YouTube announces that it is “supporting the 2020 U.S. election”:
Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come.
What does the “safe harbor” date have to do with justifying YouTube’s censorship? There are live lawsuits and investigations underway. Who or what is YouTube to decide when an election is fair, legitimate, or settled? If YouTube is so concerned about not undermining public faith in U.S. elections, why is this video still available, among many others? For that matter, why is YouTube still hosting 9-11 conspiracy videos, like this one?
Not only is YouTube’s nakedly partisan censorship not “supporting” the election, it is undermining the reason for the elections, which is continuing American democracy. What this looks like is an effort to shut down dissent and prevent lingering questions about matters of legitimate disputes and suspicion, and even if they are not legitimate, YouTube, aka Google, should not be the arbiter of the matter, or any matter?
What happened to “Democracy Dies in Darkness”? Why aren’t citizens of all partisan leanings alarmed at the increasingly shameless efforts by the news media, Big Tech and social media to sanctify Joe Biden’s election in an exact reversal of how President Trump’s election was undermined from election night 2016 all the way to this moment?
Meanwhile, Ethics Alarms is dependent on YouTube, especially since WordPress, despite adding a video “block,” doesn’t make it easy for me to embed videos from other sources. I’d like to stop using this openly biased, pro-totalitarian, hypocritical, double-talking ally of single-party rule.
This is a ruthless, dangerous, unethical, Machiavellian company with far too much power to abuse.
Ethics Alarms 
Liberty is slowly dying in the United States of America.
Ah, but Terrorism is FOREVER!
It was announced yesterday that a major FTC lawsuit, joined by the majority of the States, is going after Facebook on anti-trust grounds.
I have mixed feelings about anti-trust actions in general, especially when companies built world-beating products or services that the world actually wants to buy. But if this suit prevails, one can only hope they’ll go after Alphabet (Google, YouTube, etc.) next, and I would NOT be sorry to see it happen.
AIM
Facebook and Google among others did not build all the products they control. They bought the competition.
The business model for virtually every tech firm is to startup, begin ramp up and then sell to a Facebook, Google, Pfizer or J&J. Very few choose to go public due to the regulatory expense.
The FTC uses several methods to evaluate market power. What is missing is how much market power we will allow in key industries that can affect our political landscape. It may be perfectly appropriate for 4 firms to control 99% of the market for Army tanks but when 4 firms or fewer control the flow of information to the public we have some serious censorship issues.
Chris – yes, I’m well aware of that.
The fact that the two videos you mention (2016/Trump/Russia and 9-11 conspiracy) are still up makes it all the more insidious. The only read I get is that it’s all right to go after Republicans (even 20 years after the fact!) because we cherish our free speech, but once a Democrat gets a foot in the door, we become totalitarian. I am not hopeful.
Bingo. Our freedoms won’t vanish overnight, but expect a death of a thousand cuts.
There is little wonder why YouTube censored this video.
The tech oligarchs think that if they can stop people from talking about election fraud, people’s concerns about election fraud will cease to exist. Censorship does not ease people’s concerns, it increases them. Humans process information through pattern recognition. This election has played out like the patterns seen in corrupt communist regimes. Tossing censorship on top of that does not break that pattern.
The censorship, ironically, is only making it possible for alternative tech platforms to get traction. It is hard to compete with platforms that have a decade of content available with a platform that has…no content available. Enter censorship. Now certain content is only available on a competitor. That makes it exclusive content. Most companies have to twist people’s arms or pay tons of money to get exclusive content for their platforms. The established platforms are twisting peoples arms for them, and boom. Viable market ripe for competition. Rumble and Parler suddenly have a foothold.
This is funny.
Censorship does not ease people’s concerns, it increases them. Humans process information through pattern recognition.
Yes, and when the known patterns disappear and new messages become the pattern, humans process information accordingly. That’s the worry here. Manipulating opinion has been tool of propagandists and tyrants for as long as anyone has tracked the stuff. I do find it curious that the free-market republic – for all of its marked superiority over any other form of economic government, has brought us to the point at which the free market would traffic in manipulation (beyond, of course, telling you which cigarette is less likely to kill you).
