Dinesh D'Souza /2000 Mules/: Pre-bunk potential?

FatPhil

Senior Member.
https://www.2000mules.com/
Trailer: https://www.2000mules.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2000-MULES-TRAILER_FINAL-2.webm

Not sure exactly what claims of evidence there will be, but when they did the mosaic of all the many many surveilance cameras to demonstrate how widespread the perceived problem was, and it was obvious that it was just lots of sometimes-identically-repeated shots from very few cameras, it was clear that thinly-veiled deception was going to be a significant component to the "documentary". The 2x2 mosaic indeed was 4 different cameras in different locations, but the 6x5 mosaic had one camera repeated 5 times, two others repeated 4 times, and another repeated 3 times.


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what do Mules have to do with the 2020 election? aren't mules people who run drugs?

From the trailer, which I mostly tefloned my brain against for sanity-preservation purposes, the mules are the people delivering alleged forged ballots to drop boxes.
 
Out of curiosity, I took a recognizable image and put a yellow dot on it every time it occurred. I noticed an almost identical image where the same people were present but had moved slightly, so the same camera taking a picture a few seconds earlier/later -- so if there is a mule in there, it the same one -- put a red dot on those.

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Don't think I missed any, though I admit my eyes were starting to blur a bit towards the end...
 
In the first 6x5 image, I only count 4-5 people actually touching the box. The others show either no people, or people in the vicinity. Perhaps they were casting their ballots?

I see nothing odd.
 
In the trailer you see a couple of shots of people dropping multiple envelopes. Do they consider that prima facie evidence that the ballots are fraudulent ballots in favor of Democratic candidates?



Ballot collection: the legal practice of delivering legally completed ballots for a third party.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news/the-vilification-of-community-ballot-collection/
In many states, designated organizations, election officials or family members may collect a voter’s signed and sealed ballot and deliver the ballot to election officials on the voter’s behalf. This option, known as community ballot collection, provides voters with a safe and easy way to cast their ballots.

Why is community ballot collection so important?

Community ballot collection is a particularly important option for voters who are elderly, disabled or have limited access to transportation. It helps marginalized communities where high poverty rates, underdeveloped infrastructure and inflexible work schedules make it difficult for voters to submit their ballots on time. And, as we continue to face COVID-19, community ballot collection enables trusted community organizations to assist voters who are at high risk and unable to leave their homes.

As California Secretary of State Alex Padilla explained, community ballot collection gives “voters the power to decide who they most trust to return their vote-by-mail ballot for them if they so choose.”

What does community ballot collection look like across states?

While some states allow for community ballot collection, other states have restricted the practice or prohibited it altogether. Several states severely limit the number of ballots someone providing ballot collection assistance may collect. In Montana, for example, a person may collect only up to six ballots. This restriction has imposed severe burdens on Native American voters in Montana — many of whom live in remote areas far from county elections officers with limited access to transportation and postal services, and who had come to rely on community ballot collection to participate in elections. Other states prohibit ballot collection by community organizations altogether, cutting off crucial assistance from voters who need it most (in Alabama, voters can’t even have their family members return their ballots for them). While these prohibitions are allegedly in place to guard against election fraud, they instead impede voters from voting while doing nothing to make our elections safer.

It’s important to listen to the facts about ballot collection.

As any nonpartisan voting expert will tell you, there is little evidence that ballot collection leads to fraud. Those who seek to justify prohibitions on community ballot collection often point to Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr., who was indicted for allegedly destroying and altering absentee ballots in North Carolina. Yet Dowless’s alleged tampering was not part of any ballot collection efforts (North Carolina prohibits community ballot collection), nor did it resemble the lawful procedure used for ballot collection. In other words, the one data point used to attempt to legitimize prohibitions on community ballot collection doesn’t even apply.

How does ballot collection work?

Community ballot collection can be implemented and practiced securely. States that permit ballot collection require that ballots be signed and sealed when they are collected, which prevents a third party’s ability to tamper with the ballot. And failing to properly deliver ballots puts a person providing ballot collection assistance at risk of being convicted of a felony. Moreover, voters who vote by mail often have the option of tracking their ballots to ensure that they were submitted properly.

Ballot collection is a safe practice that does not require voters to have their ballots collected, but simply provides voters with the option to receive assistance if they wish, and choose someone they trust to submit their ballots for them.



Ballot harvesting: A neologism often intended to imply that the practice of ballot collection is prima facie evidence of voter fraud in favor of Democratic candidates.

https://www.dictionary.com/e/politics/ballot-harvesting/
In US politics, the term ballot harvesting is most commonly used by critics of the practice of groups or organizations collecting and turning in individual voters’ completed election ballots.

This practice is also referred to with the more neutral term ballot collection. The word harvesting is often seen as intending to imply that the practice results in (or is done as part of an effort to engage in) voter fraud.

The term ballot harvesting became the subject of news reports in 2021 when the US Supreme Court upheld a controversial 2016 Arizona law that made collecting and turning in another person’s ballot a felony. Although the law itself uses the term ballot abuse, critics of the practice and Arizona’s attorney general have commonly used the term ballot harvesting when discussing what the law prohibits.

Prior to 2021, the term ballot harvesting was used by President Donald Trump on multiple occasions leading up to the 2020 US presidential election when making comments critical of mail-in voting, which was forecasted to favor his opponent due to reported voting preferences among likely voters.
 
