I thought this might be a valid cross-post.
It’s also worth reiterating that Virginia basically proves that there is a limit to fortification, and that that limit really isn’t even all that high.
Yet, evidentially, that 2% gap plus the increased scrutiny was just too much to overcome with the resources they had available.
Also look at the Arizona primary. Kari Lake will be a far tougher opponent and they very very clearly tried to do shit... but it all fell apart due to boomers watching.
The 2% gap was possibly after fortification too. I really like your point here though, it is very annoying that the majority people seem to think that election rigging is an all or nothing thing. The problems become exponentially larger the more you rig. You don't want to do anymore than you have to because you have a higher chance of getting caught or doing something stupid and making a close race be a double point win out of nowhere.
Personally, I think elections have always involved cheating to some unknown degree. 2020 was just so obvious because they had to pull out all the stops to make sure biden won. The fact it was so nakedly obvious something sketchy happened is precisely why they don't just throw in a billion ballots at 2am.
I think its pretty obvious that while the Democrats
had a very reliable vote rigging system at one point, it was a very delicate system that required a lot of factors all aligning to work.
1) ZERO SCRUTINY: As long as nobody was looking for the fraud to happen, it slipped easily under the radar so by the time the winner was called, it was too late to spot the damage and call it out. Now with the modern amenities of the internet organization and video it is much harder to hide. Hell just sticking Boomers with smartphones near drop boxes cut the legs out from under their efforts in Arizona! Putting well-trained and motivated legal spotters in voting and counting centers makes it much more difficult.
2) LOW INTENSITY/FREQUENCY: The other way they kept things going was by nudging a few thousand votes here or there in select races, which makes it harder to spot. When the margins increase because of opponent turnout, they end up having to scramble and are unable to make their attempt anything except obvious. (See 2020) This puts them in a rock and a hard place - abandon the rig or be so blatant that they get caught, the entire risk calculation skews.
3) MANUFACTURED CONSENT: By manipulating polls and media, the Democrats could portray even a popular candidate as being a surefire winner/loser, and thus make their rigging seems more 'reasonable' through the centralized media. They could also smother complaints post election. Now there is a fractured media landscape and worldwide, live exposure on EVERYTHING, which makes their game much more difficult to play.
4) GROUND TROOPS: Rigging was always about low level ground troops, election secretaries, poll workers, vote counters, etc - and traditionally the more moneyed, activist/student classes of the liberals had more time and inclination to hold those roles. Without them, they can't rig jack shit - and it has to be a total blanket in the office because any one person could potentially blow the lid off the rigging. With Republicans and other 'rightist' people muscling in, it makes rigging much more risky and difficult to pull off.
5) UNSECURE SYSTEMS: Rigging depends on an insecure election system that is prone to exploitation by design or incompetence, period. The ramshackle defenses allow last minute ballot dumps, unlogged vote alterations, big pools of 'potential' voters', the list of attack profiles is lengthy and the riggers had to use every last one to put in the fix. Now many states are moving to reform and secure their systems - and even weak security upgrades have set the Democrats screaming in terror because their attack patterns are that delicate.
All of these recent developments throwing those factors into disarray are definitely a good
start, but two things must be kept in mind. First, election security in law must be advocated and fought for until we have elections that are secure in the legal, policy, and physical sense - the laws, processes, and equipment must be robust, accurate, and transparently reliable. Perhaps more importantly is the
administrative security, the actions taken to secure and keep secure our elector processes. Virginia and Arizona would have been rigged in a heartbeat if money, time, and manpower wasn't put into making it secure. Countless hours were spent training, planning, and preparing to safeguard the process from start to finish. Organizing volunteers for drop box watching, training poll observers, retaining lawyers in anticipation of legal challenges, informing the party members, the list goes on and on - stopping the steal can be done, but it takes constant effort and attention.
As the Founders said: "The cost of liberty is eternal vigilance."
