Thread by @ASFleischman

Voter fraud conspiracy enthusiasts are engaging in what you might call a Gish Gallop, throwing tons of arguments against the wall to see what sticks, to make it exhausting an distracting to debunk.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gall….

Gish gallops are difficult to handle, because it is actually very easy to make something up, and very difficult to bear down, investigate, and show why the lie is not true.

For instance, I could say, right now, that Ivanka Trump voted illegally in Pennsylvania.

That took me no effort at all to say. Now, to prove me wrong, you go through voter registration and you say "AHA, she's not registered."

And then I say, "She didn't use her real name."

Now, even more work to debunk. You've got to track her travel, or show fraud impossible.

And a smart person could probably manage to do this in, oh, half an hour.

But then I pile on. I say that actually, voters who showed up in person were given TWO ballots and allowed to vote twice.

And non-white voters were given special pens that create higher error rates.

And the real gem of the technique is that, in the process of debunking all the claims, you shift the burden. Suddenly, if the galloper can come up with one claim that isn't summarily debunkable, it sticks!

The weak point of the gish gallop is that it requires a certain shamelessness about being wrong.

But there are people in the world who can be wrong, repeatedly, without losing credibility.

And, right now, a group of people who told us of roving migrant caravans, and massive voter fraud that didn't materialize, and vaccines by election day, and walls and trade deals and health plans, are every bit as credible as they ever were.

Honestly it's an amazing strategy and something of a cheat code. And the only real way to address it is to point out what's happening.