This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Pennsylvania mail-in ballots with flawed dates on envelopes can be thrown out, court rules
This came up when the lower court issued their opinion a few weeks ago. I remember several commentators asking if the fact that it was only filed in two counties was going to have a material impact in the outcome. It looks like it did.
For those of you who leaned one way or the other, how does this impact your future predictions?
On a more specific note - @Rov_Scam, you had some fairly extensive commentary on this case that was interesting and insightful due to your profession. If you have time, would you mind chiming in with an update?
I'm a "Stop the Steal" agnostic. The 2020 election looked fishy, but most of the "proof" of election fraud has been merely suggestions with no follow-through. I'm not a Trump voter, but I have no faith in the integrity of his opponents -- especially if you take them at their word that he is an existential threat.
The Democrats do themselves no favors by trying to stop all of these election reform measures in swing states, like PA and GA. Their insistence that we should not clean the voter rolls, enforce ballot integrity or deadlines, or be able to produce records that verify vote counts or reconcile ballot and voter numbers is bewildering in the absence of fraud. Can anyone of the "Most Secure Election in History" persuasion steelman the argument against increasing election integrity? Isn't it in everyone's best interest to increase confidence in the electoral process, even if you think 2020 election deniers are kooks, as it will improve the legitimacy of whoever wins and diminish avenues of sympathy for the deniers?
I don’t think you should be agnostic here. Absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of absence.
I also don’t think Democrats are categorically against security measures. They are generally opposed for the same reasons Republicans generally oppose gun control. It’s costly, it’s been abused before, and above all, it’s an attack on Our Team.
When I last looked at Texas election policy, I concluded it was pretty reasonable. But the Texas Republican Party has to push harder. They’ve made it a wedge and a sign of party allegiance; anyone who dissents is doing himself no favors. So the party platform (§221) has to be more extreme.
Implementing these will make voting slower, more difficult, and more likely to generate lawsuits. They encourage a heckler’s veto, where anyone with the time and money has more levers to slow down and cast doubt on the outcome. Is that likely to improve legitimacy?
No, these are designed more like the post-2020 Trump playbook. Spawn enough lawsuits, raise enough red flags, and people will start to doubt the outcome regardless of the facts. If you’re looking for ulterior motives, this is the one.
Also, preferential or ranked voting is literally my single issue. I would vote for Paxton, Trump, anybody if he came out in favor, but no, the party has decided that it’s a threat to democracy. Give me a break. But I understand that most people don’t really care.
I don't see "slower or more difficult" as valid objections to improving vote security. Maybe it should be slower or more difficult? Maybe not, but I would need more information to judge those trade-offs. And it already seems to have gotten slower despite the improvements in technology. Lawsuits aren't always bad. Maybe some are worthwhile? I don't know, I'm just saying that when someone says, "Your system is flawed" and your reply is, "It's the most perfect ever," without probing the suggested issues, is shitty public relations whether or not there are actual problems. And worrying about whose ox gets gored by investigating potential hazards is never going to result in effective systems regardless of who is in charge. That's a Soviet-response to Chernobyl environment in the making. Get it the fuck out of American voting systems, please.
Every election ought to be able to withstand an audit and defend its results, and not just met with a shrug when hundreds of thousands of ballots can't be accounted for or memory cards get wiped or voter rolls don't match or someone just accidentally let thousands of late ballots get counted or all of the vote totals changed in the dead of night after all of the observers were told to go home. The best reply to false or incorrect accusations of vote fraud is to present the accuser with impeccable records that support the result. If your election systems are such a mess due to laziness or complacency that you can't really support the result, it doesn't matter who is accusing you of what -- get your shit in order, or it makes it look like they might be correct when they accuse you of corruption. That is corruption, even if it's a less malicious sort of corruption.
More options
Context Copy link
...he said, standing in front a stack of burning papers...
Ok, Im being facetious, but what sort of evidence to you expect to see, in a system that doesn't to integrity checks, and preemptive steps, that the rest of the world consider basic?
I think we do most of those checks, and that we observe very little fraud anyway.
If there was widespread undetected fraud, I would have expected surprise audits like the Mariposa County report to turn up more of it. I’d have expected more of the Kraken lawsuits to win or at least make it to court. It’s not like they were lacking in motivation!
While I can’t run the statistics on my phone, I get the impression that most of these examples are caught by routine processes. That suggests there’s not much low-hanging fruit.
What specific integrity check would you have in mind?
Partisan scrutineers being allowed to meaningfully inspect the counting process is kind of a big one.
That’s definitely already a thing, no? Pennsylvania, Georgia.
They won't be able to make a repeat of it, but 'because covid', observers were made to keep a 3m distance from the actual counters, and accused of 'making the workers feel unsafe' if they tried to ask about anything in PA for sure. (there was a court case about it, which the RNC or whoever won and got an order to let the scrutineers scrutinize -- once the counting was more or less done)
GA I don't want to relitigate, but "we're stopping counting because of <definitely not a water main break>, you may as well go home" coupled with restarting the count a couple hours later seems well outside the spirit of that reg.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence when qualified, competent people make good-faith efforts and are met with good-faith assistance. It may be too cynical but I think any investigation into the 2020 election fails every qualifier: the investigators were not competent nor good-faith, and they would be met with resistance at every possible step anyways.
To be slightly conspiratorial, I'll throat-clear saying the 2020 election was not stolen (though whatever propagandist came up with "most secure election ever" should've been fired and sent to Siberia), but I think there is an awareness that it is not really in anyone's best interest to find that evidence even if it exists (which it almost certainly doesn't). As much as Trace has come to be a disappointment, he's not wrong that right-wing media is even more disappointing and doesn't really care to find evidence (that in this case doesn't exist) so much as grift from the idea of it.
Is there any good reason ballot harvesting shouldn't be banned and treated as a grave offense against the private ballot and the democratic process?
For a few additional comments, a now-deleted account that reported (positively) on performing ballot harvesting in California back at the old abode, a few of my reasons why ballot harvesting is so open to abuse yet wouldn't get reported, and some other guy you might recognize makes offers on what to trade for banning ballot harvesting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link