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It seems that this is going to a main bit of evidence in support of their case...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/29/dishonest-pivot-heart-new-voter-fraud-conspiracy/
The film is centered on data from a group called True the Vote. In essence, the group obtained cellphone geotracking data that is collected and made available for businesses. As you walk around with your phone, it knows where exactly you are and when, information that’s very valuable to marketers.

The group used that data to try to isolate individuals who went near voter drop boxes. It “geofenced” those areas — a fancy term meaning that it narrowed down a specific square of latitude and longitude data — to see who entered those boxes an unusual amount during the weeks prior to the election. From that, it believes it found a number of people (D’Souza’s “mules”) who were dropping off ballots as the election approached. In some cases, it obtained video showing people dropping off multiple ballots.

Further...
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/04/29/film-2000-mules-offers-vivid-proof-of-voter-fraud/
These digital sleuths then narrowed their search to people who approached 10 or more drop boxes and contemporaneously visited five or more pro-Biden nonprofits.

This leads to a debunkable point.

How precise is this geotracking data? How large is the zone? Is this evidence that people were dropping things into boxes? Or just that they were within 50 feet - 100 feet - 200 feet - 300 feet of a box?

Is this a case of data mining - the process of finding anomalies, patterns and correlations within large data sets to predict outcomes? In other words what are the odds of people being within X feet of a drop box within Y time frame? Given the total number of people tracked how many positives would there have to be to make this statistically significant?


Another debunkable point...

Cameras capture one mule after another traveling from box to box to deposit successive fists full of ballots. One mule in Atlanta slid ballots into 28 different collection bins.

Are these really the same people?

If they are the same people, how is this prima facie evidence that the ballots are fraudulently completed? (And in favor of a Democratic candidate?)
 
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the 6x5 mosaic had one camera repeated 5 times, two others repeated 4 times, and another repeated 3 times.
It uses 12 different camera perspectives for 30 tiles, and only 4 of these are unique.
shot0003.png
Camera 3 is used 6 times, cameras 4 and 7 are used 4 times each, cameras 1 and 2 are used 3 times, cameras 5, 6 and 8 are used 2 times, and cameras 9 to 12 are unique (or panning?)
 
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I saw a lawn sign about this subject earlier (you can imagine what the rest of the yard looks like) and was going to Google it to see what it was about. Can’t wait for the sequel, 2001 a mule odyssey.
 
thinly-veiled deception
Your next bigger screenshot (120 frames) has the same pattern tiled with some alterations (marked green). Most surprisingly, some camera perspectives are mirrored (marked yellow and purple); I can't imagine any honest motive to use mirrored surveillance footage.
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When you pay attention to the yellow dots on @JMartJr 's post, you can spot the same pattern in the larger image.
 
If they are the same people, how is this prima facie evidence that the ballots are fraudulently completed? (And in favor of a Democratic candidate?)
The 2020 election fraud convictions I've seen concerned Republicans, though my sample is somewhat biased.

I wonder how the filmmakers gained access to that cellphone data—or if they indeed did.
 
In 1995 I read D'Souza's The End of Racism because it was marketed as a serious, scholarly
history of racism. As the dishonesty mounted, I tried to find out more about the guy, but honestly,
the 'net was pretty skimpy in those days. Since then he has made a name for himself as a hyper-partisan,
lawbreaking, adulterous weasel who is currently riding a necessary Trump pardon. Wikipedia is being
gentle when they say "D'Souza's films and commentary have generated considerable controversy due to
their promotion of conspiracy theories and falsehoods,[25] as well as for their incendiary nature.[17]"

There is every reason to believe that 2000 Mules will fit the D'Souza mold:
Red meat for the believers, especially desperate now to change the narrative now that the
Jan. 6 Committee is daily eviscerating the Republican stories about the 2020 election.
But the rest of us, those who are only going to be impressed by facts, are almost certainly going to
ignore it, or wait for the big bombshells (that never come). The sketchy "True the Vote" group has succeeded
in little beyond voter intimidation in their decade+ Tea Party-born existence.

A month from now D'Souza will be richer. Conservatives will be madder, and when the question is asked:
What was really learned from 2000 Mules, the answer is probably going to be--no significant election fraud--
only that some people can be fooled all the time. The only thing remarkable, to me, about that trailer,
is that they couldn't even manage to show any real crime.

p.s. Though Mark "Registered in 3 States" Meadows actually does know much about sketchy voting...
 
I wonder if the purpose of the tiled images will eventually be to make something like this:
s-l1600.jpg
but with the big reveal being a Mule, or Joe Biden, or something, instead of an NBA star. In which case the repeating tiles are not so much an example of lying about how many pictures you have, as a case of using some number of pictures to make up the mosaic? We'll see if they go there, I guess.
 
I wonder if the purpose of the tiled images will eventually be to make something like this:
s-l1600.jpg
but with the big reveal being a Mule, or Joe Biden, or something, instead of an NBA star. In which case the repeating tiles are not so much an example of lying about how many pictures you have, as a case of using some number of pictures to make up the mosaic? We'll see if they go there, I guess.
While I love the joke, and nod to Kobe, I have a feeling D'Souza would go with Bird, West or McHale. ;P
 
It uses 12 different camera perspectives for 30 tiles, and only 4 of these are unique.
shot0003.png
Camera 3 is used 6 times, cameras 4 and 7 are used 4 times each, cameras 1 and 2 are used 3 times, cameras 5, 6 and 8 are used 2 times, and cameras 9 to 12 are unique (or panning?)

