backgrounds don't matter, only skin & hair color.

Delusional is a strong word. If cheering for a lying politician is delusion, then roughly 80% of our country are delusional. Cheering for the idiot and believing everything he says are miles apart. As with the felon thing, I struggle to say that being worse matters. Every president in my lifetime has lied repeatedly to the voters and been cheered for it. And the voters knew it, know it, and for some unholy reason, put up with it.

I dunno about the russian angle. Trump is doing what putin wants, not as an ally or some sort of puppeteering but simply put, isolationism from us is helpful to russia. The propaganda and bs have gone on since a year after WWII. Is it worse? Hard to say, technology makes it easier to be a jackass, and its been increasing for decades.

And that circles right back to where I am. Something must be done? Ok, but what? The only ones who can do it are voters, and the next chance is midterms. Which Trump knows well and good will go against him hard... hence his full steam ahead to do as much as possible as fast as possible.

At the very least, a country with strong labor laws can't compete making the same thing against a country with few/no labor laws. That is probably 75% or more of the reason we can't make the stuff as cheaply as others.

It's not just that we can't compete due to labor laws, but we don't even have the labor available. We don't even have the raw materials that would be necessary in abundance.

The whole point of trade is to have import that makes up for your shortcomings and exports that play to your strengths.

It is not bad that we can't compete, it is a fact that we supplement with trade.

I mean I am for banning import from countries with prison labor & child labor, but we don't have the backbone to do that.

I'm sorry to be the one who has to tell you, we are the bad place. We have prison labor.

there is no scale to being a felon, its binary... Trump is the worst, sure. But you can't make it a judgement call and single him out.

That simply isn't true.

Different crimes have different punishments. Stealing and murder to not carry the same punishments. You can easily see how one of these felonies may disqualify you from presidency (and even most jobs) while the other may not.

DEI: I firmly believe that if we simply hire based on merit, diversity will follow

There are two major reasons why this is completely false:

1. Why do we think anyone is going to hire off merit to begin with? Conservatives have a romantic obsession with corporations, thinking they work on logic and efficiency.

That is not true. You would think a company would want to hire people for merit, and allow costumers of all backgrounds (more costumers = more money!). This has NEVER been the case.

A company will happily take a less qualified white man than hire the more qualified black woman.


2. Even if you only hired based of merit, which we are now fully in La-La Land, did you actually try to scout those with the most merit?

Does it make sense for a Football scout to only go to ivy league schools to search for players? Or should they extend the opportunity to all schools to actually find the best talent?


DEI is meant to give opportunity - NOT force hire people. Merit is always the number one priority - but this cannot be achieved without some sort of DEI policies.

Trump firing air safety personnel for the color of their skin does not mean the white people left over are somehow more qualified or have more merit than those who were fired.

I also believe that unless 'race' can be defined scientifically, instead of just snap judgement based off skin color/hair/accent, these programs have no merit

They usually ask you to self-identify. Either way, this isn't a very important point. DEI is not specifically about race, it's about gender, social status, class, etc..

The goal is to even the playing field in terms of opportunity, not outcome.

DEI says yes -- the cultures and backgrounds don't matter, only skin & hair color

This is the exact opposite of DEI:

"Diversity refers to the presence of variety within the organizational workforce in characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class, veteran status, or religion."

Again, whether or not a company implements this well is obviously up to the company. Governmental DEI policies were pretty solid from what I hear.

Delusional is a strong word. If cheering for a lying politician is delusion, then roughly 80% of our country are delusional

Doing so is delusional, and I have no idea where you got 80% from. People can be delusional, not the electoral college.. So we'd have to look at the popular vote where it was roughly half the voters.

And of those voters, we know many were lied to and tricked. He would not win an election if it was held tomorrow.

Trump is doing what putin wants, not as an ally or some sort of puppeteering but simply put, isolationism from us is helpful to russia

This is a very loose interpretation of events. Trump clearly has a personal relationship with Putin, to the point where he truly believed the war would never have started and that he could end it in a day.

He sucked Putin off during negotiations, blaming Ukraine for the war, calling Zelensky a dictator, and telling him he is the one who wants the war to continue.

When Trump isn't spouting lies he and his administration made up, he is spouting Russian lies instead.

Is it worse? Hard to say

Even in my own algorithm, I've received Russian propaganda videos. This includes a video saying that Russia is justified in their war because the U.S. "promised" not to expand NATO to the East, but continued to do so until it hit Russian borders.

People will say this expansion is basically threatening Russia and egging them on to do war.

This is complete nonsense Russian talking points that are devoid of the reality.

Something must be done? Ok, but what?

Certainly impeachment and voting.

However, we need to ensure fascism, idiocracy, criminal conduct, and ignoring the constitution does not occur in the future.

We cannot say, "Well jeez that sucked. Hope that doesn't happen again!" LOL

jonnin wrote:
Merit for judges sounds good. But who judges the judges? What merit? Someone has to decide this guy is better than that guy. Presidential appointment is terrible and causes nothing but trouble, and lifetime appointments are also being gamed.

I am not sure exactly how it works, but look at what they do in Europe, UK & Canada for example. I agree, lifetime appointments are also bad.

jonnin wrote:

Delusional is a strong word. If cheering for a lying politician is delusion, then roughly 80% of our country are delusional. Cheering for the idiot and believing everything he says are miles apart. As with the felon thing, I struggle to say that being worse matters. Every president in my lifetime has lied repeatedly to the voters and been cheered for it. And the voters knew it, know it, and for some unholy reason, put up with it.

