>In germany we just saw very public rigging of an election for the federal high court of justice.
Not familiar with that but I imagine that is going to be a controversial statement.
Using Russia as a subject is interesting. A western audience is probably a lot less defensive against the idea that Russia rigs their elections. The video looks interesting.
(That's partly why Germany is getting infested with Nazis again. You can go to jail for calling them out.)
I'm not sure if it's fair to call it rigging, but there was a massive smear campaign against a judge nominated for their constitutional court. Leading to the nomination being withdrawn when it really should've been an appointment as usual. Which is likely the first massive step toward Germany politicising one of the foundations of their democracy, similar to how the USA supreme court seems like it's red vs blue when looked on from the outside.
I'm guessing this conference is rather left leaning, which is why they'd called that rigging, but there wasn't election fraud. It's an issue of course, since this means that rich people can essentially buy massive influence on the German democracy by clever use of social media and lies. Which may seem like the norm to a lot of people on HN, but that's not how it has traditionally been in Germany.
It's not just the outside who see it that way!
> Origin 1980s: from the name of Robert Bork (1927–2012), an American judge whose nomination to the Supreme Court (1987) was rejected following unfavorable publicity for his allegedly extreme views.
> Wray: "I apologize in advance that it has been frustrating for you. We have tried to be clear about our process. So when it comes to the tip line, we wanted to make sure that the White House had all the information we have.[180] So when the hundreds of calls started coming in, we gathered those up, reviewed them, and provided them to the White House."
> Whitehouse asked: "Without investigation?" After a long pause, Wray answered, "We reviewed them and then provided them to..." Whitehouse interjected: "You reviewed them for purposes of separating them from tip-line traffic, but did not further investigate the ones that related to Kavanaugh, correct?"[180] Wray confirmed that process. Whitehouse asked, "Is it also true that, in that supplemental B.I. (background investigation), the FBI took direction from the White House as to whom the FBI would question, and even what questions the FBI could ask?"[180] Wray confirmed that process.[180]
> Kavanaugh had Eighty-three ethics complaints brought against him regarding his behavior during those Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Chief Justice John Roberts appointed a special federal panel of judges to investigate them. In December 2018, the panel dismissed all the complaints, calling them "serious" but deciding that lower court judges are without any authority to investigate Supreme Court appointees.[181]
> In October 2024, Whitehouse published a final report supporting the view that the supplemental investigation was heavily curtailed by the Trump administration. [182]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_Supreme_Court_...
It's now alleged that this was caused by a disinformation campaign targeting MPs of that party.
https://www.volksverpetzer.de/analyse/brosius-gersdorf-union...
not really
but compared to what seems to be happened nearly daily in the US it really is not a big deal
but compared to what is supposed to happen it was a big deal
which seems to be a common trend, being very pissed of about what happened in German politics, then looking to the US and being "they did what now!?", oh it seems things are still fine here
UK, Canada, Spain are similar ranked.
Norway is better ranked, sure so are most other Nordic countries.
But the difference between a (using their terms) "full democracy" and a noticeable better (in the index) "full democracy" is much less noticeable then the difference between a "full democracy" and a "flawed democracy".
The other thing is that is a more then imperfect index. To be able to create such an index you need to select metrics and criteria which are strongly oversimplified. Weather or not this can lead to a bias. Also there is a time delay e.g. 2025 stats are not yet out.
Anyway I'm really getting off topic. The more relevant thing is, that it doesn't matter too much if there are better (or worse) of countries in the index. What rally matters is that you see where your country can improve an try to push for it, even if it's just with voting, otherwise you will stagnate improvements once you reach a relative high standard.
Can you clarify what you're talking about? The most analogous situation I can think of is the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing which is basically the complete opposite outcome. Tremendous pressure applied against his confirmation which ultimately didnt influence the outcome.
Quick scan of my social network just confirms the same: anyone extremely agentic, intelligent, or educated I know has either left, is in the process of leaving, or is considering leaving.
Last person out of Nigeria can turn the lights off.
Or, to be blunt: a syndicate of evil clown politicians have seized control of the ship of state, looting it of anything not bolted down, and murdering anyone who challenges them.
Fixing it is an extremely high-cost endeavor, so leaving is just the only logical option if you have a portable, in-demand skill.
Perfect example would be 1940s China vs. modern China. Same people, but went from a pre-industrial hellhole to a technological superpower because the gov. deliberately invested into creating a sustainable STEM pipeline and creating a nation where their talented young people are happy to live and work. Nigeria isn't doing any of that in any significant capacity.
On the population angle, Nigeria's politicians have a thing for fudging population numbers and realistic figures are closer to 120M to 140M, vs. the 240-260m Western demographers take at face value. I explained in detail in this comment here. [0]
But, in most cases, if you have portable, in-demand skills, it's more reasonable to decamp to a better team than try to fix a failing one. The ones with enough proximity to make any change are usually co-opted, driven into exile, threatened into compliance, or straight-up murdered.
Based on what I read about her and the Awami League, I think removing Hasina will be a net-positive for Bangladesh. Yunus is a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist and widely-respected, and if they can keep AL out of power, and pacify any extremists, I think Bangladesh will quickly continue growing.
That's almost the final level. The final level would be not even holding elections...
At least people can actually audit paper ballot elections. In my country we use electronic voting machines. Attempts to add a paper trail were declared unconstitutional.
Sounds like elections in both Russia and the US are rotten these days. Curious to note which party has no desire to rectify these issues.
It doesn't really help that this line of thought is completely banned by one party though.
During the hand count they discovered series of ballots that all were marked identically for the United Russia party. Hundreds of them. In the US, tens of thousands of ballots get run through tabulation machines and the result is accepted as accurate simply because the machine counted a known batch of ballots accurately. You can’t see patterns like this with electronic tabulation machines.
He also discusses voter turnout numbers in precincts that broke for Putin’s United Russia party being 80% or greater whereas most other precincts had turnout of 30-40%. He just as easily could have been describing some Detroit precincts that had 90%+ turnout in 2020.
He spends a lot of time discussing security features on ballot bags that reveal evidence they have been tampered with. He discusses chain of custody at length and describes how and when he suspects ballot bags were tampered with. In 2020, mail-in ballots were accepted without any evidence they were actually returned by the voter named on them.
This video is interesting because it describes a lot of the same issues that plagued the 2020 election but for some reason we all expect Russian elections to be rigged, but can’t conceive of ours being anything but squeaky clean.
There have already been dozens of court cases about the 2020 election.
And Trump has even made statements which can easily be interpreted as admission[0].
But it doesn't matter.
[0]https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-trum...
All that said, one thing I can't get out of my mind is perhaps the most consistent trait of Trump's political career is him projecting his weaknesses and crimes on others as a preemptive defense for when those same criticisms are made about him. So any time he accuses his opponents of something, it should probably raise red flags for his own behavior.
From 2016 Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/a-ti...
Simple: you just need the wille to rig and the power to manifest your will freely. No fancy technology, counting systems, or statistical anomalies can stop you. Quantum cryptography is useless in such a case.
Sad but true—if there isn’t enough power to balance that wille.
echelon_musk•5mo ago
kwanbix•5mo ago