I'm sorry I wasn't 100% accurate
 
I wonder how the filmmakers gained access to that cellphone data—or if they indeed did.
It's legally bought and sold on the open market.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210812135929.htm
Currently, for your phone to work, the network has to know your location and identify you as paying customer. As such, both your identity and location data are tracked by the device at all times. Data brokers and major operators have taken advantage of this system to profit off revealing sensitive user data -- to date, in the United States, there are no federal laws restricting the use of location data.

"Today, whenever your phone is receiving or sending data, radio signals go from your phone to the cell tower, then into the network," said Raghavan. "The networks can scoop up all that data and sell it to companies or information-for-hire middlemen. Even if you stop apps tracking your location, the phone still talks to the tower, which means the carrier knows where you are.

We don't yet know how precise their geolocation data is.

https://infillion.com/location-data-guide/
Precision of Location Data
...mthe number of decimal points is important in determining how precise a piece of data is. The more digits, the smaller the radius. Location data can be appended with up to 8 digits after the decimal point, but that level of precision is not useful for the purposes of advertising or marketing.
Degree precision versus length
Decimal PlacesDecimal DegreesDMSQualitative Scale
01.01° 00′ 0″Country or large region
10.10° 06′ 0″Large city or district
20.010° 00′ 36″Town or village
30.0010° 00′ 3.6″Neighborhood, street
40.00010° 00′ 0.36″Individual street, land parcel
50.000010° 00′ 0.036″Individual trees, door entrance
60.0000010° 00′ 0.0036″Individual humans
Courtesy of Wikipedia2

Scale of Location Data​

The sheer volume of potential transactions taking place within the bid stream generates an incredible volume of location data to browse through, analyze, and use – or ignore. But is more necessarily better?

According to a report by Thinknear published at the end of 2017, only 30% of location data included within ad inventory is what they classify as hyper local – or “accurate to within 100 meters of the user’s real-time location.”

http://info.thinknear.com/rs/835-JWB-681/images/Thinknear_Location_Score_Index_Q4_2017.pdf
cell.png

Apparently the most accurate data places the phone somewhere within a circle 200 meters in diameter -

(656 feet or 1/8 of a mile.)

So, does that mean if the person was within 1/8 mile of a box, they were counted as placing ballots into that box?

That's best case scenario. Does the data come with the info on whether it is hyper-local, local, regional and so forth? I doubt it. Were they promiscuously mixing data with different levels of precision? Maybe a particular person was within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of the box?
 
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Red meat for the believers, especially desperate now to change the narrative now that the
Jan. 6 Committee is daily eviscerating the Republican stories about the 2020 election.
i'm not sure how it's going to change the narrative. News reports says its only available to people already subscribed to his paid social media platform. Although it will get him more subscribers i guess, because who is gonna want to pay 20$ for that?

Article:
LONGBOAT KEY, Fla., April 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the video platform Rumble announced that popular content creator Dinesh D'Souza will release his movie, 2000 Mules, through the Locals subscription-based platform.

...
2000 Mules, which will launch on May 7, 2022, will be available for free to annual subscribers of D'Souza's Locals community. For non-subscribers, the movie will be available for a one-time fee of $19.99.
 
The film will tie in very closely to this /Epoch Times/ story:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/subpo...ballot-trafficking-investigation_4440986.html
An investigative team from TTV used cell phone tracking, geo-fencing, and video footage to show that 242 mules collected thousands of absentee ballots from voters and made 5,668 stops at drop boxes in the metro Atlanta area in late 2020.
[...]
The evidence provided by TTV is the basis of Dinesh D’Dsouza’s[sic] new movie “2000 Mules”, which is scheduled to debut the first week of May at theaters nationwide and on streaming services.
Content from External Source
I'd never heard of TTV before; after momentary research I discovered there is a wikipedia page on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_the_Vote , but there's nothing thereon that makes me draw any firm conclusions about them.
 
I'd never heard of TTV before; after momentary research I discovered there is a wikipedia page on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_the_Vote , but there's nothing thereon that makes me draw any firm conclusions about them.
ZWs Washington Post article in comment #8 has a bit more info on the situation. like
Article:
There is an investigation based on True the Vote’s research in Georgia into whether laws were broken. But it’s not looking at voter fraud, it’s looking at whether ballots were collected and submitted in violation of the state’s ballot-harvesting prohibition. In fact, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has been explicit: “Those are still lawful ballots,” he said in an interview, “but they’ve just been handled fraudulently with, obviously, the ballot harvesting.” Maybe! If that’s proved.

...What’s more, even True the Vote doesn’t allege that the ballots themselves were fraudulent. When the website Just the News first covered the Georgia story, it noted that True the Vote was not making such a claim. When two True the Vote representatives testified in front of a Wisconsin legislative committee, the group’s Catherine Engelbrecht said so publicly.

“I want to make very clear that we’re not suggesting that the ballots that were cast were illegal ballots,” she said. “What we’re saying is that the process was abused.”
 
