Did She Really Lose?

Trigger warning: election stress

Generally I shy away from conspiracy theories, but real, actual conspiracies do exist. While the United States is undoubtedly experiencing a rightward shift in sentiment, even to the point of the outright embrace of racism and fascism by many, I’m not quite ready to accept that MORE THAN HALF actually voted for Trump.

Am I in denial? Quite possibly. But maybe it’s a little early to start analyzing why Harris’s numbers were so much lower than most reputable polls predicted.

I’ve been spending some time on the houstonwade subreddit, and some recent posts have raised my eyebrows. Were there team-Trump election shenanigans?

For example:

• This thread from a security expert re: the possibility the election was hacked on the tabulation level
• Trump’s own assertions, multiple times, that “we don’t need votes”
• A recent FBI raid of the election betting site Polymarket that appeared to predict the election results in a graphic referred to as “The Prophecy” (which Elon himself commented on)
• Election security experts writing to Harris recommending recounts in several swing states, based on 2020 voting machine security breaches
• The incredibly high, statistically improbable number of bullet ballots (with only a vote for Trump) in key precincts, in numbers just big enough to avoid triggering a recount, is alarming

Was the election stolen? Probably not. But I’m hoping for recounts, especially in MI and PA, to verify that the ballots add up with the tabulation system results. The next four years will be hard enough to stomach without the sneaking suspicion that the whole thing was rigged.