Huge difference. Vote suppression is a legitimate subject. It is conducted on a massive scale in most states. It comes in many forms and entails brazen measures conducted in public view. There are those whose professional mission is to deny it and defame those who expose it, but it cannot be described as a verboten topic. It is more like "elusive information." Efforts to talk about it are targeted with distraction, minimization, propaganda that diverts attention to partial or relatively minor aspects or offers false solutions, and, I think above all, general exhaustion. They throw the kitchen sink at rigging elections, engage in massive lie campaigns (like Trump's phantom illegal alien voters or the four-year #Russiagate op), and wear people out through long struggles in which those with the most financial and organizational resources have overwhelming advantage. At the end of extended battles like the 2000 Florida fight or Kemp-Abrams in Georgia (to take only two examples) the riggers still get their way, and it's discouraging. It's also really complicated and is part of a general clampdown on all potentials for electoral democracy, so that it goes together with gerrymandering, all the arcane restrictions on ballot access, the legalization of practices that were previously bribery or fraud via campaign finance and PAC activity, the corporate and right-wing takeover of judicial appointments, measures to bar future governments from changing laws, the judicial roll-back of voting rights protections, regulatory capture to overturn legislative power, the proliferation of emergency management and independent boards appointed by lobbyists and landowners, etc. etc. The problem is that this is the whole fucking interlocking political power structure that has to be confronted, as well as all the (often well-intentioned) ideology about how your vote is important, it counts, it makes a difference, etc.
Discussions of vote-machine fraud fall into a different category, due to the problem very obviously encapsulated in the term "black box." Even when it's real, it's invisible. You are literally attacking a problem that cannot be seen. Almost everything is supposition no matter how warranted. Showing that it happened depends on predictive models and data sets that are by definition fuzzy, even if considered reliable. Claims about an election that has already been counted cannot be experimentally tested in the real world (even when the case is slam-dunk obvious to this or that statistician). And then you have all of the above modes of distraction, plus it can be hit as "conspiracy theory" and "sore loser talk." We already know the only solution, both to solve the problem and to potentially get the political momentum to do so, is to cut the Gordian Knot: paper ballots, the paper is the legal vote, hand-counted, lots of people present from different parties, enough personnel to do it, with public oversight, with patience. And it needs to be counterposed to the very general and graspable idea, fundamental to the ideal of transparency, that even if they were honest brokers (ha ha ha ha) this task can never be entrusted to corporate-owned "proprietary" secret software that can be programmed or hacked to produce rigged results without any hope of detection. It has to be motivated on general principle more than through specific cases where you get stuck in a numbers morass and are susceptible to accusations of paranoia even if you're right.
.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
TopSecret WallSt. Iraq &
more