242 mules [...] “2000 Mules”
Gotta trust this kind of reporting.
Guys, if you had to make up a number, you should've gone with "2020 mules". 2000 was the election of the chad, not the mule. ;-)
“I want to make very clear that we’re not suggesting that the ballots that were cast were illegal ballots,” she said. “What we’re saying is that the process was abused.”
This is just so hard to understand, looking at the US from the outside: that it's not the process that makes it hard for people to vote is considered abuse, but making it easier for people to vote is.
 
each state has it's own harvest balloting rules.
Article:
As of August 2020:[1][2]

24 states and D.C. permitted someone chosen by the voter to return mail ballots on their behalf in most cases
12 states specified who may return ballots (i.e., household members, caregivers, and/or family members) in most cases
1 state explicitly allowed only the voter to return their ballot
13 states did not specify whether someone may return another's ballot

Nine states that allow someone chosen by the voter to return mail ballots have exceptions specifying who is not permitted to do so. Eleven states specify a maximum number of voters for whom a person can return ballots or a maximum number of ballots they may return. And in seven states and D.C., only voters meeting certain criteria may have their ballots returned by someone else.



the truth is if you or a family member (or neighbor/friend) can't get a piece of mail out to the mailbox for you, you have bigger problems in life than whether you can vote or not. Ballot harvesting is unnecessary.

and while dropboxes may be convenient for procrastinators (like me), technically there is no reason you cant get a mail in vote in on time if you really cared about it. Snowbirds and disabled people have managed it for decades. (ie. its not that big a deal ..it's not like America is still a frontier land and mail is super difficult to navigate).

Both sides are way over exaggerating the issue of mail voting in America. and don't forget, 2020 was a coronavirus fluke... typically people vote in person (which is also easy enough, considering you generally have 3 weeks to do it.)
 
This is just so hard to understand, looking at the US from the outside
ps. does Germany allow ballot harvesting? i tried looking it up but seeing nothing in english really, specifically about who can turn in multiple ballots.
 
and while dropboxes may be convenient for procrastinators (like me), technically there is no reason you cant get a mail in vote in on time if you really cared about it. Snowbirds and disabled people have managed it for decades. (ie. its not that big a deal ..it's not like America is still a frontier land and mail is super difficult to navigate).

Both sides are way over exaggerating the issue of mail voting in America. and don't forget, 2020 was a coronavirus fluke... typically people vote in person (which is also easy enough, considering you generally have 3 weeks to do it.)
Don't forget, voting took place during the height of postmaster general Louis DeJoy's deliberate slow-down of the mail.
 
Don't forget, voting took place during the height of postmaster general Louis DeJoy's deliberate slow-down of the mail.
yea 2020 was a mess, but its not typical of voting in America or of the majority of states.
 
This is just so hard to understand, looking at the US from the outside: that it's not the process that makes it hard for people to vote is considered abuse, but making it easier for people to vote is.
Here's my take, as somebody who used to work in politics:
To prevent fraud, it is a good idea to have ballots secure -- they leave the hand of the voter, if there are any intermediaries they are in THOSE hands for a time, they get into the hands of the Board of Elections and are subsequently counted, with processes and safegaurds to ensure as much as is possible an accurate count.

With ballot harvesting, the issue is that middle step, with the intermediaries. If I am infirm and can't get the the polls, and I trust my son to take my ballot over to the drop off point, even if my son is a rascal and supporting the guys I am not voting for, the risk of damage to the process is small -- elections CAN be decided by one vote, but pretty much never are. But if there is a team of people, or a Political Action Committee, etc. collecting LOTS of ballots, and having access to them from the time they leave the voters' hands until the time they get into the BoE system, the opportunity for mischief is there. Here in NC, we had an election for the US Congress disrupted by a dishonest ballot harvester.

Dowless was hired to produce votes for Harris and Bladen County Sheriff Jim McVickers, but his methods last year included paying people to visit potential voters who had received absentee ballots and getting them to hand over those ballots, whether completed or not, Dowless worker Lisa Britt testified.

It’s illegal in North Carolina for anyone other than a guardian or close family member to handle a voter’s ballot.

Britt testified she sometimes completed unfinished ballots and handed them to Dowless, who kept them at his home and office for days or longer before they were turned in, said Britt, whose mother was formerly married to Dowless. While the congressional and sheriff’s races were almost always marked by voters who turned in unsealed ballots, Britt said she would fill in down-ballot local races -- favoring Republicans -- to prevent local elections board workers from suspecting Dowless’ activities.

...

“It’s not just about those that have been returned. It’s potentially about those that haven’t been returned,” she said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/18/nor...-election-saw-ballot-harvesting-official.html

That last bit is to note that in addition to filling in votes that the voter intended to leave blank, or acquiring blank ballots and filling them in totally, or even changing votes where that is possible, there is also potential for simply never turning in ballots in which the voter intended to vote the other way. That obviates the risk of getting caught at the drop of point.

Is this a widespread problem? No, while it DOES happen there is no evidence that it is a widespread problem. There may be value in making sure that it does not become one, though.
 
ps. does Germany allow ballot harvesting? i tried looking it up but seeing nothing in english really, specifically about who can turn in multiple ballots.
There are no rules for this.

Elections are organized at the community level, that's a 3rd-tier subdivision (German government is subdivided into states (1st tier), counties (2nd tier) and communities (3rd tier)). Each community provides several voting locations, typically within walking distance, and organizes voting in instutions (e.g. hospitals, care homes, jails).

