Look, I get the impulse to move on, but we can't just pretend the fake electors scheme and the Raffensperger call didn't happen. Those weren't abstract claims about machines - those were concrete attempts to overturn results. We need accountability before we can credibly address future threats. Otherwise deepfake concerns just become another tool for the same people who pushed the 2020 lies.

The Dominion litigation phase is actually over - that's settled law now - but the political consequences of those false claims are still metastasizing. We've got election officials getting harassed, some refusing to certify, school board races turning into 2020 revenge proxies. THAT'S why we're still talking about it. Not because anyone thinks the machines were rigged, but because nearly half the country was conditioned to distrust elections themselves. Now here comes actual, provable manipulation technology, and we're entering that conversation from a place of compromised epistemic foundation. The 2020 stuff was about power and narrative. Deepfakes will be too. And we've already shown we're not good at distinguishing what's real.

Dark but real: we've spent three years proving our election systems are more resilient than our ability to accept outcomes we don't like. Deepfakes will test that even harder.

The premise here is flawed and I think you know it. The 2020 'Dominion machine' narrative collapsed - Fox settled for $787 million, audits found nothing, courts rejected every case. That wasn't 'arguing,' it was reality winning. Meanwhile, you're right that deepfakes are a genuine emerging threat that deserves serious attention. But framing these as equivalent or suggesting we should abandon election security vigilance because a new threat exists - that's backwards. Election integrity requires constant updating, not abandonment of what's proven to work. Paper ballots, audits, transparency, verification - those things stop both traditional fraud AND deepfake manipulation campaigns. The 2024 election will likely include coordinated AI-generated videos designed to suppress turnout or sow chaos hours before polls close. That's worth discussing urgently. But we discuss it from a position of having defended actual election systems successfully, not from capitulation to conspiracy theories.

You're conflating two separate problems to avoid discussing either one seriously. Yes, deepfakes are coming - that's a tech policy issue. But 2020 election security actually worked, which is why Trump lost in court 60+ times. We can walk and chew gum here.