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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17697 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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Why?

Perhaps because Republicans think that their votes won't count if they mail them in. Perhaps because Democrats put off voting more often in lots of different races.

In this case late-arriving ballots aren’t just favoring Democrats but Raman specifically, which is very convenient!

Do I really need to explain to you that LA is full of pinkos who want to elect a socialist? Do you think it's sus that Mamdani won in NYC? Where did the phantasm of the Based Angeleno come from? I can assure you that Angelenos are not Based.

You’re missing the point: the question isn’t why they lean Democrat by why they lean Raman very disproportionately from how they leaned for bass in earlier batches.

You don’t just need to explain why late votes are Democrat but why they are a different kind of Democratic, and the exact one to bring 3rd place into 2nd to keep an R off the ballot.

If late votes leaned D, but with a propoetion

This is not an explanation. Late-leaning ballots lean Democratic because Democrats vote late — therefore it can’t be because of fraud. But that’s indistinguishable from election fraud! That’s exactly what it would look like if it were fraud. Fraudsters would harvest late ballots that lean Democratic because that’s how they’re cheating.

Is there any reason for California to accept ballots weeks after the election?

Is there any other state on earth that conducts their elections this way?

Look, they’ve created a system where:

  • Millions of ballots get mailed out to voter rolls that are never purged
  • Any returned and filled ballots are presumed to be legitimate a priori
  • The ballots are counted by unions run as one-party organizations
  • Once counted it is impossible to disentangle chains of custody to even investigate whether any ballots were cast fraudulently

All it would take to steal an election is a political machine to harvest ballots, fill them out, and send them in the mail.it would take a few dozen people. This is literally legal in California because ballot harvesting is explicitly legal and there are rules about it. Ballot harvesters exist. They even have rules about “curing” ballots where you can chase down invalid ballots and have them fixed Ie the organization you would need to commit fraud already exists. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s the literal law. We simply trust, without evidence, that every ballot filled out actually touched the hand of a unique voter.

Come on! This doesn’t bother you at all? You don’t have any explanation at all, except that Democrats happen to prefer voting by mail? Which is exactly how it would look if democrats are using mail to commit fraud.

Ballots break for Karen Bass, right up until the day after Election Day, when they start breaking for Raman. I guess the more left-wing you are the more likely you are to fill in a ballot late. It simply cannot be the case that when millions of ballots are floating around without any security at all that someone is stuffing a few ten thousand into mail boxes. That the results benefit one party the same way every time is a statistical artifact. That no other country on earth conducts elections this way is just a stylistic choice. That the same people who would benefit are the same people responsible is a coincidence. There is no evidence of fraud. Is that really what you believe?

This is not an explanation. Late-leaning ballots lean Democratic because Democrats vote late — therefore it can’t be because of fraud. But that’s indistinguishable from election fraud! That’s exactly what it would look like if it were fraud. Fraudsters would harvest late ballots that lean Democratic because that’s how they’re cheating.

Okay, but it's also indistinguishable from Democrats voting late.

Let me ask you a question. Do you live in a state with vote by mail? Do you vote by mail? Do your Republican friends?

Fraudsters would harvest late ballots that lean Democratic because that’s how they’re cheating.

"Harvesting" is a specific thing where people collect mail in ballots and turn them in. I don't like it, but it has to be done, or postmarked, by election day. You seem to be using "harvesting" in a different way that's unclear to me.

Is there any reason for California to accept ballots weeks after the election?

Well, no. Fortunately, they don't.

Millions of ballots get mailed out to voter rolls that are never purged

I agree this is bad.

Any returned and filled ballots are presumed to be legitimate a priori

Not really true, the signatures have to match.

The ballots are counted by unions run as one-party organizations

This appears to be made up.

Once counted it is impossible to disentangle chains of custody to even investigate whether any ballots were cast fraudulently

I'm not sure what this means.

They even have rules about “curing” ballots where you can chase down invalid ballots and have them fixed Ie the organization you would need to commit fraud already exists.

Curing doesn't allow changing the actual contents of the ballot. Fairly few ballots even go through curing at all. In 2024, 120k ballots were rejected.

It simply cannot be the case that when millions of ballots are floating around without any security at all that someone is stuffing a few ten thousand into mail boxes.

This would be pointless since ballots must be postmarked by election day. Or do you believe that USPS is in on this too?

Ballots break for Karen Bass, right up until the day after Election Day, when they start breaking for Raman.

This isn't really true. The proportion of votes in each batch going to Bass is pretty stable. Most batches after the first favor Raman more than Pratt, but not all the time.

That the results benefit one party the same way every time is a statistical artifact.

You mean, the Democrats? You think it's weird that Californians elect Democrats? Pal, have you been to California?

This is naked special pleading. You seem to be confused about several things about how elections work in California (what harvesting is, how late ballots can arrive, whether they can just be shoved into mailboxes days after election day) - which is understandable since, as far as I know, you don't live here. However, that doesn't prevent you from being sure that the guy you like ought to win the race, and if he doesn't, it's because of FRAUD. If later arriving ballots don't look like the first batch of ballots counted, it's FRAUD. If later ballots should look the same as earlier ones, why even bother counting them? Either they look the same as the earlier ones, and it's a pointless exercise, or it's fraud and they shouldn't be counted.