The vote typically takes place on a Sunday, and you can get registered for vote-by-mail until Friday (in special cases until 15:00 on the day of the vote). Typically, 4-6 weeks before election day, every citizen receives a personal election notification postcard by mail that can be used for this. (If you register for vote-by-mail in person at the town hall, you can vote right there, which is "early voting" in practice, but technically counts as mail-in.)

The community sends mail-in voting papers to everyone who registered for mail-in voting. This includes two envelopes, a voting slip ("Wahlschein"), and the ballots. The voting slip represents your right to vote, if you lose it, there's going to be paperwork. (For in-person voting, just show up at the voting booth on election day with your ID. If you've registered for mail-in voting, you need to bring your voting slip to vote in person.)

To vote by mail, you cast your vote by filling out the ballot and putting it in the ballot envelope. You then fill out the voting slip to affirm under oath that this is your vote, and put the ballot envelope and the voting slip in the second, larger envelope, ideally sealing both. You can then mail that envelope free of charge, or get it to the community town hall some other way. It needs to arrive before in-person voting is closed on Sunday, there is no late voting.

§39 of the Federal Voting Law (Bundeswahlgesetz § 39) contains a provision that any envelope containing an unequal number of voting slips and ballot envelopes must be rejected, which suggests that it's possible to collect several of these in a single outer envelope.

47.3% of all actual voters used mail-in voting in the 2021 German federal election. I don't remember any controversy.

The mainstay of German vote-by-mail security is the vote slip; it's the voters' responsibility to not hand it to untrustworthy people. I've never heard of "dropboxes" being used; since any postal service mailbox works, there isn't any need, and obviously the town hall mail slot serves the same purpose, too.
 
paying people to visit potential voters who had received absentee ballots and getting them to hand over those ballots,
1) who hands out the data of absentee voters? seems a simple fix to stop doing that.

2) if anyone went around asking for ballots over here, they'd be reported to the police right quick.
 
1) who hands out the data of absentee voters? seems a simple fix to stop doing that.

Not sure if this is the case in all states, as each state us in charge if their iwn elections. And rules may have changed in response to the NC 9th Ballot Harvesting case. But, when I was in the business, you could get info on who has voted and who hasn't andvtge like from the county BoE. This was to allow for legitimate GOTV (Get Out The Vote) efforts, so campaigns and PACs would not keep bothering people who already voted.
In the absence of such info from BoE, if I were up to know good I would just call voters and ask if they have an absentee ballot, and if they'd like my team from America Vote Project That Sounds Legit to pick it up for them. There are other things I can think of, but I guess I'll keep them under my hat rather than risk giving anybody ideas.
 
In my view, there is a political tendency here on the site to be stacked one way right from the very start on certain subjects, even in this case seeking to nit-pick and "pre-debunk" something that doesn't even seem to have been seen yet, as though the very idea of calling into question the practices and changes deployed in the American election is some sort of deluded mindset and an issue that has to be untrue at its very core, like UFO sightings or poltergeists.

Being semi-flippant, I think it may even tread onto the 'confirmation bias' territory that's so often attributable to the conformists of conspiracy theories - but that is just my outsiders observation from what little time I have spent here so far. Are people here merely digging out what confirms their pre-held-beliefs, constructing a case to be satisfied that they are the "good ones" who "really know the truth"? (It is a rhetorical question, just to try and make a point).

The remarks about people's yards sounds to be biased political snobbery, as is a general undercurrent assumption or leaning/feeling here that anyone who might vote for Donald Trump is automatically likely to be wrong, that anything aired from that side of the fence is going to be fake, false, "debunkable" - whilst liberal organisations, liberal activities, liberal objectives and practices (which is pretty much the mainstay of how these things actually are) are somehow always the truth and all is done "above board".

So far, I see much is being made of collections of camera shots and repeat images - there's even a few jokes and a mocking parody about it - but it seems to be grasping at straws a bit.

I only ask - "Does it really matter?" It appears to be a propaganda video. It appears to be a propaganda designed to entertain and to try and shock or highlight seemingly dubious activities. It appears to be sensational by intent and by nature.

It could be argued that CNN does exactly the same thing every single day, by, for example, stripping shelves of produce and declaring footage showing that there's shortages in the pandemic, announcing Hunter Biden's laptop as Russia backed fake-news, and a hundred other things that acts as red-meat propaganda for the liberal-left. We could be here all day "debunking" that kind of thing that sows division and mistrust.

That they may show an exaggeration of security camera shots in the documentary is surely neither here nor there to whether there was chicanery in the election processes or grey-areas that were rife for fraud that could have been abused (but on which we will likely never get to know the truth).

It's surely editing and drama to create an impact, not an attempt to portray different locations with the same CCTV camera? It shows different camera angles? So what? It is probably a motion camera that swings side to side.

What exactly is it that they are claiming with the footage? Do the repeat shots have relevance to the claims? Have they shown a reversed image from Florida and claimed it was Ohio or something? I'm not seeing the point at the moment.

Questions trying to insinuate that some of these characters doing ridiculous sets of drop-off's may not be the same person are also a bit shaky to me so far. If they're the same height, sex, build, have similar clothes (or maybe removed a jacket, or put one on, etc) and are being triangulated to matters of a few hundred feet via mobile technology, it would tend to suggest that they are the same person - or that, even if they were not, they were deployed with the same phone as part of some alleged orchestrated plot to abuse the system.

