General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If an election was stolen and there's no evidence of it [View all]coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)an investigation is based on some flawed thinking. I can't quite put it into words but there's something like a faulty syllogism at play here.
Basically, the suppositition is that if the declared results don't mesh with exit polling, there had to be fraud. Aside from the indisputable fact that the declared results match fairly closely the pre-election polling (that showed Walker winning by 4-6%), the fact that discrepancies exist between declared results and exit polling need not necessarily suggest fraud. It can be as simple as Repigs have a documented propensity for not approving of exit polling and so avoiding exit polling or even lieing about their votes. Thus exit polls may tend to skew Democratic, not because voters actually preferred Dems, but rather because Repigs dislike and distrust exit polls.
Even if there were a manual recount of paper ballots, would the doubters be satisfied if the results were substantially the same as they are now? Or would they make that manual recount itself evidence of an even larger conspiracy? For their fraud theories to hold up, there needs to be some evidence the fraud theorists would accept that would prove those theories wrong (the principle of 'falsifiability'). But no such evidence exists. All possible outcomes that don't make Barrett the winner become part of an ever-larger conspiracy.
I do not mean to cast any aspersions on their character and recognize that 'conspiracy theorist' is often used even here as a perjorative ad hominem to squelch legitimate questions. But if the best proof they can muster is discrepancy between exit poll and actual result, then that's a flimsy foundation upon which to build a dwelling.