Ah, well. In that regard, I take comfort in the facts that 1) this republic has, to date, been remarkably self-correcting… and 2) I still think this approach is superior than appointing a gang of experts (or one that rises through oligarchy) to be in charge of making the determination. I may not be alive to see the resolution, but I’m confident it will come.
They would just say “we’re just trying to prevent the spread of misinformation,” and imply “there’s really nothing you can do about it.” Who knew the US would end this way?
Many patriots are moving to Rumble.
This is a ruthless, dangerous, unethical, Machiavellian company with far too much power to abuse.
Alas, what’s to be done?
Fortunately, there are alternative outlets, albeit less ubiquitous than YouTube. So I guess I answered my own question…
What is to be done?
Give the people doing this, to quote the film Joker, what they “fucking deserve”.
From your lips to God’s ears. But as they are a private business, this looks… difficult.
“Fortunately, there are alternative outlets, albeit less ubiquitous than YouTube.”
This does seem to be the crux of the matter. No one is guaranteed a voice on a privately-owned platform. We recently had televised Presidential debates, for instance, that included only the two most popular candidates, rather than everyone who was running for President. Didn’t hear much complaint that the other candidates’ ideas, which are often not to mainstream states, were being censored.
The failure of efforts to overturn the recent election–and “overturn” is more and more frequently being used, rather than any other pretense–puts the last investigations and lawsuits in a nonserious category, to put it generously. Nobody’s obliged to treat these efforts seriously, and a case could be made that it is some people’s insistence that they’re crucial does more damage to election integrity than brushing them off.
Of course, there’s lots of unserious content on Youtube. You can find the search for Bigfoot, UFO conspiracies and assorted nonsense, none of which passes muster on, say, the televised news, even though their investigations are also ongoing. But I don’t see why much ethical case that a website is obliged to air all of these views, even for those of us who prefer they would.
Which leads us to the fact that of course there are countless other platforms for people to put up whatever nonsense they like, which may even be wildly popular. Pornography, for instance, accounts for a great deal of online traffic, and yet Youtube doesn’t put it on. Nevertheless, I’ve heard there are still corners of the internet where it’s available.
There is plenty to investigate, and the issues raised are serious…a lot more serious and substantive than “Russian collusion.” Banning videos is stupid, and increases suspicion rather than alleviating it.
Your arguments are so disingenuous that you’re making ME suspicious. Google and YouTube are so huge in comparison to alternatives that the “other platforms” dodge is vaguely insulting. Yes, we all know that it is legal for the social media platforms to censor views they don’t want people to think about; that doesn’t mean it’s ethical, (Ethics Blog, not Constitutional Law blog here), just as the mainstream media abandonment of minimal journalism standards to carry Biden across the finish line is legal. It’s still dangerous and wrong.
So your claim isn’t that it’s unethical for Youtube to engage in censorship, just that they shouldn’t censor these views in particular? Reasonable people can disagree on what a large media company ought to keep out of the spotlight, but “incendiary accusations that have been rejected by both the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice” doesn’t seem like a radical viewpoint. Sandy Hook conspiracy videos, for instance, were removed on the grounds that they posed a greater danger than discretionary censorship does to free expression, which is basically the same argument for banning porn. That some alternate platforms are currently smaller doesn’t seem particularly relevant, given the quick moves of the media landscape. OANN, for instance, has moved from an utterly unknown platform to an ubiquitous one in no time at all.
You really should read what Jack is saying before you respond to it, as that’s not at all what he said.
But the idea of trying to suppress viewpoints such as these is antithetical to our system of government. It has been said many times that the answer to bad speech or speech you don’t like or agree with is more speech not trying to silence your opponent.
The people in this country, I will assert, are adults and can make up their minds by themselves. Suppressing things such as this only serves to feed the suspicion that there really is something to them — if they were, in fact, baseless, no suppression would be necessary.
You argue for treating Americans as if they were children. They are not.
“But the idea of trying to suppress viewpoints such as these is antithetical to our system of government.”
You either have to make the ethical case that Youtube shouldn’t be suppressing anyone’s viewpoint (hello porn!) or you have to make the case that there’s a pressing reason why these viewpoints in particular are beneficial to society.
The last five weeks, quite a lot of media time has been devoted to looking for widespread election fraud. Neither the Department of Justice nor the Supreme Court, among many other bodies, has found the evidence sufficient for legal action. Investigations continue, sure, but you can say that about allegations of a faked moon landing.
