site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

These are outcomes that could be swung, potentially, by one county in the state being manipulated or screwing up a count... It's not like there's not ample historical precedent of organized efforts to influence voter outcomes. Oh, also recent precedent. Can't imagine why you'd want to chance it in a state where races can be extremely close.

Those are, of course, organized efforts. Individual acts of fraudulent voting don't seem to be a major vector for attacks on election integrity; although they certainly happen, it's always marginal and doesn't have a huge partisan slant. The actual vector, both historically and in the present day, is actions by election officials and professionals.

Imagine a world where instead of this fiasco, DeSantis investigated Palm Beach County officials and came up with a ream of evidence that they manipulated the election. Would that have been more significant than this showboating, both in terms of ensuring election integrity and in terms of securing his political future?

Imagine a world where instead of this fiasco, DeSantis investigated Palm Beach County officials and came up with a ream of evidence that they manipulated the election.

Given that he's formed a branch of the State Law Enforcement specifically to investigate election crimes, I'd guess the odds of such an investigation both taking place and finding evidence if fraud did occur is substantially higher than it was before.

Likewise, this would imply that any officials who might have been considering it are much less likely to try it.

It'd be a bit hard for him to order an investigation into such a problem if it occurred in 2018 seeing as he didn't take office until months after the election.

Firing the Palm Beach County Election Supervisor was a measure he took to reduce the risk of it happening. So was the formation of the election crimes unit. So was the announcement of these arrests.

Not sure why this is hard to grok.

Maybe it works maybe it doesn't, but I don't find the motive behind it 'bewildering' at all.

Given that he's formed a branch of the State Law Enforcement specifically to investigate election crimes, I'd guess the odds of such an investigation both taking place and finding evidence if fraud did occur is substantially higher than it was before.

I mean, the motivation behind forming this agency was as a response to completely delusional claims of voter fraud that are unfortunately held by a significant portion of the electorate. I get that DeSantis is a politician that has to cater to the people who vote for him (no matter how crazy they are), so I can't fault him too much on this point. However, it does undercut the notion that this necessarily means it's an earnest and non-crazy investigative endeavor. It's possible that it was just put in place for the sake of appeasing the louder loons. Of course this doesn't mean that the agency is incapable of doing honest police work, but it definitely doesn't augur well that they chose — as their opening salvo — to go after random nobodies who are guilty of being misled by their government.

but it definitely doesn't augur well that they chose — as their opening salvo — to go after random nobodies who are guilty of being misled by their government.

The Election Crimes Unit has been in existence for LESS THAN A YEAR.

If they're going to take down Public Officials, (which, being honest, I do not predict will happen!) it behooves them to build a very strong case, which means gathering evidence, which takes time. And of course this election would be their first chance to catch it in action.

So taking an easy early 'win' in hopes of deterring other actors makes sense as an opening salvo in this context.

I responded to this here.

I don't see the win here (aside from improving DeSantis' electoral chances), because the problem with faulty record-keeping was the main argument against how Florida decided to implement Amendment 4. None of the issues are predicated on criminal behavior by the officials. The fact that the system made mistakes about voter registration was exactly what was predicted, and it's rich for the government to take out its frustrations on the victims of this system.

I mean, the motivation behind forming this agency was as a response to completely delusional claims of voter fraud that are unfortunately held by a significant portion of the electorate.

Objection! Low effort consensus building which you have not only failed to demonstrate, but you have failed to uphold in this very day's update regarding Desantis's domestic political context, in which multiple contemporary contexts of conspiracy to commit voter fraud, potential evidence of fraudulant voting, and systemic weakness for fraud have been noted without sufficient rebuttal. That you, and even a significant portion of the American electorate, insist that claims of voter fraud are completely delusional and dismiss other people's reasons and perspectives does not, in fact, make those other people unreasonable or completely delusional.

Given your past ruts on this topic with similar tendencies of not acknowledging contrary evidence, I would submit you are not objective on this topic, given your frequent shills for your private substack and the financial interests in catering to your desired target audience I would submit you are not impartial, and given some of your past clunkers on understanding other people's viewpoints even when described to you, I would submit you lack the credibility to be a trustworthy evaluator of the motivations of your outgroup, especially on topics in which you have both past bad history and current financial incentives to defend dumping on your outgroup.

That you, and even a significant portion of the American electorate

Most of the american electorate on both sides wouldn't know a motte from a pot, so that's a weird objection. Most voters vote for a combination of 'my friends/family vote this way' and really strange idiosyncratic reasons, and their positions on any specific issue are much worse. I don't see what that has to do with ymeskhout's precise and very long arguments

I would submit you are not objective on this topic, given your frequent shills for your private substack and the financial interests in catering to your desired target audience

Wouldn't he just not post on what a journo could call a "alt-right dogwhistle reactionary forum" in that case?

you have failed to uphold in this very day's update regarding Desantis's domestic political context, in which multiple contemporary contexts of conspiracy to commit voter fraud, potential evidence of fraudulant voting, and systemic weakness for fraud have been noted without sufficient rebuttal

But I did, in the same post above you're replying to. If DeSantis was serious about actual voter fraud, I don't have an explanation for why he'd choose to make a public spectacle of people who were misled by his administration and dragging them to jail.

Given your past ruts on this topic with similar tendencies of not acknowledging contrary evidence...

We've been over this so so many times by now, and this exchange from May 2021 remains the most illustrative. I ask questions and your response is along the lines that it's not your job to educate me. Ok, fine, I accept that it's not your job, but I have no idea what exactly you expect of me. I have no idea how I'd even try to parody your position if I wanted, because you repeatedly refuse to state what it is besides a generalized complaint! If I said "Trump's election fraud allegations were true, or at least were made in good faith" you'd accuse me of strawmanning or whatever and then darkly hint that I am somehow missing the point or that I am intentionally ignoring the real and totally valid election fraud theories that apparently exist somewhere out there.

I get that you don't like it when I talk about the 2020 election fraud theories, you've made that abundantly clear! What I don't get is why you keep wasting time on this beat. You either have specific arguments to make or you don't. If you don't have any, or you just refuse to make them out of principle, vaguely complaining is not going to accomplish anything. I'm not a mind reader, and you can't expect me to respond to arguments you choose to keep cloistered in your head.

given your frequent shills for your private substack and the financial interests in catering to your desired target audience I would submit you are not impartial

Well, you caught me. The dozens of subscribers paying $0 a month pose a grave liability to my impartiality. I hope my reputation can someday recover.

More comments