We all have our biases, but I'd just want to gently remind people that confirmation biases and selective sources of information can work two ways - and that, one of the main problems with "debunking" sites in general (as I have found) is that they tend to be dominated with left-wing vantage points in a world where those who may need debunking the most are an extreme right-wing - and who would only look into places like these as being echo-chambers of liberalism and not necessarily the arbiters of "truth" and as such dismiss what's being said as they see it as hostile territory of people who can't understand an opposing ideology or who mock it.

I realise I am a little biased. I don't exclude myself from having to be mindful of it.

Do I think that massive voter fraud occurred? I don't really know. I'd like to think I'd be able to watch "2000 mules" and be balanced enough to spot obvious lies and untruths.

Do I think that many grey-areas were constructed and exploited that could have subverted or stacked the election a certain way? Yes. At the moment I do. Why?

There were many underhanded things going on, such as the documented case of Mayor Bloomberg donating $16 million of his own money to let almost exclusively Black and Hispanic criminals out of prison early and pay their fines so that they'd be eligible to vote in the election in what I believe to be a key swing seat.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...da787e-fc5a-11ea-8d05-9beaaa91c71f_story.html

Mike Bloomberg raises $16 million to allow former felons to vote in Florida
Content from External Source




Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and his team have raised more than $16 million to pay the court fines and fees of nearly 32,000 Black and Hispanic Florida voters with felony convictions, an effort aimed at boosting turnout for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

{...}

He saw the donations as a more cost-effective way of adding votes to the Democratic column than investing money to persuade voters who already have the right to vote, a Bloomberg memo said.

“We have identified a significant vote share that requires a nominal investment,” the memo read. “The data shows that in Florida, Black voters are a unique universe unlike any other voting bloc, where the Democratic support rate tends to be 90%-95%.”

The memo noted that Biden was polling worse among Cuban American voters than Hillary Clinton, the 2016 nominee, while winning other Hispanic groups by a margin of 3 to 1.

{...}


A study by the University of Florida found that nearly 775,000 former felons still owed money related to their convictions and would be barred from the voting booth by the law. The vast majority are too poor to pay their outstanding debts, according to evidence presented in court documents challenging the law.

Several philanthropic groups, including a nonprofit founded by the professional basketball player LeBron James, have since committed donations to pay the owed money. The Bloomberg effort, which his aides said will be pooled with about $5 million already raised by the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, is narrowly focused only on Black and Hispanic voters who are already registered to vote and whose debts are less than $1,500.

Bloomberg’s advisers identified that group as both likely to vote for Biden and more likely to vote than other groups of former felons.

“Mike wanted to get this done for two reasons,” said a Bloomberg adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “One, because it’s the right thing to do for the democracy. And two, because it immediately activates tens of thousands of voters who are predisposed to vote for Joe Biden.”

{...}

The Bloomberg memo pointed out that the 31,790 targeted voters, including 25,548 who are Black, are nearly equivalent to the margin by which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won election in 2018, and about three times as big as the margin that elected Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that same year.
Content from External Source
The same antics can be said for the cover-up over Hunter's laptop, his debauchery and suspect dealings of the Biden family abroad - which was recently shown to have had the potential to give a significant knock on the Biden vote if it had been duly investigated by an impartial media and not banned from two main social media platforms that notoriously have a liberal slant.

With such chicanery going on and such biased desperation from the "liberal left" to ensure they obtain office, not Trump, at almost any cost - it isn't that much of a leap for lots of people to believe that some of the aspects that may be raised in the "2000 mules" propaganda documentary (or the one about Mark Zuckerberg's influence) are going to be true.

Those things which aren't clear cut may well be the grey-areas of an election process that reeks to high heaven but is technically 'legitimate'.

Some people of a certain persuasion may be happy with that and just declare it "debunked", but for many out there in the world it would not be acceptable and see it as a corrupt orchestration that severely undermines democracy and proves that there is a "deep state" and biased "corporatism" that will ride roughshod over the will of a majority.

I hope that anything that is highlighted in this documentary as being dubious or exploitable or remotely true (even if not possibly provable either way to the ultimate effect on the count) will help ensure that such ambiguities (or insinuations by 'conspiracy theorists') cannot occur again.
 
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there is a political tendency here on the site to be stacked one way right from the very start on certain subjects, even in this case seeking to nit-pick and "pre-debunk" something that doesn't even seem to have been seen yet
it's not political, it's common sense

1) D'Souza has a reputation (just google him)

2) if the evidence was any good, it would have made it into court

None of these points are political, and they should cause anyone watching the trailer to be very skeptical.
 
There were many underhanded things going on, such as the documented case of Mayor Bloomberg donating $16 million of his own money to let almost exclusively Black and Hispanic criminals out of prison early and pay their fines so that they'd be eligible to vote in the election in what I believe to be a key swing seat.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...da787e-fc5a-11ea-8d05-9beaaa91c71f_story.html

Mike Bloomberg raises $16 million to allow former felons to vote in Florida
Content from External Source




Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and his team have raised more than $16 million to pay the court fines and fees of nearly 32,000 Black and Hispanic Florida voters with felony convictions, an effort aimed at boosting turnout for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

{...}

He saw the donations as a more cost-effective way of adding votes to the Democratic column than investing money to persuade voters who already have the right to vote, a Bloomberg memo said.

“We have identified a significant vote share that requires a nominal investment,” the memo read. “The data shows that in Florida, Black voters are a unique universe unlike any other voting bloc, where the Democratic support rate tends to be 90%-95%.”

