But anyway the core point I am making here is that the most important thing to do for coup proofing/election hacking is to establish more broadly/justifiably credible election integrity.
I am skeptical that there is very much correlation between between the actual level of election integrity and the perceived level of election integrity by heavily partisan individuals. It is difficult to prove a negative. There are so many ways one could allegedly tamper with the election results, and a fair number of people seem to need ~0 evidence to believe they are truly happening (e.g., allegations of local officials dropping off premarked ballots by the truckload).
To fix the problem from a stability standpoint, an election integrity system would have to be strong enough to credibly disprove malicious lies told to a hyperpartisan audience. That is much harder than actually ensuring the integrity of elections. (And even that is harder than the task securing most things because of the limitations imposed by the need for ballot privacy.)
I am skeptical that there is very much correlation between between the actual level of election integrity and the perceived level of election integrity by heavily partisan individuals. It is difficult to prove a negative. There are so many ways one could allegedly tamper with the election results, and a fair number of people seem to need ~0 evidence to believe they are truly happening (e.g., allegations of local officials dropping off premarked ballots by the truckload).
To fix the problem from a stability standpoint, an election integrity system would have to be strong enough to credibly disprove malicious lies told to a hyperpartisan audience. That is much harder than actually ensuring the integrity of elections. (And even that is harder than the task securing most things because of the limitations imposed by the need for ballot privacy.)
Agreed—I haven’t looked very closely here either, but eg “Fox, Dominion reach $787M settlement over election claims” seems like a robust signal. https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe
Agree that’s a strong signal!