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 -
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?
Speaking purely from the political grandstanding perspective, it mostly makes DeSantis look silly and buffoonish: at the margin, it lost him votes, possibly even in future Republican primaries. You can talk about hypothetical second-order effects on marginal illegal voters all you want, but the public doesn't care, and it'll be hard to convince anyone that this escapade was DeSantis courageously trying to institute good policy despite any negative effects it might have on his grander political ambitions.
Find me a single likely voter who was actually swayed from voting for Desantis due to this action, I'll give you the point. Honest.
I doubt Desantis needs many extra votes given how he's got approximately zero chance of losing his re-election bid this year, though.
But if OTHER races end up being close, and he can dissuade fraudulent votes from being cast, well that is a serious benefit to people besides him.
HENCE: The Meta level analysis.
Desantis seems to actually care not just about looking good and winning his own elections, he seems to care about establishing systems which will, over a longer term, support his allies and thus increase the chances his goals will be achieved in the future.
Looking buffoonish for a month is a fine trade if you can bump your party's electoral chances by a few percentage points in the next election and every election to come.
If I can find a single felon who was considering casting a fraudulent vote who is now dissuaded, it would be strong evidence that the tactic worked.
There are two implicit assumptions buried in your analysis, though:
Voter fraud disproportionately favors DeSantis's opponents, and
The fraud is of such a scope to have an effect on an election
To the first point, there's no real evidence that this would be the case. I looked at cases of what I call "casual voter fraud" from the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. By Casual Voter Fraud I mean things like ineligible voting, impersonation at the polls, and mail-in or absentee ballot fraud; in other words, the kind of voter fraud a normal person could attempt without much difficulty. There are other cases of voter fraud, but these all either involved insiders or were part of large schemes that involved a certain amount of organization. Out of five total cases four involved registered Republicans and one didn't specify the party affiliation of the defendant. Given the small sample size, I'm going to conclude that there's no conclusive evidence that deterring voter fraud would help DeSantis's party in any way.
To the second point, again, I point to the small sample size, and to the fact that the incidents in question were distributed throughout the state. If they were concentrated in one area then it's conceivable that five votes could impact some local election, but that simply wasn't the case. More importantly, though, it speaks volumes that DeSantis is making this point by arresting people whom he knows are unlikely to be convicted. If he wants to send a message about voter fraud, then why not have a mass arrest of people who actually committed voter fraud? I understand that maybe it's a difficult thing to catch, but Pennsylvania managed to catch five people in a single election without really trying (there was no statewide crackdown and the only case that got even got significant news coverage was one that Fetterman memed about). Florida is larger than Pennsylvania and if you go back to the start of the Statute of Limitations it shouldn't be too hard to come up with 20 cases of real voter fraud if you were to actually try.
That's not really what this is directed at, though. This is people voting in spite of not actually being allowed to. Felons, indigents, flavors of immigrants. Most of those categories seem likely to favor Democrats. It makes me think of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race, which ended up being decided by 225 votes. It was later determined that something like 1000 felons illegally voted in overwhelmingly Democrat counties. That result sent Al Franken to Washington, and gave Obama the 60th vote for the ACA.
Indigents? Is that a typo? Indigents obviously are allowed to vote.
Looking it up, I actually misunderstood the meaning of the word. I had the impression there was a strong subtext of homelessness + mobility, and thus would include people who were not in the municipality/county/state in which they were actually registered to vote.
do you mean 'transient'?
Having now looked up the formal definitions for both, yes.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link