Youtube has evidently decided that in the case of this election, the line has crossed from investigation to misinformation, and that the misinformation–unlike charges of a faked moon landing–is as harmful as anything else they censor–about which, by the way, one doesn’t see much complaint.
Diego – thank you. I could not have put it better.
So your claim isn’t that it’s unethical for Youtube to engage in censorship, just that they shouldn’t censor these views in particular?
Apparently I failed to make myself clear. YouTube is wrong to promote one side of the argument while suppressing the other. They are further wrong for substituting their judgment about what is worthwhile and what is not for that of their viewership. Finally, they are wrong for being partisan hacks that present themselves as a free service open to all. They should say, “open only to those we agree with.”
Reasonable people can disagree on what a large media company ought to keep out of the spotlight, but “incendiary accusations that have been rejected by both the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice” doesn’t seem like a radical viewpoint.
Well, we aren’t talking about a “spotlight,” for one thing — we are talking about being allowed on the stage at all. Second, the “incendiary” accusations you’re talking about are legitimate points of public debate. The liberal Daily Kos, hardly unbiased, took a poll that found only 51% of Americans believe the election was fairly conducted.
Now, keeping in mind the reliability of polls have been somewhat…ah… lessened of late, it still points out that a significant minority have a stake in these “incendiary accusations.” That makes it a bona-fide public controversy, not just some wacko conspiracy theory.
As far as the rest of it goes, what Twitter is to Parler, all YouTube is to all the other video streaming platforms combined. That does matter, and is materially different from your example.
I would suggest a chicken or egg relationship with the public’s opinion on recent events. If you keep telling people the election is stolen, a certain number of people will believe you. The President of the United States is talking openly about overturning the election. It is not surprising that a substantial portion of the people who voted for him would hold that opinion.
As with Sandy Hook and other censored information I’ve mentioned, there’s not an indication that Youtube is censoring these videos because they’re right-wing in nature. They are censoring them because they believe they’re harmful. “Harmful,” of course, is a judgment call. Views that would further fan the flames regarding incendiary accusations without compelling evidence may indeed be harmful. The fact that a commenter here, on what is generally a fairly calm and reasoned blog, suggests the actions of a violent criminal as a cure, for instance, does not exactly make Youtube’s policy seem irrelevant.
And… yours is the last word. Thank you.
It is nothing like Sandy Hook; stop that. The use of mail-in ballots made voter fraud easier to do and more difficult to detect. Biden’s totals do not make logical sense in many ways. The Democrats made it clear for four years that they would bend law, ethics and our institutions to try to remove the President, and there is no reason for anyone paying attention to trust them. It is irresponsible and inflammatory to talk about over-turning the election; but it is also irresponsible to allow the obvious irregularities to go examined. And it is incredible for Democrats, who built the narrative that Trump was not a legitimately elected President and weaponize it for four years, to demand that the GOP behave any differently that they did, with less provocation, and without social media censorship. I can demand that, but they can’t.
“It is irresponsible and inflammatory to talk about over-turning the election; but it is also irresponsible to allow the obvious irregularities to go examined.”
Yes, and Youtube is not preventing the latter, only the former.
YouTube should not prevent either.
It is preventing explanations of why the latter is necessary. That’s a ridiculous response.
I’m seeing plenty of press conferences and news appearances by people advocating for the election to be overturned up on Youtube, so that is clearly not what’s happening. It is likely that the banned videos are of the unhinged conspiracy theorist type, which is what happened with Sandy Hook and other non-rightwing causes and which you agree are irresponsible and inflammatory.
It still can not, in an ethical sense, justify censoring these videos or tweets, as they had acquired an audience by advertising themselves as politically neutral platforms.
Which is completely unethical.
Only pornography, true threats, and copyrighted material can ethically be censored by YouTube.
It would be unethical for them to censor a video arguing that the legal age for pornography should be lowered to thirteen (which of course is far different in both a legal and ethical sense from censoring sexually explicit videos of thirteen-year-olds)!
Gully wrote:
This does seem to be the crux of the matter. No one is guaranteed a voice on a privately-owned platform.
Yep. That’s the problem. Unless YouTube is judicially declared some kind of open forum, which I cannot see the rationale for given it’s high technical barriers when compared to things like Twitter and Facebook, it is immune to much legislative action.
