Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

Mail-in ballots don't generally increase the instances of election fraud. All of the "what ifs" have been investigated in the states that have had general-populace mail-in for years and been found not to occur in either (a) numbers that sway the election or (b) numbers distinguishable from in-person fraud (which is usually of the form "person not eligible to vote, but voting office screwed up and granted them a card" or "person moved and failed to notify election boards of the relocation; voted in the wrong district").

Every election has at least one story of rampant incompetence and/or outright fraud where one person is able to alter hundreds to thousands of votes. For elections where it can literally be 50.2% to 49.8%, it can make all the difference.

Rampant incompetence isn't the same as fraud, and one would still have to make the case that we lose hundreds of envelopes more often than we have an entire data-store go missing (or, for that matter, than we have a fleet of digital voting machines crash and deny access to the polls to face-to-face voters for hours).

Then the tweet wasn't 'factually incorrect' as was claimed, perhaps unsubstantiated given past performance isn't a guarantee of future performance but certainly election security is nothing to turn a blind eye to.

I'm not sure where you're getting the "factually incorrect" claim; "unsubstantiated" is the actual terminology Twitter used:

"Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud"

Please do not spead false information on HN. The tweet in question is:

> "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent."

Twitter labeled it as unsubstantiated, and provided a link to facts on mail-in ballots. Even if they didn't, his tweet is factually incorrect.

That's not what he posted. You've invented a strawman and are now arguing against a hypothetical scenario that plays out only according to the rules your mind has made up for it.

Mmm citation needed here.

Which part are you asserting is factually wrong, that the election that hasn't happened yet will have "substantially fraudulent" mail in ballots?

Or are you asserting that mail-in-ballots are secure or secure-enough to maintain the American democracy?

Mail-in ballots have existed for decades in elections all across the country and no one has questioned their legitimacy. If you accept the results of elections that have occurred prior to today, then there is no basis for the argument that mail-in ballots are illegitimate all of a sudden.

The problem isn't their legitimacy, it's that there have been numerous stories about one or very few persons affecting hundreds or thousands of votes, basically like an amplification attack on democracy. When mail-in ballots are only a small percentage of the overall votes it's not as large of an issue. What Trump asserted was simply that we'll see a sharp increase in the number of fraudulent votes because the attack surface is going to be exponentially larger.

Trump's assertion is based on the notion that mail-in-ballots see higher rates of fraud than in-person. It's not difficult to see why that would be the case, but I will concede I don't have first hand numbers.

The insidious thing about this situation is that there is now a lot of anger on both sides. If cooler heads had waited a bit longer, collected real data on the rates of voter fraud, actually addressed Trump's concerns about stolen/forged ballots rather than calling him a liar and linking to puff pieces from two of his biggest and unfairest outlets, we would stand a better chance at resolving this amicably.

I have provided plenty of sources in my other comment on why "Mail-in ballots don't generally increase the instances of election fraud" is 100% wrong:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331091

I have provided plenty of sources in my other comment on why 100% factually correct:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331091

If you were told that gerrymandering has a demonstrably larger effect on an election's legitimacy than mail-in voting, would you be as vocal against gerrymandering as you are against mail-in voting? If it is really about election legitimacy to you, isn't that what you should do?