(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, running for a new six-year term in an election that his opponents say is a parody of democracy, said on Tuesday that past U.S. elections had been rigged by postal voting.
“In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting … they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that’s it,” Putin said, without providing evidence.
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And watch MAGA eat this shit up.
Why would putin lie about such a thing? I’m going to blindly believe him since it confirms my existing beliefs.
I mean, he does know a thing or two about rigged elections.
This 100%. The Russian propaganda to right wing talking heads pipeline is just so painfully obvious.
Elections have been rigged for a long, long time. Gerrymandering is absolutely insane. Cities with meandering sections cut off. Disadvantaged suburbs slammed into afluent areas across town to dilute the votes.
Rigged overlaps too much with the votes being fake. I think unjust and inequitable are better terms.
Ah yes, a Putin, the bastion of honesty and truth.
Well, this one is a confession from him
Pot calling Kettle black, but he ain’t even wrong.
Not even getting into the Brooks Brothers Riots or Operation Eagle Eye or the straight explicit rigging of Jim Crow, the modern political class fully endorses rigging elections
Putin knows the US elections can be rigged because he’s had his hands on the levers of power. But he’s hardly unique in that regard. Certainly, not given how we’ve eviscerated the Voting Rights Act over the last twenty years.
Yes he IS wrong, what the fuck???
The brooks brothers riots had nothing to do with mail in voting, neither did any of the other examples you gave. If you’re going to say he’s right you need to qualify that since he specifically stated postal voting as the medium for rigging.
The brooks brothers riots had nothing to do with mail in voting
They very explicitly stopped a district from counting mailed in absentee ballots.
“In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting … they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that’s it,”
Problem - That’s not the way vote by mail works.
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You register to vote and place a signature on file.
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You get your ballot in the mail and vote.
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You put the ballot in the mailing envelope and sign the back of the envelope.
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When the ballot is returned, they compare the signature on the envelope with the signature on file, if it matches, the ballot is set aside for counting.
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If there’s a PROBLEM:
A) Missing signature
B) Signature doesn’t match
C) Ballot damaged or unreadable
D) Ballot already recorded as presentThe ballot gets returned to the voter for correction, assuming there’s enough time for it to be corrected.
What Putin describes wouldn’t work, because the fake ballots either wouldn’t have a signature, wouldn’t have a valid signature, or wouldn’t correspond to a registered voter.
Won’t matter, he is speaking directly to MAGAs, and they already believe that this is the truth
Bingo! Thank you for taking the time to write that up.
I fail to see why it would not work though? Instead of paying 10$ for an empty ballot from a registered voter you pay 10$ for an empty ballot from a registered voter and and their signed envelope?
Like I am not saying this happened, because 10$ ballot sales would probably have made the news around the election, I doubt 10$ buys silence. But like I fail to see how this is impossible?
You can’t get that done in enough bulk to sway the election without getting caught.
Of course, that was my point with 10$ doesn’t buy silence. Top comment simply seemed to imply that buying blank mail-in ballots is impossible which for sure doesn’t seem to be. I could even see some nut at least trying to buying say 5-10, but ironically I think a Trump supporter is more likely to try to pull this.
Obtaining blank ballots isn’t the trick, it’s obtaining blank ballots attached to valid, registered voters with a signature on file and matching the signature.
You’d have to do that by the thousands to flip an election and it would only take one person going “I already voted? What do you mean I already voted?” to rumble it.
Even if we just counted ballots with no verification, which we don’t, you’d end up with overcounts which we know did not happen. “Hey, this county only has 5,000 registered voters, how did we get 30,000 ballots?”
The point is you offer someone who registered for mail in to simply sell you their ballot along with a signed envelope. I would vager doing this for a few votes would be fairly easy. Certainly plenty of poor voters would easily sell a vote. Idk about 10, but for 20-50 bucks? For sure. I would imagine someone selling a vote would be less likely to come forward in some respect too, so if you target the right people, at some minor scale you would even get away with it no problem.
Yes this is obviously not happening, not at scale anyway, and certainly not enough to flip the election. But the idea that this is particularly hard in itself, let alone impossible, is absurd.
Oh, yeah, small scale voting fraud has always been a thing.
When we first set up vote by mail 23 years ago, Republican operatives got the bright idea to set up fake ballot drop off locations. The idea was go to Democratic heavy areas, collect the ballots, then just throw them away.
They were arrested. LOL.
Last election cycle there were multiple reports of people doing double voting for family members, they also got caught.
So when small scale stuff like this gets exposed and prosecuted, the idea that fraud on a scale big enough to turn an election would go un-noticed is just laughable.
Just like Trump lies, Putin requires that there be no evidence to support his claims. Imagine if Trump actually tried to prove his claims with evidence… it would fail. Even if one ended up true that would be worse as then people would expect him to prove things with evidence in the future.
A lie spreads worldwide before the truth contradicting it can be typed, unfortunately.
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So weird that Trump and Putin have the exact same opinions. Do you think Trump is controlling Putin?
I wish.
Putin dying will be a holiday.
I mean he should know since he was one of the people paying to influence the election.
phew I thought Russian elections were rigged too, glad to hear that is not the case, what a real relief
“by me lelelelelelelel” - Putin prolly
Say it with me kids, Projection.
Protecting bitch, Putin rigs Russian elections and tried to rig ours again but failed. Fuck him
Projecting?
Rhetoric of this sort just promotes distrust in election systems, which of course prompts demagogues like Trump to promise voters they can fix it if they gain power. The fun thing here is that the right here needs you to believe things that aren’t true in order to justify them doing a coup, the stupid thing is that stupid people take this kind of talk seriously.
But seriously, American voting is relatively secure- it’s just that where lawmakers don’t want voters deciding the ‘wrong’ way they’ve gerrymandered them into districts to prevent them doing it, and they’ve done things to strip voters of their voting rights and to suppress voting and to make it inconvenient or difficult to vote. This has been a bipartisan thing in the past, but today the GOP are the chief offenders.
Also, Putin’s Russia is in the stage of democracy where elections are an exercise in flaunting the death of democracy itself, and nobody should ever take his talk about elections as being in good faith, ever
There’s plenty of injustice in our voting system but it’s all out in the open. Seriously, why go through the tremendous amount of risk and effort needed to fake votes when there are plenty of ways to sway the election in broad daylight?
Cool story.
Why is it so hard for people to judge credibility? It’s just (1) listen to a statement, (2) ask if what a person is saying directly benefits them and (3) if it does, require evidence to believe it.
We know this is not credible because by saying it, Putin diverts attention from his own corrupt election and normalizes election fraud. So did he provide evidence? No. So it should be ignored.
Can’t we all just… Do that?
“Nooo, you don’t understand. I agree with what he says, so I don’t need evidence”
- MAGA idiots
it’s 2024, credibility has been defenestrated
This post is disinformation
How so?
It lies on you to verify your claim is factual
Hey Putin, we’re all saving up for the gigantic party we’re gonna throw when you blow your (meager collection of) irradiated brains out all over your disheveled office.
Also the table you use for meetings is SMALL!