This would be pointless since ballots must be postmarked by election day. Or do you believe that USPS is in on this too?

Are ballot envelopes retained so that this can be verified? Or is it just up to whoever receives it to do a single verification of the postmark date?

Let me ask you a question. Do you live in a state with vote by mail? Do you vote by mail? Do your Republican friends?

I live in Virginia, where we do have vote by mail. I vote in person, where they at least check my ID, in a district that routinely votes 90% Dem. Among my Republican friends, those less-connected to official party politics they are least likely to vote. I would estimate 50% of my friends who are Republicans and regularly opine about politics actually vote. I vote in every election but not out of any principled reason. And I don’t think my vote counts for much. But when I meet so many Virginia and DC Republicans who are in politics, I much prefer truthfully saying I voted to lying or inventing a complicated explanation for why I don’t. My local precinct is cute and it’s a pleasant drive. My boss has never given me a problem about taking an hour to vote. I think there’s a charge code for it but I’ve never asked.

I hear all sorts of interesting things from my friends in Virginia politics. A friend who would know swears that Jason Miyares was presented with evidence of Democrats committing election fraud and he balked, saying that allegations like that are exactly what he had to protect Virginia from. Not the activities alleged, the allegations themselves. Obviously this isn’t any kind of proof that amounts to anything, let alone proving anything in a discussion here. I’m just adding this for color.

I know a lot of people with different views about the possibility of mail-in ballot voter fraud. I think most people assume some is happening, but probably not “a lot”. I think that Democrats would keep winning elections without it, especially in California. But I also think that they’re certainly doing some, because it helps them keep their grip on power. It’s the same tendency as unions taking a cut of their members’ wages and donating it to Democrats, who get elected and give the unions sweetheart pensions and deals. It’s been going on a long time. It’s part of Tammany Hall and Ellis Island. It’s how part of Truman and LBJ became VP.

The more of this you allow, the weaker your Democracy gets. California in a meaningful sense is ceasing to be a Democracy. The idea of Democracy is that the people choose in fair and free elections who is supposed to govern them. This is increasingly not how elections are conducted. When you allow ballot harvesting, the edge goes to whoever can spin up the largest political machine. The machine is always present in Democracy when it gets larger than the size of a few thousand Athenians raising hands on the public forum. But when we confuse elections with the ballots cast in those elections, the balance tilts toward the machine. We, informed citizens debating what kind of society we should live in, lose power to whoever can stake out the nursing homes, homeless shelters, welfare ghettos, and immigrant slums. The fraud is just a stalking horse. Democracy is already in trouble before it gets that far.

I’m not especially attached to Democracy, but I think it’s probably a good idea and we should fight for it. I’m not going to lecture anybody about the importance of voting or counting every ballot. But I think that overall it works. The system pioneered in California and spreading to Illinois and Virginia and New York clearly does not work. It gets you corrupt officials who can’t even build a train because everything is looted for parts. Karen Bass is a Communist who was trained in Cuba who allowed a beautiful part of a beautiful city to burn, and she can’t even be voted out of office because Democracy has already degraded to a bureaucratized ritual of hand sanitizing.

To address a few of your other points quickly: signature verification is a joke because nobody knows half the time what a signature is supposed to look like and when a ballot is rejected it can be “cured”; chain of custody means that even after a ballot has been ripped apart so that the voter’s name isn’t attached to his vote, you can prove it started life as a legitimate ballot, and if it’s not done it makes a mockery of postmarking ballots, and it’s frequently never done; postmarking itself is not a sacred human institution, robots aren’t staffing the post office, it would be cheap to fake; and it remains extraordinarily convenient that, after all this, Karen Bass has the same vote share, but Spencer Pratt’s goes down and Raman’s goes up.

If a stack of ballots arrived today, nobody knows from where, and they looked official and had the right postmarks, they would be counted.

If the same thing happened with a stack of $100 bills, your local gas station or 7/11 might accept them. But the FBI would find you, because we’ve made it incredibly difficult to counterfeit. But not for ballots. Ballots are sacred.

Okay, so it sounds like you and your Republican friends don't vote by mail. Yet you are still suspicious that the people who vote by mail are not the same as those who vote in person?

I don't even disagree that there's a lot wrong with the system. I'd rather we tossed the ballots that arrive after election day (although these account for less than 1% of ballots). I'd rather we had some kind of voter ID in place. I'd rather we had the count by the morning after election day. But Pratt not getting elected is not evidence of fraud. The guy was a long shot in a city full of libs.

signature verification is a joke because nobody knows half the time what a signature is supposed to look like and when a ballot is rejected it can be “cured”;

The signature is available for comparison from voter registration. The rejection count I gave is ballots that were not cured.

chain of custody means that even after a ballot has been ripped apart so that the voter’s name isn’t attached to his vote, you can prove it started life as a legitimate ballot,

A unique identifier on the ballot compromises secrecy. I'm not aware of any state in the union which does this.

if it’s not done it makes a mockery of postmarking ballots, and it’s frequently never done;

The envelope has a unique identifier.

postmarking itself is not a sacred human institution, robots aren’t staffing the post office,

To be clear - you are claiming that the post office is falsifying postmarks?

