I have to admit that it's getting very boring reading the same rebuttal in thread after thread. "You haven't addressed my points, therefore I win." Since you are such a fan of pointing out the fallacies in other people's statements, allow me to demonstrate yours.

First of all, this entire argument is guilty of the appeal to ignorance fallacy, since you are debating over something that cannot positively be proven true or false. If you believe that it can be proven either way, then the burden is on you to do so. Have fun with that.

Second, nearly every thread in this forum is filled to bursting with ad hominem arguments. Everyone has been guilty of this, and unless you guys just really like trolling each other, you should really tone that down some.

Third, you (sini) are constantly guilty of the straw man fallacy when, whether willfully or through ignorance, you misrepresent or twist your opponent's argument into something it is not. In this case, Derid is not trying to prove to you that the election was stolen. If you don't believe me, re-read the thread and find the spot where he said, "yes, the election was stolen." Instead, he is trying to show you how it's impossible for you or anybody else to say that it wasn't stolen. Since this argument is not one you can win, you instead twist his argument to make it seem as though he is one of the 49% that believe (more on this in a moment) that the election was stolen and then proceed to try to punch holes in that position.

I personally couldn't care less, but if I had to comment on the legitimacy of the election, I would say that in all likelihood there was just as much tampering by one side as the other, so whatever. There probably hasn't been a legitimate presidential victory in the past 20 years (note the use of the word "probably" as opposed to "definitely"). Here is the point where you commit another fallacy. The article you linked earlier is a poll that shows that 49% of Republican voters believe that the election was stolen. For you to dismiss this argument out of hand as you have is an argument from silence. I'm not saying they are correct, but I cannot sit here and say that they are wrong just because I think so. The fact is that there is no evidence that says it was or wasn't stolen.


Originally Posted By: sini
I have sufficient evidence: A) The Federal Election Commission endorsed tally of United States Electoral College is in, and it is 332 Obama to 206 Romney. These are official results; they are not disputed, are not in process of counting/recounting, are not being challenged in courts. B) Romney, an official GOP leader and the GOP presidential campaign nominee, conceded and acknowledged Democratic victory.

This is all evidence I need to be absolutely justified beyond any reasonable doubt that US 2012 election legitimately resulted in the victory for Democrats/Obama.


What you are saying is that since the outcome was a win for Obama as determined by the governing body, and since the opponent conceded that it was a win for Obama, then there could not possibly have been any tampering. You are saying that the end proves the means, which is impossible. The outcome can neither prove nor disprove the means used to reach it. Here, let me demonstrate: "Your dog's puppies look just like my dog, so they must have mated." -OR- "Those puppies look nothing like my dog, so some other dog must be the sire." Neither of these statements are necessarily true, but neither can be proven false without much further investigation.


Originally Posted By: sini
You are absolutely right that I will claim “you cannot prove a negative”, but you are unjustified in discounting it as irrelevant. Your line of reasoning – paraphrasing: “there is no strong evidence to suggest that there wasn’t any tampering occurred, hence tampering did occur and it did determined elections outcome as a result election was stolen” is a fallacious for following reasons. First, you are applying unreasonable standard of having evidence of no tampering. How would such evidence, aside from existence of undisputed official tally, look like? Second, you are asserting that magnitude of tampering was significant enough to change the outcome of historically not close (332 v 206) election. If we extend this reasoning to other, much closer, elections then we can conclude that most US elections were won because of tampering. I hope you’d agree that such result is an absurd conclusion. Third, this is formally invalid argument.


First, your paraphrasing of Derid's reasoning is exactly the straw man I referred to earlier. Derid has absolutely not been asserting that the lack of evidence that there was no tampering proves that there was tampering. As I said before, his position the entire time has been that there is no way to positively prove that tampering did or did not occur.

You made two mistakes in the second part. You continue to stand on the 332 v 206 electoral count to describe the election as not close when it has already been demonstrated to you that the margin of victory was a mere 300k votes. Had those votes gone the other way, would you believe that Obama lost in a landslide? I won't presume to know the answer to that question. The last part of your statement is a non sequitor. For one thing, you again use the straw man to make it appear that Derid has concluded that there was tampering and that it affected this election, which is not the case, but then you go a step farther and reason that for that to have been the case in this election it must have been the case in all of the previous ones. That logic does not follow.

Now, since you brought up this subject, and since you are the one that dismissed the other side of the argument out of hand, if anyone here is responsible for providing evidence to support their argument it is you. So I will end with this. If you believe that the election was won legitimately, with no tampering whatsoever, and that all of the people that believe otherwise are delusional knuckle-draggers, prove it. I will not try to prove that it wasn't, because I already know that doing so would be virtually impossible.

P.S. Derid, please forgive me (and correct me) if I have misunderstood your position here or if you take offense to me trying to defend said position.