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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11246 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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The story was they sent the poll watchers home for the night because of a false claim of a broken water main. Then once the poll watchers were gone they pulled boxes of ballots out from under a table and started counting. This, of course, was widely derided as a conspiracy theory that never happened. Once every element was shown to be substantially true, they started saying stuff like "well we didn't REALLY tell the poll watchers to go home" and "It's perfectly normal to do this". At which point there's clearly no basis for discussion.

The story was they sent the poll watchers home for the night because of a false claim of a broken water main.

Would have been a risky lie, any of the watchers could have questioned it and exposed it then and there if it wasn't true! They also weren't "sent home", there's no one who will testify they were ordered or directed to leave.

I even double checked this with ChatGPT

Have any of the poll watchers who left during the Fulton county water leak attested to being told to leave?

Short answer: No—there’s no credible evidence that poll watchers attested to being told to leave because of the Fulton County “water leak.” Investigations and sworn testimony generally found the opposite.

Some people left cause they thought the leak being handled meant proceedings were done, but that was their mistake.

Then once the poll watchers were gone they pulled boxes of ballots out from under a table and started counting.

We also know what this was, some of the workers were also confused and started packing up (the "boxes of ballots") until they were informed they needed to continue scanning the already prepared ones.

They already tried this claim, and the Georgia supreme court dismissed the case.

And just think about it for a second, we have to believe that there's some grand election fraud conspiracy where they fake a water leak planning for everyone to leave and no one to question it and then pull out ballots from under the table (that none of the observers noticed while there???) all while forgetting the cameras in the room. It's not technically impossible, but that's a pretty shaky plan.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

"people correcting me about a nuanced situation really proves the point about how people correct me" isn't a particularly great argument.

Do you have an actual explanation for why none of the poll watchers have actually claimed they were told to leave? How about workers/observers/etc testifying that there wasn't a water leak? Seems like they would come out about it by now if there was any.

How about why this elaborate ruse didn't account for the cameras in the room? Maybe they're just that dumb, but it sure is a pretty basic thing to just forget about.

The set of people who had control of the situation are the ones who have the burden of proof to demonstrate they were on the up and up. If someone comes to your house to set up a roach fumigating tent and then a meth lab explodes in your house...

Sure but if you're gonna claim there was a meth lab explosion in my house, you can at least bother with good evidence there was even an explosion to begin with.

If I can point to "none of my neighbors heard or saw an explosion", that's pretty good evidence there wasn't one.

The equivalent here is why isn't there anyone coming out and actually claiming they were ordered to leave?

And maybe the smoke detectors went off, but there's burnt food in the oven that makes for a perfectly good explanation.

And also it turns out that I actually was inviting a bunch of police friends to a house party later today (the cameras being on), would be weird to have a meth lab if I was having lots of cops in my home. Maybe I'm that stupid, but it is evidence against.

This is what I genuinely despise about the discourse on this matter (and many matters like it).

The standard of proof for every single element of the claim of election fraud gets escalated to an unreasonable level, and every time you 'prove' some particular element of it, they insist on strict proof of some even more granular point of fact. Plus motte and baileying from "oh there's no proof of voter fraud" to "Well you can't show that the outcome was effected!"

"Okay sure they pulled ballots from under a table... prove those weren't legitimate ballots that were just... unconventionally stored." "Okay, this ballot can't be traced to an actual voter... but you can't show that it was intentionally filled in by a third party."

Or whatever.

When the meta point is we really need to make sure important elections don't have the scent of fraud, even accidentally.

Yes! The point is, more than the Lizardman Constant truly believes that there was fraud, when our system only works when we all agree that voting is fair and honest. Both sides need to bend over backwards to make sure that everyone has faith in our elections because that is the only way we keep the ship running.

It's significantly more than the Lizardman Constant. Rasmussen in 2023 had 32% of Democrats believing it was very likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election (13% "somewhat likely"). 62% all voters for very/somewhat. Now, before someone jumps on me, that's "affected", not "the election was stolen". But this loss of faith is a serious problem, and no amount of socially enforced outgroup-blaming or ostrich-heading among Respectable People will change that.

This assumes that it's a both-sides problem, when the root issue is that Republican (and even more specifically Trumpist) political elites have found it useful to raise bad-faith claims of vote fraud. This renders attempts to satisfy their concerns largely pointless: the only way to convince their followers will be to convince their leaders, and their leaders know what they are saying isn't true.

Democrats also reject the legitimacy of elections, though with less concrete explanations of what would make them more comfortable with them.

For Trump, it was Russian Collusion. Bush was "Selected, not Elected.". In smaller elections there are complaints about voter suppression. Locally there was a big kerfuffle that State funding got pulled to send out extra busses to bring people to poll locations on Election Day.

These comparisons are laughable. One off comments, random local issues, and material complaints about voting access are being compared to a top-down campaign by the Republican Party's elite.

One off comments that lead to an impeachment?

Notably, Stacey Abrams also claimed that her 2018 gubernatorial election was Stolen (I will, in fairness to both her and Blake Masters' mysteriously broken voting machines, say that having partisan Secretaries of State overseeing elections seems insane to me).

As if democrats don’t make bad faith claims about elections all day long.

Yep. And maybe the SAVE act isn't the right solution.

But its the one that's actually being offered.

I've said that I would actually be okay with the death penalty for anyone caught fabricating some large number of votes.

The system is THAT important to maintain faith in it.

And I also suggest sanctions for trying to overturn an election based on spurious claims of fraud, since that also undermines faith in the system.

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