The memo noted that Biden was polling worse among Cuban American voters than Hillary Clinton, the 2016 nominee, while winning other Hispanic groups by a margin of 3 to 1.

{...}


A study by the University of Florida found that nearly 775,000 former felons still owed money related to their convictions and would be barred from the voting booth by the law. The vast majority are too poor to pay their outstanding debts, according to evidence presented in court documents challenging the law.

Several philanthropic groups, including a nonprofit founded by the professional basketball player LeBron James, have since committed donations to pay the owed money. The Bloomberg effort, which his aides said will be pooled with about $5 million already raised by the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, is narrowly focused only on Black and Hispanic voters who are already registered to vote and whose debts are less than $1,500.

Bloomberg’s advisers identified that group as both likely to vote for Biden and more likely to vote than other groups of former felons.

“Mike wanted to get this done for two reasons,” said a Bloomberg adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “One, because it’s the right thing to do for the democracy. And two, because it immediately activates tens of thousands of voters who are predisposed to vote for Joe Biden.”

{...}

The Bloomberg memo pointed out that the 31,790 targeted voters, including 25,548 who are Black, are nearly equivalent to the margin by which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won election in 2018, and about three times as big as the margin that elected Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that same year.
Content from External Source
The same antics can be said for the cover-up over Hunter's laptop, his debauchery and suspect dealings of the Biden family abroad - which was recently shown to have had the potential to give a significant knock on the Biden vote if it had been duly investigated by an impartial media and not banned from two main social media platforms that notoriously have a liberal slant.

With such chicanery going on and such biased desperation from the "liberal left" to ensure they obtain office, not Trump, at almost any cost - it isn't that much of a leap for lots of people to believe that some of the aspects that may be raised in the "2000 mules" propaganda documentary (or the one about Mark Zuckerberg's influence) are going to be true.

Those things which aren't clear cut may well be the grey-areas of an election process that reeks to high heaven but is technically 'legitimate'.

Some people of a certain persuasion may be happy with that and just declare it "debunked", but for many out there in the world it would not be acceptable and see it as a corrupt orchestration that severely undermines democracy and proves that there is a "deep state" and biased "corporatism" that will ride roughshod over the will of a majority.

I hope that anything that is highlighted in this documentary as being dubious or exploitable or remotely true (even if not possibly provable either way to the ultimate effect on the count) will help ensure that such ambiguities (or insinuations by 'conspiracy theorists') cannot occur again.
It would appear that your sources of information are inadequate, and thus your own bias is in evidence. Allow me to explain.

From Snopes, generally a reliable source of fact-checking:

"Up until 2018, Florida was one of four states where convicted felons did not regain their right to vote after fulfilling all requirements of their sentencing unless specifically restored by a state officer or board...In September 2020, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which presides over Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, ruled to uphold the law that the voting rights of felons could only be restored if they pay all fines, fees, and restitution owed to the government after some sued arguing that the amendment violated the Constitution."

In other words, the voter bias took place specifically to disenfranchise democrats in deep-south Florida, and Bloomberg sought to rectify that by helping released felons achieve a right they have in almost every other state. As you quote, it was "the right thing to do for democracy".

As for Hunter Biden, that story appears to have been cooked up by Russian operatives and Trump loyalists, and it is highly improbable that a wealthy man in California would go across country to abandon laptops with incriminating evidence in a small mom-and-pop repair shop on the east coast. Subsequent investigations (NOT the rather dubious mechanisms of "social media platforms") have shown no wrongdoing by Hunter Biden ... who is, of course, not the one who was running for office in the first place.

We are right to be suspicious of the machinations of Dinesh D'Sousa, well known as a conspiracy theorist with little regard for the truth.
 
It could be argued that CNN does exactly the same thing every single day, by, for example, stripping shelves of produce and declaring footage showing that there's shortages in the pandemic...
You really have dozens, hundreds of instances of CNN lying as brazenly as D'Souza?!?

How could CNN possibly compete in the hyper-competitive world of news if they got caught
"stripping shelves of produce," etc., every day...
(not that I even know what you're arguing that they'd gain by risking their credibility on that).

At first glance this looks like egregious false equivalence, but I have an open mind
enough to entertain your favorite 10 staged CNN scenes.
 
It could be argued that CNN does exactly the same thing every single day, by, for example, stripping shelves of produce and declaring footage showing that there's shortages in the pandemic
I couldn't even find this claim using a web search, do you have any evidence for it?

What I did find:
Article:
Ingraham_supplychain_photos_marked.001.jpeg.jpg

Maybe you got the station wrong?

and also:
Article:
A popular image claims to show a news reporter staging a shot of empty grocery store shelves. But the photo is a hoax from Romania.

There is no evidence here that the media has staged its coverage of the coronavirus outbreak to cause undue panic.
 
yea 2020 was a mess, but its not typical of voting in America or of the majority of states.
Electing presidents with a minority of the vote is typical of elections in the US.
Gerrymandering is typical of elections in the US.
Every country with a proportional voting system (which is immune to both issues) looks at the US and thinks it's a mess, a mess that already made headlines back in 2000 and still hasn't been fixed.