People were voting in person and by mail all through Election Day which produced 1. Bass 2. Pratt 3. Raman. After Election Day suddenly the ballots start surging for Raman, so that she might pass Pratt, but they don’t start surging for Pratt.

There’s no good explanation for this that isn’t just an ex-post facto. And you cannot prove that these ballots are legitimate because California deliberately implemented a system that made this impossible.

A unique identifier on the ballot compromises secrecy. I'm not aware of any state in the union which does this.

That’s not what chain of custody means.

To be clear - you are claiming that the post office is falsifying postmarks?

That’s a completely different sentence.

After Election Day suddenly the ballots start surging for Raman, so that she might pass Pratt, but they don’t start surging for Pratt.

Results changing with more ballots coming in is not evidence of fraud. Sorry, that just makes no sense.

Pratt's second most favorable ballot drop ever came on the third btw, so that part isn't even true.

you cannot prove that these ballots are legitimate because California deliberately implemented a system that made this impossible

What would constitute proof?

That’s not what chain of custody means.

Sure. Are you under the impression that California doesn't have chain of custody for ballots? In what way? Be specific.

That’s a completely different sentence.

It's a different sentence because you are merely hinting rather than speaking plainly. Please explain what it means that the post office isn't staffed by robots if postmarks aren't being falsified.

There were two Democratic candidates. Why do the mail-ins support one particular Democratic candidate to a far greater extent than the in-person ballots?

It's fraud. It's obviously fraud.

There were two Democratic candidates.

There's more than that. Did you mean two in the top 3?

Why do the mail-ins support one particular Democratic candidate to a far greater extent than the in-person ballots?

It's fraud. It's obviously fraud.

I do believe I covered this.

.If later arriving ballots don't look like the first batch of ballots counted, it's FRAUD. If later ballots should look the same as earlier ones, why even bother counting them? Either they look the same as the earlier ones, and it's a pointless exercise, or it's fraud and they shouldn't be counted.

You count all the ballots because the law says to count all the ballots, not a convenience sample, even if they could be expected to look the same. There are plausible explanations for the later ballots leaning more Democratic than earlier ones. There are no plausible explanations for them to favor Raman more than the earlier ballots.

It's fraud.

You count all the ballots because the law says to count all the ballots, not a convenience sample, even if they could be expected to look the same.

Oh, sure. But at least we can basically know the result from the first few ballots. Excepting fraud, of course.

There are plausible explanations for the later ballots leaning more Democratic than earlier ones. There are no plausible explanations for them to favor Raman more than the earlier ballots.

So, basically, later ballots might be more Democratic than earlier ones, and that's not prima face fraud. But unless they are in favor of the Democrat that was ahead to begin with, it's fraud. Am I understanding you correctly?

Very much an aside, but:

I guess the more left-wing you are the more likely you are to fill in a ballot late.

This seems entirely believable to me. At the extreme end, zero-covid loons would all vote by mail and would be overwhelmingly far-left. Very-online far-left agoraphobes would also exclusively vote by mail, which is not true of very-online far-right types (who wouldn’t trust it). More relevantly, far-left PMC types who can’t be bothered to go out to a polling station are more likely to vote by mail. Same for boomer-lib retiree types. Less charitably, dysfunctional zoomer-socialists with self-diagnosed mental illnesses are presumably very likely to send their mail-in votes at the last possible moment. Combine these and similar factors, plus the fact that actual republicans are likely not to trust vote-by-mail systems, and I could easily see a direct correlation between left-wing-ness and propensity for mail voting. I think this is borne out by surveys too, although I admit I don’t remember where I read that.

That doesn’t explain why hundreds of thousands of those ballots wouldn’t be turned in until after the election. It’s very interesting that the 3rd place candidate starts winning the most votes days after the election. Must be one of those statistical correlations. That’s likelier than FRAUD

At the extreme end, zero-covid loons would all vote by mail and would be overwhelmingly far-left. Very-online far-left agoraphobes would also exclusively vote by mail, which is not true of very-online far-right types (who wouldn’t trust it). More relevantly, far-left PMC types who can’t be bothered to go out to a polling station are more likely to vote by mail. Same for boomer-lib retiree types.

Every one of these types sounds like someone who would have had their ballot in the mail weeks ago. I mean, really, we're thinking the HR highlighter girls are just "whoops, three weeks past due" on voting?

Sometimes deadlines are what actually makes things get done: In my locale, I can early vote (and do sometimes), but often put it off until the last chance on election day proper. I could imagine "I should put my ballot in the mailbox, but eh I'm busy tonight" leading to a lot of ballots postmarked on election day if that's the nominal deadline.

But absent USPS shenanigans, I wouldn't expect that to arrive three weeks late.

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