It's easier to trick the average citizen than it would be to trick specifically selected Electors. I mean no one is gonna pick dummies of folks on the fence as Electors for the College.

Which electors went against the vote of their state in 2016? otherwise why are you making a distinction between the electors and the population of the state?

are you suggesting, or has anyone, that people bribed/tricked the electors?

this seems like a confusing tangent to get on. but you misunderstood my question, because it seems i misunderstood your use of the electoral college. i meant, is it harder to influence the populace of a single state or the entire nation? the answer to which is of course that it's easier to make a difference on a regional level than it is to do it nation wide. and as you pointed out DT won the electoral college due to 3-5 states going his way that were a dead race down to the wire. days before no one knew what would happen, nor day of. MI, WI, PA, OH, etc. these are called battleground states.

Well you suggested it. I didn't. I said IF there was any influencing done, it would be easier to do it to the masses than to the Electors.

i mean you did say it tho, i responded to what you said:



the electoral college can have many meanings. electors, the system of the electoral college, etc. when you're referring to the system you're referring to the voters. and further in that system not all states matter, we all know TX is red and CA is blue. the purple ones matter, they're the ones that CAN be influenced. thus my question. given that right before you talk about the popular vote it seems odd that the bold meant "russia bribed electors?" when none of them voted against hte state.

which leads me to ask a 2nd time, why are you talking about influencing electors? none of them voted against what the state popular vote was. they weren't influenced at all, they just cast the vote their state told them too. ALL of them, without exception. so in this case influencing the populace = influencing the electors. can you agree with that, in this case, specifically, like what we saw here, in 2016, that's all documented. ?

It must feel terrible to be a liberal these days. You have to watch the bottom of the barrel just to have yourself validated.

i was on vacation, but read your debate with icemage on the differing connotations of "surveillance" and "spying" and icemage is right.

it's a venn diagram type thing, or circle-rectangle if that works better.

spying clearly has a harsher tone colloquially, but technically one can be surveilled knowingly but should only be spied on secretly. i know i'm on tapes when i walk in a grocery store, i'm under surveillance, but i wouldn't say the security guard is spying on me. and also if i know someone is spying on me it's my fault to keep them around after that or provide them with damaging info. it's a subtle but pretty clear difference.

in the specific case of the DT campaign tho you're more right, as the DT campaign didn't know they were being spied on. so it was in the dual spy/surveille area of the venn diagram. i was just thinking about the semantics of it on a drive home and i disagree the two are inherently synonyms.

Uhhh...

What?

The word "collusion" obviously has a sinister connotation. Everybody who used it knew it implied wrongdoing.

But people on the right are claiming the word "spying" doesn't have a sinister connotation, or implies wrongdoing. They argue it's just another word for surveillance.

I prefer the term wire tapping. It's either legal or it isn't, on a case by case basis.

wire tapping is just one kind of surveillance and/or spying.

you just made a 2 part venn diagram into a 4 part venn diagram for? reasons?