The failure of efforts to overturn the recent election–and “overturn” is more and more frequently being used, rather than any other pretense–puts the last investigations and lawsuits in a nonserious category, to put it generously. Nobody’s obliged to treat these efforts seriously, and a case could be made that it is some people’s insistence that they’re crucial does more damage to election integrity than brushing them off.
Of course they are “obliged” to treat them seriously, because they are serious. Most of them have failed for reasons unrelated to sufficiency of evidence or persuasive arguments, but rather because of procedural matters like standing and venue. The most resounding “defeat” on substance came at the hands of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which used the doctrine of laches to effectively allow an amendment to their state’s constitution without following the procedure for doing so. That same Pennsylvania Supreme Court said in a previous case that laches cannot be used to bar a constitutional challenge to the substance of a statute, which is essentially what it did here.
So color me unconvinced.
But I don’t see why much ethical case that a website is obliged to air all of these views, even for those of us who prefer they would.
Well, that may be so, but I don’t think that states the case at all. The problem is, YouTube is permitting the sort of content you decry above as “nonserious” by the Left, but not by the Right. So it effectively amplifies one side of the argument, no matter what you think about the merits thereof, and suppresses the other.
That’s a problem for lots of reasons, especially when the platform is the largest of its type. I struggle to come up with a solution, but as an ethical matter, it is a manifest and profound breach of wide swaths of ethical behavior, starting with the Golden Rule but not even close to ending there.
An Israeli officer this week said that Trump negotiated with space aliens. This is a serious allegation, in that if it is true, it’s pretty important. It is not a serious allegation, however, in the sense that there is no compelling evidence indicating that it’s true. Should some such evidence surface, we’d be obliged to take it seriously. Meanwhile, we’re not.
There may be compelling evidence that a widespread conspiracy gave an illegal victory to Biden over Trump. It has not surfaced. There is no ethical obligation to take it seriously. As with the search for space aliens, that doesn’t mean other people can’t spend their days thinking and talking about it, but nobody’s obliged to give them a platform. Furthermore, a case can be made that insisting on the fact that the election ought to be overturned is harmful to this country. Youtube is in fact making this case–as they did with Sandy Hook and assortment of other banned videos that have no obvious political slant.
Gully said:
An Israeli officer this week said that Trump negotiated with space aliens. This is a serious allegation, in that if it is true, it’s pretty important. It is not a serious allegation, however, in the sense that there is no compelling evidence indicating that it’s true.
…
There may be compelling evidence that a widespread conspiracy gave an illegal victory to Biden over Trump. It has not surfaced.
This is known as “raising a strawman.” In the first place, we are not talking about conspiracies. YouTube is banning all content talking about the election being wrongly decided, regardless of the evidence. That’s what:
Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections.
means.
They are saying that the election was fair because the so-called “safe harbor” date has passed. This is simply an excuse to ban content they disagree with. They are saying that any suggestion of “widespread fraud or errors” is misleading, as if five weeks were sufficient to fully investigate and adjudicate all possible election problems.
On it’s face, this is an absurd abuse of their position. They have decided that they will brook no dissent about whether or not the election had “widespread fraud and errors,” that somehow that matter is settled beyond rational doubt. That’s absurd, and if you don’t know that, please consider this my last comment in response. I will not debate a True Believer.
Whether it’s settled beyond rational doubt is of course a matter of interpretation. Whether it’s settled in the eyes of the Supreme Court or the Department of Justice is not. You say we are not talking about conspiracies, but the President and his legal team are talking about a widespread cooperation between various factions working towards a common goal. That’s pretty much the definition of a conspiracy.
Of course, the emergence of compelling evidence would mean that such unfounded claims would have to be looked at again. But, of course, that would also happen if aliens landed.
You’re setting off my troll alarms. Either argue in good faith, or be quiet. YouTube is neither qualified not trustworthy to decide what political views are baseless or dangerous. Its readers are, and those who are not are the lowest common denominator.This is hardly the first example of YouTube cutting off legitimate political information, pushing propaganda they liked, like the myth that the Benghazi attack was caused by a video. No, an argument cannot be made that insisting an election be overturned is more damaging than censoring the speech involved. YouTube’s “standard” are evenly nor objectively applied, and for a key sources of information, speech and entertainment, that’s unacceptable.
