Something that always bothers me during election time, even in leftist spaces, is the lack of any discussion of direct election tampering. In addition to voter suppression and gerrymandering and such, we know electronic voting machines are seemingly designed for the purpose of tampering, and the dem primaries were blatantly rigged with shitty apps, coin flips, and "rouding errors" that somehow all went for establishment candidates. So, are we really sure any vote totals are legit, or is it a giant psy-op whose results are tailored to produce the preferred political climate for capital?
Robert Caro wrote some of my favorite looks behind the curtain of the American political process, in “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” and (less relevantly) The Power Broker.
In the LBJ books, we see how stealing is essentially “part of the game” in American politics. In some of LBJ’s early races they talk about stealing whole ballot boxes from unfavorable districts. One person who allegedly had proof of that theft “committed suicide” after talking about said proof with a journalist, while the journalist was on the way to visit him in prison.
So no, the vote totals were never legit, even in the days of all paper ballots.
The way I had to eventually look at it to avoid being completely doomerized, was to see someone’s ability to steal elections effectively as a mark of some level of political competence , even if its really just base cunning.
Cheating is part of the game, but both sides can do it, so it's something like a test of organization, followers, and competence?