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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Back in August 20 people were arrested in Florida as part of a sting operation on "voter fraud" heavily publicized by Gov. DeSantis. Each person had a felony conviction and voted, but I wrote about how each person was specifically told by election authorities that they were legally able to vote. The confusion stems from how felony voter right restoration was implemented in Florida, where the state insisted that everyone had to pay all outstanding fines while at the same time admitting it had no way of keeping track of all these fines.

A small update since then is that bodyworn video footage of the arrests has been released. The language in an arrest warrant issued by a court usually says something along the lines of "To every peace officer of blah blah, you are commanded to..." which means the decision to arrest is not discretionary. I've watched thousands of arrest videos by now and while the modal arrest is far less eventful that what the typical viral incident would have you believe, it's still an event that is inherently antagonistic. After all, the cop is placing handcuffs on you and taking you to jail, with serious retribution if you impede the process in any way.

I have never seen cops anywhere near as apologetic about an arrest as in the videos just released from Florida. They caught these people unaware outside of their homes, and as they explain the arrest warrant they pepper every sentence with "sir" and "m'am". When they explain that they're about to be handcuffed, they use "unfortunately" as a prefix. Thanks to qualified immunity along with the general deference courts give law enforcement, each cop would have had the legal authority to leg sweep each person and slam them to the ground if they displayed anything that could remotely be construed as resistance. Instead they take the time to calmly explain the process, including when they would likely be released, in a bid to secure as much of their cooperation as possible through what is understandably a distressing event for any person to go through. They're treated with astounding compassion. The people arrested start talking (of course they do), with one explaining how he was told he could legally vote, and the cop responds with "there's your defense". I've never seen a cop highlight legal defenses to the person they just arrested.

DeSantis is a Yale/Harvard educated former federal prosecutor. I would assume based on his background that he's not an idiot, and that he knows how criminal prosecutions work. If I keep my cynic hat on, DeSantis chose to make a big show of these arrests entirely as a means to appease the portion of the electorate that still believes the 2020 election was stolen and remains angry no one has gotten punished. But even so, what exactly was the follow-up supposed to be? Whatever charges one would levy against these people would require that you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew they weren't allowed to vote but voted anyway, and how would any prosecutor counter the fact that election authorities approved their registration? What this does also just brings more attention to the confusing labyrinthian mess around court fines the state of Florida intentionally created as a hurdle for felons pursuing voter right restoration.

If the cops conducting the arrest are expressing this much skepticism about the charges, you can surmise how a random jury pool would react. These charges were patently frivolous from the very start but setting that aside they don't even make sense from the political grandstanding perspective. Bewildering.

These charges were patently frivolous from the very start but setting that aside they don't even make sense from the political grandstanding perspective. Bewildering.

Think on the meta level just a bit. As in, not about whether these twenty people themselves were or were not intentionally trying to commit a crime, and catching them is proof of anything.

From a pure signalling standpoint, if you want to prevent people from knowingly casting illegal votes and demonstrate that you are capable of enforcing this rule (i.e. detecting illegal votes), then yes, you have to arrest people who do cast illegal votes, even if they possess a defense for the action.

Especially since "I was told it was legal to cast my vote" is such an easy defense to invoke and hard to disprove otherwise. You show that you will STILL investigate such situations and try to verify the defense as valid.

Do you think that this action will, on the margins, increase or decrease the chances of someone attempting actual voter fraud in the 2022 elections in Florida?

Or would the effect be entirely minimal and worth disregarding?

Do you think that this action will, on the margins, increase or decrease the chances of someone attempting actual voter fraud in the 2022 elections in Florida?

The answer isn't obvious. These actions will absolutely discourage anyone with a felony conviction from trying to vote, even if they are legally permitted to, because who wants to risk getting arrested years down the line over something as individually trivial as voting? Felony disenfranchisement currently affects almost a million people in Florida, almost 10% of the adult population, so it's bound to have a significant effect.

