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What is 'bad faith'? Maybe, when someone uses poor arguments or selectively chooses facts to further a personal goal that isn't 'truth-seeking'. But does that require them to intentionally do so, or does it merely require them to fall into a pattern of doing so? The ... "election denier" ... operate in functional bad faith, not conscious bad faith. And they share that with most participants in political discussions. When someone reads an accusation of bad faith, they imagine they're accused of conscious bad faith, and then get upset that their genuine attempts to discuss aren't taken seriously.
Say you're arguing with a Christian about whether God exists. They make the usual arguments, that 'something caused the universe, so that thing must be God', 'humans are simply too complicated for evolution to create', 'the historical case for Jesus's miracles is undeniable', 'all logic needs axioms and thus has no grounding, so it must be grounded in something, which is God'. Yeah, these are all fallacious, some trivially so - 'thing that caused the universe' doesn't have to be spiritual or sentient, fossil and DNA evidence for evolution is overwhelming, history is replete with other strongly attested miracles that didn't happen. And, if you're approaching the question from a position of genuine intellectual inquiry, how is it possible to - not to make so many mistakes, everyone is mistaken about everything - but to make so many mistakes in the same direction? But if they're saying things that are superficially convincing and support their claim, whether or not they're accurate, it all makes sense.
Okay, but ... some of us have been fundamentalist christians or progressives in the past, and that's not what it feels like. You genuinely believe in what you're saying. You, initially, see your interlocutor as someone who's misguided but could be persuaded. Your mistakes come from lack of knowledge and cleverness, bad sources of information, a lack of discipline and carefulness in thinking, and all sorts of social and moral constraints. But if that's "bad faith", then most discussions people have are bad faith.
Okay, to you it's obvious that most vote fraud arguments are terrible, obvious enough to dismiss those making it as bad faith. I agree that the arguments are terrible, seemingly obviously so. But it's also obvious that the spirits of our ancestors don't inhabit their graves, that praying doesn't help people with medical problems, that freudian psychoanalysis is bunk, and that neither democrats nor republicans are evil moral mutants. Yet man, very intelligent people of the past or present whole-heartedly believed all of those, and made all sorts of tortured arguments for them. The fact is, understanding the complicated world and society we live in is just hard. Even in areas with better-than-average truth-seeking institutions and incentives, like corporations or universities, people end up with a lot of false beliefs. Take away the institutions and incentives, like in casual news/politics discussion, and people end up blabbing nonsense even in areas with no partisan divides. Then add Trump, who many Rs saw as the only guy on their side in Washington, losing an election, and they saw the usual weird events that happen in any large-scale social system as proof of election subversion.
Most of them would not be. But they don't know that, in the same way that a preindustrial Muslim doesn't know they'd be Christian if they were born in Europe instead of the Middle East. And some of them still would, because mistakes don't go away if there's no tribal motive, they're just not amplified as much.
I'm not arguing that most of the fraud arguments are made in bad faith, regardless of how terrible I think they are; I'm arguing that this particular argument is made in bad faith. Republicans had no particular opposition to mail voting until Trump decided he could get some kind of advantage by making a big deal about it. This isn't some long-held Republican principle, it's a convenient argument to a self-serving end. That's where your Christianity analogy fails; I'm Catholic myself, and if a sincere Protestant wanted to have a conversation about faith with me I'd be happy to discuss it with them, even if their aim was obviously evangelical. But I'd be less happy if I found out they had recently converted because there was some personal advantage to them doing so that was wholly unrelated to their spiritual needs. I think people like Joel Osteen get a little too much flac from irreligious types because he seems like an obvious huckster. But I'm reluctant to join in on the dogpile because, despite his wealth, there's nothing in his past that suggests he isn't sincere. That, and I've actually listened to his sermons and it's obvious that his critics haven't because nothing he says is remotely objectionable. But I'd probably feel different if he were a twice-divorced advertising executive with a conviction for writing bad checks who became a self-ordained minister at the age of 40 after realizing that a combination of Billy Graham and Tony Robbins was a license to print money. And who also was a frequent visitor to tit bars and had been kicked out of every country club in the Houston area because he was too much of an asshole for the members to want to deal with.
Citation very much needed.
Maybe I'm just old but my recollection is that Republican opposition to mail-in ballots and demands for voter ID go back at least as far as the Clinton years.
In PA, Republicans passed the mail in voting law in 2019 (thus nothing to do with COVID) because they thought it would help their rural voters or because they wanted to get rid of straight ticket voting in exchange (depending on the representative in question).
This is what they said then:
"In late October 2019, the Pennsylvania General Assembly was preparing to pass a comprehensive voting reform package that included no-excuse mail-in voting. Republicans, who controlled both chambers of the Legislature, were happy that they had managed to eliminate straight-ticket voting as part of the legislation. Some Democrats, including state Rep. Mike Sturla of Lancaster, were miffed by this and so voted against what would become Act 77. But the Lancaster County Republican delegation to Harrisburg voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation (state Reps. Steven Mentzer and David Zimmerman voted against it). The legislation passed in the state House in a 138-61 vote (note 59 of the votes against were Democrats) , and was approved by the Senate in a 35-14 vote. (note the 14 votes against were all Democrats) The state House Republican Caucus website was almost giddy in its characterization of this “Historic Election Reform,” the “most comprehensive effort to modernize and improve Pennsylvania’s elections since the 1930s.” State House Majority Leader — now Speaker — Bryan Cutler, of Drumore Township, discussed the legislation in glowing terms. “This bill was not written to benefit one party or the other, or any one candidate or single election,” Cutler maintained. “It was developed over a multi-year period, with input from people of different backgrounds and regions of Pennsylvania. It serves to preserve the integrity of every election and lift the voice of every voter in the Commonwealth.” What was not to like? Reporting on the new law, CNN noted that it eliminated a “requirement that applicants for absentee ballots provide an excuse as to why they can’t make it to the polls.” “We never checked anyway,” said state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, who’s now the Senate president pro tempore and is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination. As Spotlight PA reported, Corman hailed Act 77 as the “most significant modernization of our elections code in decades.”"
and
In a column published in May 2020 in LNP | LancasterOnline, Kirk Radanovic, chairman of the Republican Committee of Lancaster County, wrote that “this new mail-in voting option in Pennsylvania will be a crucial tool for the Republican Party and candidates to succeed.” “Anyone can apply to vote by mail, without a reason or excuse needed,” Radanovic wrote, encouragingly. “If you think COVID-19 or the prospect of long lines will keep you from wanting to go to the polls on Election Day, then vote by mail. “Our state senators and representatives have worked to ensure the integrity of this process, including safeguards to protect your vote.” He pointed out that every “mail-in ballot includes a unique bar code that is used to match you and your ballot, a security safeguard.”
PA only expanded mail in voting because the GOP wanted it done, they had majorities in both House and Senate. Mostly it was Democrats who voted against it because they feared the loss of straight ticket voting would hurt them. The fact that barely a year later they were now saying the very law passed by Republicans was unconstitutional and left things open to fraud is you have to admit a little laughable.
There is shooting yourself in the foot and then there is shooting yourself in the foot and then saying:
"Act 77 also had the support of almost all of the Republican state representatives in the Pennsylvania House, including state Rep. Dan Moul, a Republican from Adams County who joined the lawsuit over the mail-in voting law in 2021 "So my bad. I should've checked the constitutionality of that big bill," Moul says."
It's either staggering incompetence or a scapegoat for the loss, but at least in PA, The Republican party were all for mail in voting..until they weren't.
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