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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   20610 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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Elections are by their nature a contested environment not just between the individual candidates, but as Tom Scott touches upon in this video on electronic voting, between the candidates, their respective voters, and those administering the election. You seem to be approaching this issue as though it were a criminal trial where the election must be presumed legitimate unless proved otherwise in a court of law, but that's not how this works. You need to understand that the purpose of an election is not to produce a "true" or "accurate" result. It is to produce a clear result that the candidates (and their voters) can accept as legitimate, including the ones who lost. [some spelling corrections]

So one side gets a Heckler's Veto until they are convinced of the legitimacy of the election? If they're upset enough, then the government needs to alter procedures until they are satisfied? No evidence is required, merely a sense of disquiet among some portion of voters? What procedural changes would produce a "legitimate" election for those people?

Basically yes.

If you want a peaceful transition of power, you need to be able to convince the losers that they lost fairly and that they have more to gain by continuing to work within the system than they have to lose by checking out of it or blowing it up.

As I've touched upon before I think liberals tend treat the relative peace and prosperity of societies such as the US and EU as though it were a physical law (like gravity), rather than something that has to be actively cultivated and maintained, and this sort of attitude strikes me as a manifestation of this tendency.

As I've touched upon before I think liberals tend treat the relative peace and prosperity of societies such as the US and EU as though it were a physical law (like gravity), rather than something that has to be actively cultivated and maintained

But that is precisely why losers should be required to provide proofs when they contest an election! Otherwise no peace is possible because the losers will always contest the results because it will always be in their best interest.

Again, "You seem to be approaching this issue as though it were a criminal trial where the election must be presumed legitimate unless proved otherwise in a court of law, but that's not how this works."

My core point is that no such presumption exists.

Your core point is not clear because it is an anti-analogy. Analogies are not helpful to begin with, but anti-analogies are even worse. It needs to be clarified, but let me help.

I agree that any citizen committed to democracy should make sure that the electoral process is fair. This means, above all, that the legal procedures in place have been respected, and also that nothing has occurred which cannot be codified but which seriously calls into question the sincerity of the ballot. I think you agree, but contradict me if you don't.

However, here's where it gets complicated: questioning the results (in bad faith) is also a way of trying to cheat. So a citizen committed to democracy should also view any accusations of fraud with circumspection.

He or she should therefore demand that anyone making such accusations provides, perhaps not evidence, but factual elements that lead him or her to believe that irregularities have been committed and that they are of such a nature as to call the results into question. Tell me where I'm wrong.

Suppose I were to suggest that a goal of the 2020 election was not in fact to convince the losers that they lost fairly. It was to convince the losers that the winners could engage blatant shenanigans and get away with it. To let conservatives know that the only way they could win would be to challenge the legitimacy of the system.... which, being conservatives, they could not do. So the only real choice available to them was to sit down, shut up, and assist in the muzzling of their fringe in exchange for being thrown a bone now and then.

If you want a peaceful transition of power, you need to be able to convince the losers that they lost fairly and that they have more to gain by continuing to work within the system than they have to lose by checking out of it or blowing it up.

Is there a responsibility, in your view, for the losers to examine if their real objection might not be principled, but literally over just losing?

I think you two might be talking past each other. Whether or not the losers should have good objections is a normative statement. Whether or not their objections are a problem is a descriptive statement. If the losers refuse to accept the result of an election no matter how fair and transparent it is, you don't have a functioning democracy.

In other words, no matter how fair an election might be that both sides had previously agreed to, the loser should be catered to with negotiations and compromises simply because they refuse to accept the outcome.

I reject that idea entirely. If Trump supporters and other election truthers need to have refuges from the rest of the American nation, I'm willing to accommodate that, but I'm not going to accept their claim that they just have a principled concern about election security.

I'm not giving a "should". Maybe Hlynka is, but there's certainly multiple options how you deal with people not recognizing the legitimacy of a government. Simply ignoring them is the default, and works just fine if there aren't too many of them or they aren't particularly interested in taking action. On the other extreme is civil war. I think the US is leaning a lot closer to the former than the latter.

I recognize you didn't give a "should", but Hlynka very much would agree with the absurd position I detailed in my previous comment. That's his position, unless he draws some line based on how many people actually disagree.

What does it mean for an election to be "fair" or "legitimate" if it doesn't mean having buy-in from both sides?

Consider an unopened box. You and I agree that whatever is inside, we will share equally between ourselves. We open it, and it happens to be your favorite candy bar. I go to split it equally, but you grab one side of it and insist that actually, you want the whole thing and I should re-negotiate over it.

Would you say you are acting in bad faith?

As much as there’s responsibility for the winners to examine if their belief in the legitimacy of their win might not be principled, by verifying the methods with the same scrutiny as if they’d lost.

I agree. But if you want to go down the route of saying the losers are refusing to be rational because that would cost them energy and momentum vs. the winners who don't, then just say that.

No because that's not how Democracy works.

You want Democracy? You need buy-in from the démos.