Facebook blocked posts from EA for two years, and even now won’t post the full links. Why? Because I posted an ethical analysis of Fred Astaire’s use of black make-up in “Top Hat.” Now, compare that to pornography, and it will be the last comment you get here.
Facebook’s blockage of you is ridiculous, of course. The accusation that differing views on blackface would be harmful is the worst kind of pearl-clutching rhetoric. But I haven’t seen widespread mutterings about violence over differing interpretations of Fred Astaire. The barrage of accusations of election fraud in this country is unethical and irresponsible, given the evidence that has so far come to light, as well as the brewing insurrection that such accusers are encouraging.
Youtube is fully qualified to decide what they think is dangerous and/or inappropriate on their own site, just as you are fully qualified to decide that you’d no longer like me commenting here.
This is a thing I believe, and am arguing in good faith.
I’ll accept your word on that.
Then you are just sincerely, honestly, dead wrong. The “we’re just preventing violence” is the same argument used on indoctrination-centered college campuses to ban the conservative speakers students say make them feel “unsafe.” It as dishonest excuse to stifle dissent, and an endorsement of the heckler’s veto, and that is all it is.
As for blackface, that’s part of the alleged systemmic racism that there WAS violance over, lots of it, this very year. Claims that the police are racists have killed people. There is no evidence, none, that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd out of racial animus:Youtube hasn’t touched that demonstrably false claim. YouTube allowed “Hands up, Don’t shoot” videos, and they are still up.
Come on. Your rationalization is in denial of reality.
No, my “rationalization” is that no website is obliged, legally or ethically, to give a platform to views it finds irresponsible and inflammatory. Plenty of black activist videos were removed for making direct threats of violence. “Kill whitey” and “rise up and kidnap the governor because the election was stolen” are not considered of sufficient import by Youtube to weigh out against possible violent effect. Giuliani theorizing about voter fraud and activists speaking about racist police violence are–even if one, or both, is faulty in its logic.
The tagging of your discussion of blackface is more likely the result of a bad algorithm during a time of blackface panic, rather than some Facebook tzar viewing your analysis and thinking it was unsafe. If you believe that left-wing commentary isn’t tagged or removed from social media sites, you might spend more time on leftist activist sites, where “They banned me but not [someone else making the opposite point]” is a common cry.
Absent an absolutist position, the ethics of censorship has to be argued on a case by case basis, which would include the context and circumstances in which the case is being made. We can agree that institutions make the wrong choices all the time, and we can disagree about whether irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric about the election is something Youtube is ethically required to support.
Gully,
After reading your comments I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re intentionally being obtuse; why you’re doing that I won’t speculate just yet but there is a developing pattern to your comments.
Consider this; Test for Acute Propaganda-Induced Anti-Trump Hysteria Syndrome.
No, my “rationalization” is that no website is obliged, legally or ethically, to give a platform to views it finds irresponsible and inflammatory
Got it. You don’t understand what “unethical” means.
Check the definitions in the Glossary. Or think. Just take one example:Kant’s Universality Principle: if your theory were universally followed,all news media and social media, all Big Tech, could decide to only provide access to views supporting a single ideological position, and there would be no comparably effective way for any form of non-conforming view to reach widespread readership. That’s just one of many ethical systems in which the YouTube policy as executed is a recipe for societal disaster. Similarly, it doesn’t just fail utilitarian principles, it reverses them.
YouTube gained such an ethical obligation by advertising itself as a politically neutral platform to host user-generated content.
Bingo.
Damn! I thought when you opened with the Israeli-General-space-alien stuff, that you might make it through a comment without bringing up Sandy Hook. You were so close. BANG that drum!
Because YouTube advertised itself as a politically-neutral platform where users were free to publish their own content. This distinguishes it from the Democratic Underground or the Free Republic or even Ethics Alarms.
But since you are on the topic of attacking the integrity of elections.
http://mtracey.medium.com/i-wouldnt-gloat-if-i-were-you-49b2692feb59
The problem is that YouTube has no idea whether there was widespread cheating. They don’t know any more about it than we do. We know with much MORE certainty that 9/11 conspiracies are false, and that there was no plot between Trump and Putin to “steal” the election from Hillary.