In contrast, actual voting fraud is extremely rare. Just for perspective, 19 foreign nationals were charged for illegally voting in North Carolina in 2020. To me, it's not obvious how many of those foreign nationals were acting with malicious intent, or whether they made an honest mistake. Jeopardizing one's immigration status to cast one vote seems like an idiotic gamble. Beyond that, the scenarios where voter fraud is clearly motivated by malicious intent are too sporadic to get a comprehensive accounting for. I'm aware of very few cases, like for example this Nevada man who used his dead wife's ballot to cast a vote.

I suppose you can defend the heavy-handedness if your overriding priority is primarily to tamp down on the handful of actual voter fraud that takes place. But if so, I would like to at least see an earnest attempt to address the collateral damage. Is dissuading a handful of bad actors worth putting some innocent people in jail? Worth dissuading large swathes of the population from legally voting? If so, say so.

I suppose you can defend the heavy-handedness if your overriding priority is primarily to tamp down on the handful of actual voter fraud that takes place.

Perhaps we can gain some insight into Desantis' mindset by looking at the 2018 election:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_elections

Desantis won by the veritable skin of his teeth by 33,000 votes out of 8 million cast.

Rick Scott won his Senate race by about 10k votes.

Nikki Fried, the ONLY Democrat to win an executive office, won by 6,000 votes.

These are outcomes that could be swung, potentially, by one county in the state being manipulated or screwing up a count.

And guess what happened in Broward County in 2018?

https://archive.ph/Qc9Tt

Half of Broward County’s election precincts reported more ballots cast than the number of voters. Backlogs in processing mail ballots snarled reporting of results.

Confusing ballot design may have led thousands of voters to inadvertently skip an important contest.

Money was wasted on unneeded blank ballots, which weren’t adequately tracked and were eventually destroyed.

After election day, auditors found the recount was plagued by poor planning, inadequate staffing and equipment, and poor quality control.

And the money quote:

“We conclude that the November 2018 election was not efficiently and effectively conducted,” Melton wrote in to county commissioners. “Based on the totality of these issues, we are unable to provide assurance over the accuracy of the November 2018 election results as reported.”

Oh, and lets not forget that Rick Scott very directly claimed the election was being stolen. He and Stacey Abrams were two years ahead of Trump on applying this tactic.

Broward singlehandedly delayed the final outcome of multiple races and from the look of things had gaping holes in their system that COULD have been exploited. Oh, and it's heavily and reliably a blue county.

Actually, Palm Beach County also delayed it. Also another heavily blue area.

One of Desantis' first actions upon taking office was removing and replacing the Broward and Palm Beach County Election supervisors.

And, 'strangely,' Broward and Palm Beach County had no discrepancies or delays in the 2020 election. Further, Florida went more heavily Republican than usual, including more towards Trump than expected.

Broward County has almost 2 milllion citizens, this is not a small podunk area that we're talking about. Palm Beach has 1.5 million.

And while Desantis is going to walk to an easy victory this time, I can't imagine he wants to allow ANY room for doubt in the sanctity of the election should any races come down to the wire.

So in light of all this, perhaps it makes sense why Desantis might conclude that arresting 20 people is worth it for the possible upside of dissuading electoral shenanigans throughout the state?

Is dissuading a handful of bad actors worth putting some innocent people in jail? Worth dissuading large swathes of the population from legally voting? If so, say so.

I dunno. I think he cares very little that those twenty guys got misled, but cares a lot about ensuring he doesn't have to worry as much about catching electoral fraud after the fact.

So this action is a cheap way to possibly pre-emptively solve an issue that could arise.

Going along on the premise that because voter fraud has not been detected in the past and therefore is not likely to occur in the future seems like an unwise tactic in an environment as adversarial as this one.

It's not like there's not ample historical precedent of organized efforts to fraudulently influence election outcomes. Oh, also recent precedent.

