A bunch of people showed up to testify at the Arizona Legislature about last Tuesday’s Presidential Preference Election debacle in Maricopa County, and while many of them did have important and factual points to make, others were like this guy:
Link to video.
The young man accused the Arizona Democratic Party of flipping voter registrations to steal the election in Arizona for Hillary Clinton. The evidence he has to support it is – wait for it – that everyone he personally knows who alleges they had this happen to them was a Bernie supporter! What a rock solid case he has. (Judging from his behavior at the podium, my guess is that no one he knows personally volunteers that they support Clinton out of fear they will be trapped in a conversation with him, so that could explain why his anecdotal evidence is so skewed.)
Last week, when I blogged about this bogus and utterly implausible allegation making the rounds immediately after Clinton won Arizona, commenters showed up to tone police me and minimize it as an isolated incident. But it’s been showing up over and over again, this time in a public legislative hearing. The guy making the claim got a big cheer from the crowd, which was presumably made up of residents of Arizona, who ought to know who is in charge of maintaining voter registrations (hint: not any political party), so I’d say this is an ongoing problem. The “Hillary is dishonest” narrative is largely predicated on made-up bullshit and circular reasoning, the kind we’ve grown to expect from smear merchants on the right, but is increasingly coming out of the left in this primary. You’re entitled to your opinions on things that Hillary Clinton has actually stood for and voted on in her career, and you are similarly entitled to have an opinion about the state Democratic party, but you’re not entitled to make up your own “facts” – ones that are not even in the realm of possibility – about either as regards the election of last week.
Oh, and note to the tone police: I don’t care what you think, so don’t bother.
Sanders has done much better in caucuses than in primaries. He has won just 3 of 20 primaries with a 41% share but has won 11 of 12 caucuses with a 66% share. There is a 97.8% probability that the difference was not due to chance.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sGxtIofohrj3POpwq-85Id2_fYKgvgoWbPZacZw0XlY/edit#gid=815759394
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/investigate-voter-fraud-and-voter-suppression-arizona-3222016-democratic-party
Many bernie supporters have had it with the democratic party trying to foist hillary iraq war clinton on us. More and more will not vote for hillary clinton thanks to her arrogant supporters.
We’ll need his type down the road. You can’t win with just the fact -and-logic-based electorate.
Dear Ms Gratehouse:
First of all I would like to take exception to your calling people “conspiracy loons” when they don’t understand the voter suppression they experienced in the recent election. (That is unacceptable ad homenim fallacy in any rational discussion and I will try to instruct you further on this point later in my discussion). I would prefer that we look at facts first. In Yavapai County, exit polls made by the Daily Courier had Sanders winning the county 63% to Clinton’s 37%. The nationally reported vote shares had Clinton winning the county 59% to 43% for Sanders. That is a 37% flip in the outcome. (A 26% win for Sanders flipped to a 11% win for Clinton add up to a 37% flip). If exit polls and recorded votes vary that much, wouldn’t you agree, that that might indicate a possibility of election fraud, possibly accomplished by the reported security breach in the state’s voter data base. Now these are facts which have apparently eluded you, and I am happy to bring them to your awareness. Now that you have them, I hope you would check to see if they are accurate, and if they are I would hope you would form new opinions about these matters. As you have so aptly observed limiting one’s set of facts leads to fallacious opinions. (The funny thing about facts is that they don’t cease to exist when they are ignored)
I promised you instruction on ad hominem fallacy: For example, if I were to call you a (and please understand that I am not) “shill” for Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean and Mike Bryan you could see and feel what ad hominem fallacies do to rational discussion. They destroy it. I’m just trying to make a point here and I hope you might learn from it. I am sure that those characterization of you lack an essential truth that you are likely a very reasonable, intelligent and educated person and very open to changing your mind if the facts warrant a change. If I’ve helped you with the effects of ad hominem fallacies we are all better off. If you consider the data on the election, I have shared with you we are all better off. Where the denied voters pleasant at the hearing? No they were not. But neither were they “loons” and neither are you a “shill”. Thank you for your reading of this communication. Please, enjoy the rest of your day
Regards
Bruce Wm Sargent
What a breath of fresh air! It’s normally the RIGHT wing whackaloons testifying at the Lege; it’s about time they gave some time to the left wing ones!