There were many underhanded things going on, such as the documented case of Mayor Bloomberg donating $16 million of his own money to let almost exclusively Black and Hispanic criminals out of prison early and pay their fines so that they'd be eligible to vote in the election in what I believe to be a key swing seat.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...da787e-fc5a-11ea-8d05-9beaaa91c71f_story.html
"let criminals out of prison early" is a false claim, contradicted by your own source, which repeats many times that the initiative applies to former felons—by comparison, in Great Britain you have to actually be in prison to be denied the right to vote, and even that used to be in violation of EU law, as held by the European Court of Human Rights.

From your WaPo article:
[...] former felons [...] former prisoners [...]
The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition is a nonpartisan group that has been fundraising to return all former felons in the state to the voting rolls. Desmond Meade, the group’s president, said the group does not share Bloomberg’s goal of empowering only one political side in the upcoming election.

After organizing by Meade’s group, Florida voters passed a statewide constitutional amendment in 2018 that gave former felons, except those convicted of murder or felony sexual offenses, the opportunity to vote in upcoming elections. The Republican-controlled legislature subsequently passed, and the Republican governor signed, a law that conditioned their return to the voting rolls on the payment of all fees, fines and restitution that were part of their sentence.

[...] former felons [...]
Content from External Source
 
by comparison, in Great Britain you have to actually be in prison to be denied the right to vote, and even that used to be in violation of EU law, as held by the European Court of Human Rights.
while you are correct about the "former felons" (out of jail, off parole)thing... who cares what UK and the EU thinks? strange that you would bring that up.
(but Trump still won even with the Dems again coddling criminals, so... who cares about Bloomberg wasting his money? and if felons don't like Florida law they can go commit crimes in more liberal states...easy work around.)

Florida voters passed a statewide constitutional amendment in 2018 that gave former felons, except those convicted of murder or felony sexual offenses, the opportunity to vote in upcoming elections. The Republican-controlled legislature subsequently passed, and the Republican governor signed, a law that conditioned their return to the voting rolls on the payment of all fees, fines and restitution that were part of their sentence.
Official sources are better than WaPo:

Article:
The eligibility requirements to restore voting rights are found in the Florida Constitution and Florida Statutes. See specifically, section 4, Article VI, Fla. Const., and section 98.0751, Fla. Stat.

What standards govern eligibility to vote after a felony conviction?

A felony conviction in Florida for murder or a sexual offense makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida unless and until the person’s right to vote is restored by the State Clemency Board.
For any other felony conviction in Florida, a person is eligible to register and vote if the person has completed all terms of his or her sentence. Completion of the sentence means:
Prison or jail time;
Parole, probation, or other forms of supervision; and
Payment of the total amount of all fines, fees, costs, and restitution ordered as part of the felony sentence.
Note: Such person may alternatively apply to have his or her right to vote restored by the State Clemency Board.

A felony conviction in another state makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida only if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the state where the person was convicted.






and yea, i never heard of the "emptying shelves" thing either.

As for Hunter Biden, that story appears to have been cooked up by Russian operatives and Trump loyalists, and it is highly improbable that a wealthy man in California would go across country to abandon laptops with incriminating evidence in a small mom-and-pop repair shop on the east coast. Subsequent investigations (NOT the rather dubious mechanisms of "social media platforms") have shown no wrongdoing by Hunter Biden ... who is, of course, not the one who was running for office in the first place.
ouch. this paragraph is so wrong i don't even know where to begin! Even the liberal press recently announced the laptop story was real. As for investigations, the investigation is still ongoing. (and i note that Mendel didnt bother to debunk you. hmmmm). Are you American? i only ask because i know that not all stories are covered overseas and i'm curious if that is the problem.

Article:
In 2020, much of the mainstream media dismissed a story about Hunter Biden's business dealings. Now emails supporting the story have been authenticated. Was the media too deferential to the Bidens?

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There's fresh scrutiny on Hunter Biden, the president's son, as he is under investigation. Part of that investigation appears to center on emails that showed up on a notorious laptop that was publicized before the 2020 election and then dismissed by much of the news media. Many of these emails have now been authenticated. NPR's David Folkenflik joins us now. David, thanks so much for being with us.
 
Electing presidents with a minority of the vote is typical of elections in the US.
Gerrymandering is typical of elections in the US.
Every country with a proportional voting system (which is immune to both issues) looks at the US and thinks it's a mess, a mess that already made headlines back in 2000 and still hasn't been fixed.
ps. way to move those goal posts Mendel and quote me out of context.
 
while you are correct about the "former felons" (out of jail, off parole)thing... who cares what UK and the EU thinks? strange that you would bring that up.
I've been bringing up the UK because I was replying to @ConcernedBriton . It felt appropriate to note that Florida's law is stricter than the UK, and that the EU considers voting so much of a constitutional right that it applies a high bar to allow countries to disenfranchise criminals of it. (Not like you care: )
they can go commit crimes in more liberal states...

I don't understand this:
Official sources are better than WaPo:
It says the same thing as the WaPo quote?

i note that Mendel didnt bother to debunk you
there really hasn't been any new evidence since the last time we went around on this, and the fact that some emails are authentic doesn't really contradict any of @Ann K's points.
 
there really hasn't been any new evidence since the last time we went around on this, and the fact that some emails are authentic doesn't really contradict any of @Ann K's points.
what? you need to read her paragraph again.

but it's cool, i'm amused y'all are trying so hard to prove Concerned Brit's main point. (a point i've been trying to get across for 2 and half years. @ConcernedBriton fyi, they don't care if MB is seen as biased and MB turns off right wingers. )
 
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