In June 2022, the defendant admitted in court to bribing the Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 36th Division in South Philadelphia in a fraudulent scheme over several years. Myers admitted to bribing the election official to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections. Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons. Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as “consulting fees,” and then use portions of these funds to pay election officials to tamper with election results.

Just because it's 'rare' doesn't mean, when it happens, it won't have significant impact.

Can't imagine why you'd want to chance it in a state where races can be extremely close.

Can't imagine why you'd want to chance it in a state where races can be extremely close.

I don't disagree that this is the motivation behind the current system. Black voters are much more likely to be disenfranchised because of a felony record, and that demographic heavily votes Democrat. It's true that in total, there are way more white voters who lose their right to vote, but the voting pattern of the ex-con in general is not as lopsided as it is for the black demographic. So there's good reason to suspect that allowing felons to vote would benefit democrats, even slightly, but as you note there were enough close-call elections for that to be a real risk for republicans. Therefore, it made sense for the Republican legislature to do as much as it did to kneecap the implementation of the 2018 felony voting restoration amendment. Given the demographics, it was better for the republican party to keep as many felons disenfranchised as possible than to take a gamble with election results.

As for the rest of your post, I struggle to understand how it's relevant. You post about some election precincts in Florida having problems around keeping track of ballots. Assuming these were legitimate issues, I don't see how you solve that problem by targeting individual voters who are mislead by election officials. If I understand your argument correctly, you believe that prosecuting individual felons who were mislead by the government will have a collateral dissuasion effect on other (potentially higher-up) voter fraud that could happen, right? If so that seems to me to be needlessly attenuated. Why wouldn't these investigations just focus directly on the election officials responsible instead? What kind of messaging is sent by the government taking random nobodies to jail because they were dumb enough to believe something the government told them? I don't get it.

I'd be curious to know how other aspects of the felon demographic intersect with its racial makeup. Although they are disproportionately black, it's also disproportionately male and not college-educated. I suspect it'd still solidly favor Democrats, but less lopsidedly than someone might imagine.

[I'll just repost a comment I wrote on this]

There have been multiple studies, but it's difficult to get a clear picture because every state is different and there are a host of confounding variables.

It's relatively straightforward to get a good perspective from Vermont and Maine, because those are the only states that allow people currently incarcerated to vote from prison. The Marshall Project surveyed that population and did not find that they leaned heavily Democratic.

Elsewhere however, a common problem is that it is very difficult for felons to know exactly their right to vote is restored, so many of them don't bother trying even if they are legally allowed to. If you asked me right now to answer without looking up whether felons can vote in my state, I literally have no idea whether they regain their right upon release or after a judge restores it, and I'm a public defender who has processed hundreds of guilty pleas! All I know is that felony convictions take away your right to vote, and you get it back "someday".

Besides the lack of knowledge, felons face higher hardships (finding housing, finding employment, not committing more crimes, etc) than the general population, and their appetite for voting is a fairly low priority. You can see why something as heavily publicized as a referendum on a constitutional amendment for voting right restoration would draw a lot of attention and get people with convictions coming out of the woodwork to register. In a state that is as purple as Florida and with razor-sharp electoral margins, this is bound to be a catastrophic risk that just isn't worth it for the party that expects the short-end of the stick.

Vermont and Maine are ~95% white. Their state prison populations are overwhelmingly white. It's not reasonable to infer that the same political preferences follow for the nationwide prison population.

If you read the article, the prison population was 'roughly half' nonwhite. It also claims the POCs were "20 percent identifying as black, 14 percent as Latino, 17 percent as Native American and 19 percent as Asian or other races" (which adds up to 70%?), and that they polled at 20% trump / 30% novote / 50% dem, while whites 40% trump / 25% novote / 35% dem.

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I agree, and would never claim otherwise. It might still be a useful sample if compared against that specific state's average. But besides that my main point is that we don't know much on this topic, and finding out more information is very hard.