Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

I feel like we are slowly reaching the state the movie “Idiocracy” describes. I feel very torn about this. On the one hand I don’t think we should leave it up to companies like Twitter to censor things. On the other hand I find it hard to believe that the president is constantly claiming things without any evidence backing up. It started with the claims of millions of illegal voters in 2016 and the commission they started disbanding quietly after finding nothing. And now publicly spreading rumors about killing somebody.

It’s insane how little respect the US has for the integrity of its political system. As long as it may hurt the “other” side everything is ok without regard to the damage they are constantly doing the health of the system.

> the president is constantly claiming things without any evidence backing up

[to those voting down: these are convicted cases of voter fraud. If you are in favor of fact-checking these cases demonstrate the core question: who deserve this power?]

Let's fact check these fact checkers.

Here are some cases convicted in court of election fraud, a lot of them involve fraudulent use of absentee ballots https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...

And there is also a problem with the chain of trust, since 28 million mail-in ballots went missing in the last four elections: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_mil...

Or what about the mail carrier recently charged with meddling with the ballot requests in his chain of trust? https://www.whsv.com/content/news/Pendleton-County-mail-carr...

And if you think politicians would never cheat, a Pennsylvania election official just plead guilty to stuffing the ballot box. He was paid by candidates that I believe won: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/21/doj-democrats-...

"Although there is no evidence that the millions of missing ballots were used fraudulently, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which compiled the public data provided from the Election Assistance Commission, says that the sheer volume of them raises serious doubts about election security."

So... no evidence of fraudulent use.

28 million out of how many? "almost 1 in 5". so roughly 150 million ballots mailed out over multiple years and elections, and < 20% are not returned. Or something else?

What does "unaccounted for" mean? They knew they were mailed out. All I can divine from that is 'not returned'.

"There’s little doubt that as the number of mail-in ballots increases, so does fraud."

Yet, right above that in the article, it says of the 28 million - "no evidence of fraud". How many more mail-in ballots do you need to get evidence of fraud? 200 million? 300 million?

What is the insinuation? People are mailing their ballots back, but they're getting "lost"?

It seems that when there's evidence found - as in, criminal investigations turn up fraud and people are charged and prosecuted - "there's evidence of fraud!". When no evidence is found... that's also evidence that it's going on, but not discovered yet. That's how I read this hysteria over 'mail in ballots'.

> So... no evidence of fraudulent use.

First link has plenty of people convicted of voter fraud using absentee ballots: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...

> 28 million out of how many? "almost 1 in 5". so roughly 150 million ballots mailed out over multiple years and elections, and < 20% are not returned. Or something else?

The second link was there to provide data on what happens to absentee ballots along the chain of trust. As you said 1/5 is unaccounted for.

The third link is one court case of a mail man meddling with absentee ballots, and admitting to doing so. It shows the chain-of-trust of mail system is much weaker than what we expect with in-person voting.

Would you be happy if 1/5 of the people that showed up at the voting office was unaccounted for?

> It seems that when there's evidence found - as in, criminal investigations turn up fraud and people are charged and prosecuted - "there's evidence of fraud!".

Seems like you commented without inspecting all evidence or in bad faith when you ignore the evidence in the first link of convicted cases of absentee ballot fraud, then state this.

didn't ignore it - was responding specifically to text/headline of one of the other articles, which pretty clearly had "28 million" as the click bait, then later says "no evidence of fraud was found".

What does "unaccounted for" mean?

"Would you be happy if 1/5 of the people that showed up at the voting office was unaccounted for?"

huh? how does that compare to ballots mailed out that were not returned? Again - "unaccounted for" is... nebulous. If 100m were mailed out, and 20m were not returned... are they "unaccounted for"?

There's context missing here. What are the historical averages?

If in any given year, 20% of mailed out ballots are not returned, and that's pretty average for 10-15-20 years... 20% "unaccounted for" is a non-issue. If the average is 4%, and in one election it's 20% or more... yeah, that's an issue that needs investigation. That information was not provided in the articles I saw, instead they just appear to rely on "big" numbers.