But these people have been brainwashed until they are delusional. They cheer AND fully believe; what's more one can't talk them out of it, or make them see reason. It such a shame it has happened to so many people; so many that can't see the wood for the trees. Sure, politicians have always lied to some degree, and there have been scandals over time. Someone did a study and found that most politicians lie about 30% of the time. But Trump is at another level, so many BIG lies.

So with Felons, how does it work? If it's a money related thing, one can settle out of court and that's it? If that is true, it sounds terrible that a scammer can rip people off, settle for some percentage, and walk away - then potentially do it again? One would simply not see that elsewhere in places with strong democracies such Europe, Canada etc.

zapshe wrote:
Certainly impeachment and voting.

I worry about the efficacy of both those. Impeachment is too easy to slip out of, too much of a majority is needed given that half the people are under the thumb. With voting, I worry there will be interference. One giant red flag for me at the last election was the disparity between the polling and the outcome. Polling generally has about 3% accuracy, but when there is a consistent 10% swing nationwide - that's a worry. I know the Democrats did an investigation into the electronic voting machines and found nothing, but was there an investigation into the full stack of the system? There must be servers that collate all the votes, were they checked? It's possible they were infected with malware that deletes itself afterwards. Are there paper records of the voting in general? If there are, how long are they kept, did anyone check if they still exist and haven't been destroyed?

I worry about the efficacy of both those

Whether or not they work/occur is a different matter, but they are certainly important things to be done if possible.

With voting, I worry there will be interference... but was there an investigation into the full stack of the system

I have a couple issues with this.

First, there's no doubt there's election interference. We have seen the Russian and right-wing propaganda machine. Their level of media control is insane.

If you simply make a new social media account on a major platform, you will find right wing content shoved down your throat initially. We also have Elon Musk offering money to voters and buying Twitter, all to try and secure Trump's win.

These alone, though this is not comprehensive, are huge election interferences - some even illegal.


However, when we start to doubt whether the votes themselves are valid, then we are playing into their hands. We're playing the same game they wanted to play, which is for us to doubt the outcomes of democracy.

While it may be possible to rig some machines here or there, each state is responsible for its own voting system. Each state has different types of machines - and not all of their counters are machines at all. You would have to rig so much, it's essentially not feasible.

You could, theoretically, have targeted rigging, where you rig certain districts that are swingable. Elon Musk theoretically has the resources for this, but this is still a lot of work, and not something likely to be covered up successfully given the time and manpower required.


To rig an entire state? To rig multiple states? It just isn't very feasible, even though perhaps possible.


I will be the first to admit I was skeptical, but optimistic, that perhaps some kind of vote rigging had taken place. But as time passed and nothing substantial was released, it was clear there was no evidence for this.

The election truly came down to media manipulation, cult figures spreading sweet words and promises, people downplaying the true insanity of Trump, and people just plain not feeling like voting for a black woman.

Of course, we can't forget that the relative majority doesn't vote blue or red, they don't vote at all.


I don't think there's much doubt that if EVERYONE voted, democrats would win every single time. Most people are generally liberal in their views. But conservatives have it ingrained in their culture and blood to always vote. They always go out and vote. They are passionate.

Liberals are more normie, they may vote, they may not vote. If the media is controlled by the opposition, they likely don't even see the call to action that may influence them to go out and vote.

We caught two high profile Republicans talking about low voter turn-out in an upcoming election, claiming it would be "huge" for them. Republicans historically love low voter turn-out, that's when they win. Because Republicans always turn out, but Liberals generally need a call to action.


This is why I can pretty much guarantee Democrats will win more than usual in the upcoming midterms and will definitely win the presidency.

This is assuming the system of voting is not somehow insanely compromised by Trump's administration and democracy still exists in 4 years. Big assumption sadly.

zapshe wrote:
You would have to rig so much, it's essentially not feasible.

But I was saying that all it takes is for there to be malware on the electoral system network: no great manpower or resources required. At some point the data is going to put into a database; manipulation of that data could easily be carried out and hidden. That is why I asked if there had been an investigation into the full stack of the voting system, not just the machines. My understanding of the machines themselves is that they don't have code, it's mainly hardware instead.

Also how do you account for the difference between the polling and the result? If there really was a swing towards Trump, that would have shown up in the polling data.

With voter turnout, some countries have compulsory voting, a fine is issued for non compliance, and it applies to all 3 levels of government.

electoral system network

I'm fairly certain no such network exists. The machines do not connect to the internet, their data is taken off the machine directly with paper backups as well.

At some point the data is going to put into a database;

Surely there is not one database. There is certainly multiple databases per state that would contain the information. And there would be at least one database per state as well.

Each state individually takes care of their voting and counting.

Also how do you account for the difference between the polling and the result?

Aren't election polls notoriously wrong? Even when the predict the right candidate, it seems to be a fluke.

With voter turnout, some countries have compulsory voting, a fine is issued for non compliance, and it applies to all 3 levels of government.

I have my issues with this, and this certainly would never pass in the U.S. with the first amendment.

However, the way to get more voters is always to increase the ease of which to vote. Just having to go somewhere or even register are hassles people avoid and end up not voting.

It doesn't help that registering to vote makes you insanely easy to find by anyone..



EDIT: I am definitely not a voter expert, so I'm open to new information/evidence. But I don't see it possible currently.