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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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And that's just one logistical issue. The secret ballot doesn't mean there's no tracking of ballots sent out and returned at all. The record of who you voted for is unknown, but if you voted is public. So in order to generate a bunch of additional fake votes you have to figure out a bunch of registered nonvoters to pin it on or else you end up with a massive clump of votes received>voters who actually voted. But if you have a bunch of registered nonvoters to pin it on, then you have to coordinate them to cover up that they didn't actually vote when people check, in which case is it not easier to just have them vote if they're in on the conspiracy? So ok maybe you make up a bunch of fake people who can't expose they didn't really vote because they aren't real, but then the double check finds they aren't real so nothing has been fixed!

The easiest weak point I can think of would be in the counting process, just saying "yep this one for A is actually for B" but then you have to find a way to hide it from the other monitors and dispose of the real ballots without anyone noticing, because of course if you just mark it down wrong the double checks can find that too you have to replace real ballots with fake ones.

Election fraud can work out in countries that are already lying about all their other logistics and where no one really bothers to meaningfully contest the results anyway (since they all know it's rigged), but it's going to be way harder when numbers don't start to match and people are willing to challenge it in the US.

you have to figure out a bunch of registered nonvoters to pin it on

Homeless people. You register them to vote at the homeless shelter, getting them to sign the registration form with an X, then the party loyalists staffing the homeless shelter just fill out the ballots when they arrive at the shelter. The homeless shelter is rewarded with government funding when their party has power. There is essentially zero possibility that there is anybody working at any homeless shelter who is not a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat party loyalist, there's essentially zero chance of this operation getting ratted out. It actually feels extremely reasonable to me that this would be the explicit mechanism by which the Democrats keep their electoral majority secure in California. This also explains a great deal about how California can continue to spend billions of dollars on homelessness without actually achieving any sort of meaningful reduction in homelessness.

X to doubt. Homeless shelters are mostly run by religious Christians, not lefty NGO's.

Why not just have the homeless vote in the first place? Presumably most homeless would also mostly vote for the Democrats, and this way you do not go to jail if your little scheme is discovered.

Purportedly, this was how they swung things in LA. Paying homeless people $5 to vote for the other socialist after the formal date, and then kept going until they had just enough to keep Pratt out of the runoff. There are videos of interviews with supposed homeless people. Believe, dive down a research rabbit hole, or press X to doubt as you choose.

Given that these are literal homeless people, there would probably be an unacceptable rate of voting for republicans because of some combination of 'I just want to fill it out for my $10'/literally not understanding how to vote straight D/'Screw you for telling me what to do'/etc.

I don't believe the theory, mind(notably, homeless shelters are mostly a Christian project in the US, and not particularly likely to do shady stuff on behalf of democrats). But the idea that the homeless would vote monolithically D anyways is not an argument.

And yet it fails the very next part

then you have to coordinate them to cover up that they didn't actually vote when people check,

A whole bunch of people saying they were signed up at the homeless shelters and that they didn't vote yet somehow votes were submitted in their name would be noticeable. And if these homeless people were willing to lie and say they actually did vote, then it would be easy to just get them to vote to begin with.

This also explains a great deal about how California can continue to spend billions of dollars on homelessness without actually achieving any sort of meaningful reduction in homelessness.

There's already an easy and known explanation for it, spending doesn't matter. Housing supply and demand matters and California is extremely NIMBY. It's why West Virginia has some of the worst drug rates but low homelessness. Homes are cheaper (because they have a much larger supply:demand ratio) so even most of the addicts can afford a place.

A whole bunch of people saying they were signed up at the homeless shelters and that they didn't vote yet somehow votes were submitted in their name would be noticeable.

Dunno about a whole bunch, but I recently saw a reporter interviewing homeless people in LA saying that they were paid to fill out ballots for/against some ballot initiative -- so what if it's both happening and noticeable, but nobody does anything about it because the people doing the fraud keep getting elected?

but I recently saw a reporter interviewing homeless people in LA saying that they were paid to fill out ballots for/against some ballot initiative --

If there is any teeth to it, why is it kept only at "interviewing" random people? Put together a list of names who are willing to officially testify. File lawsuits. Have professional journalists (the top news media corporation in the US is conservative aligned! They have talent who could do a proper investigation). It seems remarkable that apparently the amount people want to go in evidence for it is random ground interviews, something easily and commonly staged, and then everyone is apparently happy to stop there and be satisfied. If they're real, it should be easy to do more than some guy making a YouTube or Tiktok video or something!

And if there is something going on, it should be able to be traced to top level officials (if the accusations was that they were involved). When voter fraud schemes do occur, they're often from private individuals engaged in their own misbehavior. For example we actually know of a drugs for votes scheme in Puerto Rico and we have an idea who was involved. A violent gang had connections to the Republican candidate and independently engaged in a drugs for votes scheme to support her. She was not involved, they just did it because they stood to benefit from her winning.

It wasn't some youtuber, it was like a real old-fashioned TV news reporter -- I do think a lady got charged on that one, you could look it up? But I have no reason to think it was staged.

It wasn't some youtuber, it was like a real old-fashioned TV news reporter -- I do think a lady got charged on that one, you could look it up? But I have no reason to think it was staged.

So I did look it up, and yes a woman named Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong plead guilty to it. There doesn't seem to be any proof of connections to higher level officials, she seems to have done it of her own volition and got caught. https://www.facebook.com/SpectrumNews1SoCal/videos/a-marina-del-rey-woman-paid-homeless-individuals-on-las-skid-row-to-register-to-/1835258350765981/

This combined with the recent Puerto Rico case serve as good evidence of how hard getting away with such a widespread conspiracy would be, the homeless people will not actually engage in a cover up as alleged. If there was widespread election fraud going on, then "just go and ask people if they actually voted" seems to be an effective strategy. Even just a random person attempting it with a very small segment of homeless people got it leaked.

Even a far simpler case like someone who tried to fake signatures for a petition got easily caught https://abc7news.com/post/exclusive-team-confronts-couple-paying-san-francisco-homeless-fake-signatures-petitions/18868695/ it's really hard to get away with such fraud for an extended period.

How politically active do you really think the modal homeless person is? The point is to get your hands on a bunch of ballots for a bunch of people who were never actually planning on voting, and likely aren't even aware of what you are doing when you shove a voter registration in their face and tell them to draw an X on it.

How politically active do you really think the modal homeless person is?

According to your theory, they are politically active enough that they would help in an active cover up and pretend to have actually voted if questioned. And if they're that motivated to lie to people double checking, then it seems reasonable enough to assume they should be motivated to just vote to begin with.

They're vagrants. How would you find them in order to question them? You show up to the address on their ballot to ask about them and the person there will just shrug and tell you they have no idea.

They're vagrants. How would you find them in order to question them?

You have their name and other registration information and know what city they're in, that's more than enough for someone who wants to check to track basically anyone down. That this theory is specifically selected for people who use shelters too makes it way easier to find them as well. If people don't want to do the work of double checking, then it suggests that no one actually believes this is a method used in election fraud and thus not worth their time to investigate.

You show up to the address on their ballot to ask about them and the person there will just shrug and tell you they have no idea.

Just ask them if they voted. Sure some will tell you to fuck off because they assume you're up to something else like trying to solicit them or whatever, but if it was a widespread issue then you should be able to find a pretty sizeable verifiable number of people who are marked as having voted who will attest that they didn't actually vote.