site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This works well and we don't have any voting fraud here.

How do you know you don't have any voting fraud?

We have a robust system and when some fool tries they get caught and punished and their fraudulent ballot is not counted.

The paper ballots that are marked by the voter and not a machine. Prior to an election, the state tests the memory devices that are programmed to read ballots to ensure the machines used to count ballots — known as tabulators — produce the same results as a hand-count of test ballots. Clerks repeat those tests on local machines. Tabulators are not connected to the internet.

Local nonpartisan clerks then report each person’s voting history in the days following each election through the state’s central voter registration system. This allows state election officials to verify that the total number of ballots cast and voters match. It also lets election overseers check that voters did not cast multiple ballots either by voting by absentee ballot and again in-person, or at multiple polling locations.

The only cases of alleged voter fraud charged by the attorney general’s office after the 2020 election were against two University students. One case is still pending against a woman who allegedly voted twice. Two felony charges against another woman were dismissed in November 2021 after she completed 200 hours of community service and wrote an apology letter to a voter she falsely submitted an absentee ballot for, according to DH, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Attorney General.