site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is what we did before vote-counting machines existed. It's what they still do in larger countries like India.

India only have one race per election (rarely two), and they don't try to count overnight - they allow a full day for counting after several days to allow ballot boxes from remote rural precincts to be taken to the counting centre.

In the UK, we don't try to count more than one race overnight. If there are multiple races (e.g. Westminster and local elections on the same day) we count the Westminster election overnight and count the local elections the following day. Three races is about the practical limit for a full-day count - I have attended local counts with three open seats per ward, and London mayoral elections also involve three races (Mayor, constituency assembly member, and PR list assembly member) and in both cases the results come out late in the afternoon. London count the mayoral election on Saturday (polling day is Thursday) to given electoral staff and party observers time to recover from polling day - having done a day's GOTV followed by observing a three-race count the next day I understand why they do this.

Taking the largest state as an example, California had 4 major races in 2020 (POTUS, US House, both houses of the State legislature) and 12 propositions. In 2022 there were 13 major races (scheduled US senate, special US senate, US House, both houses of the State legislature, 7 statewide offices, Board of Equalization), 7 propositions, and 4 judicial elections. Add 2-3 county-level races, 1-2 city level races and 1-2 other races (e.g. school board) and you are looking at an average of about 25 races. Hand-counting that at British levels of efficiency (which are above the global average, and well above anything California could manage) would take about two weeks even if there were no contentious recounts. Americans expect the first count to be complete by the early hours of Wednesday morning, and MAGA are already claiming that delayed counts are evidence of fraud.

To hand-count all races in a typical US election in a one-day daylight count, let alone overnight, would be a bigger commitment of resources to vote-counting than any other country has ever made. There is a reason why the US adopted voting machines long before voting machines that actually worked were available - remember the Florida 2000 "chad" debacle. I'm not sure, but it looks like the US starts using voting machines around the same time that the media starts to expect next-day results. Would it be a good idea? Probably. Is it technically feasible? I don't know. The number of races you can count in parallel is limited by the size of the available count venue and the bandwidth of key senior people who need to review every result before it is announced. You also run out of sufficiently distinct colours of ballot paper. I remember the time the city council election was on blue paper and the county council election was on lilac paper - it caused several hours of delay and the administrator responsible was transferred.

Would convincing the media that they could wait two weeks for the state and local results to allow for a hand count to happen at reasonable speed be a good idea? It depends if it would actually increase confidence in elections. My gut feeling is that in today's America it would not.

Would reducing the number of directly elected positions so that there are fewer races to count be a good idea? Almost certainly in my view, but the argument about whether or not to elect the dog catcher is not primarily about ease of election administration.