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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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How...annoying. Sending partisans in to loom over ballot boxes has to be one of the least trustworthy ways to actually secure elections. [edit to clarify: lowest ratios of effectiveness to potential abuses.] Though "election reconciliation" might compete depending on its implementation. I have a very hard time reading this as good faith, yet I don't know what I can do about it.

Other adventures in the state/county saga include specifically rolling back Harris county measures.

Now if only we can get Paxton to "immediately respond" and go ahead with his trial.

The full context in the state/county saga is probably it’s own top level comment, and agree that it’s hard to view the election security team outside of it, but the idea that it actually matters is almost as dumb as the idea that Harris county usually votes Republican and is only blue thanks to massive fraud.

Sending partisans in to loom over ballot boxes has to be one of the least trustworthy ways to actually secure elections.

We already do this, everywhere. Every time I have worked the polls, both parties had partisans on hand to observe everything, on top of the county election staff and the volunteer staff.

Yeah, party selected poll monitors are part of the election process Canada too. Kind of dull work but important to ensure the count is acceptable to each party. Is it not a normal thing in the US?

Yes, and democrats want to get rid of them for reasons that probably boil down to anti-red tribe hysteria. This is a little bit different because it’s state government appointed partisan monitors.

Meanwhile, my side in my state wants to move the poll watching tables from 3-8 feet to inside of 3 feet for reasons that probably boil down to anti-blue tribe hysteria. Maybe I'm missing something and they're worried about sleight of hand from the two-yard observation, but this quarrel really looks like two groups that just plain don't trust each other and see any argument about rules as an indication that the other side must be cheating.

In the 2020 election, at some polling locations, they arranged the desks so that it was impossible to observe anything while following the covid distance rules.

Pretty much, yes.

It is a normal thing. The problem is that very little of note happens at most polling places on election day so these people spend most of their time drinking stale coffee and solving minor problems like helping people who came to the wrong polling place find the correct one. So if you're convinced there was MASSIVE FRAUD then these people are obviously inadequate because they aren't looking out for every little deviation from official protocol and raising objections because of it.

Next we'll be letting both parties at a trial send lawyers in to loom over witnesses while they are testifying.

Why can't people just trust the judges like we should?

The previous version wasn’t “trusting the judges.” As @Iconochasm notes, (partisan) observers are well-established. I’m under the impression that they aren't normally hired directly by the people on the ballot.

"The attorney general is a candidate on the ballot in this very election, and yet he is intending to send his own staff members to quote-unquote respond to issues in the largest and most diverse county in the state. The secretary of state himself is an unconfirmed appointee of the governor whose very job depends on that governor winning reelection in the very election he is now taking steps to be involved in."

The SoS does not have an opposing counterpart. Its observers also hold ambiguous authority compared to previous poll watchers. Perhaps a better analogy would be “next we’ll be letting both parties in a trial send lawyers, but the prosecution gets to send twice as many, and they’re allowed to be armed.”

It’s not impossible that this is studiously neutral and aboveboard. Like with Texas SB 1, there is a fig leaf. I don’t have much faith in the Texas government to do the right thing, so I would much prefer that they stop giving themselves opportunities to do wrong.

To expand a bit- the Texas government might do wrong, it might not, but it probably doesn’t matter in the end except maybe for a few local elected officials. It’s a red year in a red state in a very light blue county that will probably go red in all the races the state GOP thinks are winnable there, regardless of if the SOS finds some way to edit vote totals or not. And the Texas government may not be a consistently good actor, but they are aware of the consequences if they blatantly rig the election, and have a long history of caution when it comes to pulling stunts. Abbott doesn’t want to be federally investigated and Paxton doesn’t want his investigation to become a political priority.

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