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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   30059 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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The statute allows simply mailing ballots. There is no problem here that needs solving.

Would you be allowed to mail a sealed ballot on someone else's behalf?

I don't think I've ever actually mailed a physical letter in my entire life. I'm sure it's not too hard, but one can imagine 80IQ or low-motivation people screwing it up.

There’s something to what you say, but I’d say the impact is more on young people than on stupid people. Even though some people here can’t seem to imagine it, there are plenty of younger Millennials and Zoomers who have never sent a letter in their lives, and I know for a fact that many elementary schools stopped teaching kids how to address an envelope 15+ years ago (probably around the time they stopped teaching cursive). Bills get paid online, greeting cards are passe, and anything else can be handled via email. Couple these young people’s inexperience with their crippling anxiety and other mental disorders, and many will decide to skip an activity entirely rather than try to figure out how to send a letter. Even worse are the ones who don’t know how to address an envelope but who arrogantly assume they can just somehow figure it out. I’ve seen some doozies from younger coworkers.

I’d guess low-IQ individuals, on the other hand, probably send out more letters than any other group. They’re probably more likely to still pay bills by cash or check, they’re more likely to have relatives or friends who are incarcerated (jails and prisons still make inmates use the postal service), they’re more likely to receive government benefits that require them to send documents via mail, etc.

I've had a few friends go to prison. Can't speak for everyone or all of them, but it seems most of them have solutions for electronic messaging now. It's all hacky custom apps by some prison services company that are overpriced, don't work that well, and are certain to be highly monitored, but it's still better than physical letters. Physical letters may still be necessary sometimes though.

I don't think I'd ever communicate with a regular person via written physical letters. But it's also hard to imagine not ever mailing a physical letter in my whole life. At least some legal and bureaucratic processes still seem to require it.

They’re probably more likely to still pay bills by cash or check,

The underclass pays their bills over the phone or through middlemen. Not by mailing a physical check.

No offense, but what possible lifestyle do you live? Are you really young, like college age?

Am I just old and out of touch, or are you a strange outlier?

I’m youngish (just shy of 30). I have never sent a physical letter. No one I know my age has ever sent a physical letter. I have sent 1 package by UPS. I recently had to walk a friend through how to do so because they had no idea how it worked at all, whether they needed their own box or were provided one etc.

It’s just really not that common unless you sell stuff online or something and so need to ship things.

You've never had to deal with a government agency by mail?

No. In what context would that be necessary? All state-level stuff has always been online, and county-level, while theoretically doable via mail, is easier to just do in person. I can’t think of anything that would require the mail, and anything that doesn’t require it gets sped up by several weeks by not using it.

Meanwhile, all my dealings with the feds have involved a blacked-out SUV showing up at my door. By far the most convenient.

And we have discovered the reason why Democrats want this and Republicans don't.

Whether true or not, both parties believe that the extremely stupid and lazy will lean blue.

If stupid and lazy people are going to screw up mailing a ballot then I'm not sure why Democrats would expect to benefit.

Subsets of the population which incline towards the Democratic Party have low voter turnout. The average nonvoter would favor the Democratic Party if voting was mandatory.

We're talking about voting by mail, not mandatory voting.

Your experience is extremely atypical and I wouldn’t extrapolate from that.

Agreed. I'm a person who does a lot of stuff digitally (more than average, in my experience) and I still mail physical letters a few times per year. Someone who has never mailed a letter ever is way, way outside the norm.

Also, I'll second @yofuckreddit here: mailing a letter is really easy and if someone can't figure it out, they frankly are too stupid to vote. Even if one has never mailed a letter before, it would take 5 minutes with Google to look at how you are supposed to address the envelope and where the nearest post office is. The bar to entry is on the floor here.

You don't even need to address the envelope to vote by mail. They send you an envelope. You just have to put the ballot in, seal it, sign it, and put it in a blue box.

I haven't mailed anything in years, and I haven't mailed an actual letter in decades.

I'm struggling to think of when I last received a valuable piece of mail (instead of just paper copies of bills and advertisements). It might have been some Christmas cards from pre-pandemic times.

I got a jury summons the other day and the IRS communicates via mail.

I'm struggling to think of when I last received a valuable piece of mail

Weekly for me. In the past month: a passport, a check, a medical bill. All mandatory through the mail.

I’ve sent one or two letters in my life. Idr how to do it but I’m sure it’s googleable.

It might be more typical for the under 25 contingent. Many do seem genuinely unable to do simple offline things like mail a letter or make phone calls to a business.

I've seen a Reddit post where a young person claimed that no apartments were available in their city because they couldn't find any on the one or two apartment websites they tried. When people pointed out a large number of listings on Craig's List, they seemed to despair at the thought of actually having to call or email for information. Maybe that says more about Reddit than young people... but this is presumably not ultra rare behavior.

Sounds like a feature, not a bug.

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