That means you don't really even want elections, right? You just want negotiations over policy. Because if the losers, as I suspect, are a bit more motivated by losing than they claim to be, then no amount of proof would work because they don't care about proof in the first place.

That means you don't really even want elections, right? You just want negotiations over policy.

Perhaps this is the Leviathan-shaped hole in the discourse rearing it's ugly head again, but "negotiations over policy" (or rather who gets to set that policy) is exactly what an election is, is it not?

Otherwise, I refer you to @DuplexFields' response above.

Perhaps this is the Leviathan-shaped hole in the discourse rearing it's ugly head again, but "negotiations over policy" (or rather who gets to set that policy) is exactly what an election is, is it not?

No, my point is that you and anyone else who takes this viewpoint is essentially claiming that you don't care about proof over whether the election was stolen in the first place. You just want a guarantee that your policies are enacted.

Suppose the Democrats were to offer a guarantee that they'd quash any attempt at enacting laws which would shift the government's stance to be more socially progressive in exchange for Republicans (including the MAGA ones) never bringing up the 2020 election again, and that this would hold for the next 10 years. God himself comes down and says they're not lying about what they'll do. In this scenario, I would expect people complaining about the election losers to largely come down against this deal on principle. Instead, I suspect the losers would actually, seriously debate if they should accept.

you and anyone else who takes this viewpoint is essentially claiming that you don't care about proof over whether the election was stolen in the first place. You just want a guarantee that your policies are enacted.

Isn't this, like -- strictly way better than relitigating 2020 in excrutiating detail over and over again? The evidence is what it is, we aren't getting more, and even outside of partisan hacks pretty much everyone has made up their mind.

"I don't care about 2020 proofs and never want to hear about it again -- but we need to bake accountability for following voting procedures and anti-fraud measures into the system so it never happens again" is at least actionable -- and something that is difficult(ish) for either side to object to. (and no, "it doesn't matter, those dumb MAGAs will protest anyways" is not a valid objection)

Why would it be better? It's a flat-out rejection of the idea that the truth should inform action. I have no problem with litigation over the facts of the 2020 election, but the frustrating part is that the election truthers don't ever give me confidence that they care about the truth for its own sake, but more because they think it's impossible Trump could have lost in the first place.

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Traditionally, even the losers in the US have been quite principled and put country over party, and their own specific interests.

Even Nixon stepped down.

You’re trying to justify a race to the bottom instead of calling out unjustified behavior.

No non-authoritarian system of government is going to do well with unprincipled, unreasonable behavior at scale.

You’re trying to justify a race to the bottom instead of calling out unjustified behavior.

No, those objecting to the election shenanigans are trying to call out bad behavior. Those excusing them on the grounds that it's bad to question elections are attempting to elevate the appearance of legitimacy over actual legitimacy.

You’re doing the motte n bailey between “were things perfect” and “was the election rigged/stolen.”

Instances of bad behavior can be acknowledged and we are still nowhere near what was claimed by Trump or TTV.

Nobody is even "acknowledging" "bad behavior".

It does not follow from "The election has not been demonstrated to hostile adjudicators to be as bad as was claimed by Trump or TTV" that "The election may not have been perfect but it was good enough".

Well there’s a great deal of evidence from all the recounts and investigations that in fact it was good enough.

We have a ton of procedures in place so that the baseline is supposed to be “good enough.”

Hanging chads and glitches and Covid issues can all still happen, even low-level fraud, but that’s pretty far away from the claims made that 2020 was illegitimate.

One way to try to do this is examine specific claims of fraud and foul play…

You’re certainly right overall, but you’re underplaying here the particulars of Trump and the ecosystem of liars and idiots who cannot be swayed by any level of evidence about the fairness of elections, even when they win!

On many issues, I blame the left for being the root of the problem. On elections, however, there’s clearly a Trump-inspired delusion on the right that is impervious to reality.

So one side gets a Heckler's Veto until they are convinced of the legitimacy of the election?

This, but unironically.

The primary goal of an election is convincing the losers they lost to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. Selecting a winner is a significantly less important goal. If a large portion of the population doesn't believe the election (and therefore the government) is legitimate, that's the road to a coup or civil war. Or at least lower level societal dysfunction as more people reject government authority. It's still a problem even if their reasons appear to be nonsense.

The primary goal of an election is convincing the losers they lost to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. Selecting a winner is a significantly less important goal.

Precisely.

So what’s the theory on how to get people who demonstrably don’t care about evidence to become open to being convinced by evidence?

Conspiratorial thinking is famously hard to deal with.

Let’s pretend Dems had done an admirable job of running elections to whatever standard you consider reasonable, but Trump still narrowly lost.

How different would Trump and MAGA types have behaved in your view?

Yes. that's literally how democracy works.

You have to convince the other half of the country they lost fair and square, or give up on peaceful transition of power. There is no third option.

If you find the other half to be unreasonable, that's a problem, but they still need to be placated or fought.

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