Voting fraud is a much murkier topic, and much more worthy of debate. Mainstream outlets have shown in the past that voting machines are susceptible to all sorts of mischief. Plenty of organized fraud has been exposed at a local level. It is not inconceivable that there was an actual conspiracy to manipulate vote totals in swing states. I don’t think there was, but if a statistician, programmer, or just a good citizen journalist sees patterns or evidence suggesting fraud, and platforms block him from sharing his opinions, there is a very real chance that YouTube could be toadying up to some serious villainy by silencing truth-tellers. Who the “truth-tellers” are can’t be based on who has consensus or power.
You can argue that people can just go speak on a different platform, but Google and Facebook use their market share and political connections to strangle (or buy) competing platforms. They then are in a position to manipulate and control what their millions of clients see (while offering fewer and fewer privacy protections.) Sounds like a dangerous monopoly.
Well, I will make one final comment and then leave Gully to raise all the strawmen arguments he cares to.
If Youtube is going to ban content on an election because it is ‘past the safe harbor’, well then it must logically ban content regarding election fraud in the 1960 election. Or for the 1876 election, or 1824 for that matter, which Andrew Jackson successfully portrayed as having been stolen from him.
I am not even addressing the 2016 election, which is also past the safe harbor date — but which set the stage for these speculations.
History tells us that when prospective and actual dictators try to suppress news and rumors, they invariably fail and only make things worse. Youtube would be well advised to watch some of its own history videos.
Bingo.
IANAL, would it be possible for you to post about the Texas(and 17?) other States USSC lawsuit?
This seems to be the “best” way to settle at least part of the questions raised by this election and the “fraud”. Having the USSC look at the Constitutional issues would at least help lay some of the drama to rest…
This is worrisome. It’s just like Twitter removing anything about the Hunter Biden laptop saying it was false allegation. Which we now find him to be under FBI investigation. And has been for months.
I’m honestly more concerned with the obvious obfuscation and blatant party politics being played in the mainstream media. They are burying stories and pushing propaganda.
The Hunter Biden laptop has been buried until just now. He has been under investigation from at the latest October. Possibly earlier. Who honestly knows?
Why has the cognitive decline of Joe Biden not been routinely pointed out? Doctors were more than happy to proclaim Trump a narcissist, among other things, without actually ever talking to him! I’m at my wit’s end.
The election fraud is more than obvious. To record voting tallies to counties having more votes than they have people. Or Joe Biden winning roughly 17% or all counties in America but getting record total of popular votes. Or how about that lovey suitcase being brought out immediately after supervisory positions have been told to leave due to a leaky pipe?
If fraud and forgery did not get Joe Biden elected, slanted and biased news networks did.
*sigh* I am not prepared to state that Biden was elected because of fraud and malarkey. But here is what I will state:
If I were running an extremely controversial election and was using procedures that had never been used on a wide scale before in my state: I would want to conduct myself in such a fashion that there would be absolutely no question that the election and the count were conducted in a fair and impartial manner. In Pennsylvania, especially, that did not happen.
If I were trying to cover up wrong doing, I would do my best to ensure that no one was there when I did it,
that no one could follow what I was doing at crucial moments or when inexplicable things happened.
Appearances are extremely important in trying to win public trust, especially a public that’s already suspicious of you.
As I said, I am not asserting that wide spread fraud happened. But, man, aren’t they trying to point me in that direction?
So actually one other thing occurs to me along these lines.
Gully writes that this is settled as far as the Supreme Court and Justice Department is concerned.
However, I believe that is not quite right. What they decided was that there has been no compelling evidence at this time sufficient to overturn the election results.
That is not the same as saying there was no fraud or no widespread fraud. It simply means that in this narrow time window, they’ve not been able to come up with the evidence.
Whether there is such evidence is a question we haven’t determined.
But if there should develop such evidence in the new year or two, we would know more for future elections and perhaps even if there was criminal wrongdoing, there would be plenty of time for charges to be filed.
I’m not saying I expect that — but it is a legitimate field for inquiry given all the irregularities and malarkey that have been evident this year.
To block legitimate inquiries of that sort (like we had in 2001, 2002, and 2003 regarding Florida) is both wrong, unethical and shortsighted.