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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Starting with a response to this since it might shed some light on my posting motivations (if need be). I did not vote in 2016 (not old enough in '16) or 2020, nor do I plan to in 2024, mostly cause I live in New York state, among other reasons. However, if you dragged me in front of a voting booth, then I'm 99% certain I'd vote a straight R ticket in every election, including 2024. In fact, I'm probably the closest to voting than I've ever been mostly cause I really like Vance, even if Trump has soured on me. But, even without Vance, I'd probably still still vote a straight R ticket if you dragged me there.
Did you read my comment about the CEO and worker stealing money? I think this applies here.
I know the US is incredibly polarized, but if Trump presented smoking gun evidence of fraud, I sincerely believe it would break through that polarization. The reason it didn't break through was that the evidence wasn't strong enough. Sure, you could say the left wing MSM would just bury any good smoking gun evidence, but if they did, the public would see through it ala Epstein killing himself, or, if you take the Hanania view that media is biased but still fundamentally truth seeking like I do, then media would cover the story in a biased, but still truth presenting way.
RE: the worker stealing money analogy:
For me the analogy breaks down at the beginning. Republicans have always accused Democrats of fraud. Florida has a few counties that are notorious for it. Chicago is notorious for it. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
Let's say a CEO knows that employees sometimes waste time on their phones or talking about non-work topics, and that this cuts into their bottom line. Sometimes the company has bad quarters, and some grumbling is given to the employees getting paid to chatter. A few of the more egregious examples get written up but not much happens.
Then the company has a year where everyone works from home. There are many more reports of employees doing errands during normal business hours, more reports of overtime than usual, time card irregularities. The business has a horrible year and ends Q4 with a loss.
Is it reasonable for the boss to think he's being taken for a sucker?
It seems the disagreement ends up at disagreeing on our priors of how likely election fraud is, like with a lot of other people that have replied. My priors on fraud are way lower than yours, so I need way stronger evidence to overcome that. So, for your version of the hypo I would disagree with
this part because it shows decently strong evidence (assuming the reports aren't spurious) for employees wasting more time than they usually do, thus explaining the bad year. Meanwhile, I don't see strong evidence for 2020 fraud that would explain Trump's bad year. I think it's not strong cause my prior on election fraud in the US is so low, but, if the same events occurred in a random third world country with a history of unstable democracy and fraud, the same evidence might actually push me over the edge and conclude that was fraud. (or maybe not. Depending how much I cared about this random 3rd world country, I still might not think there was fraud if the official explanation poked enough holes the fraud explanation). So, ultimately answering the hypo, yes it is reasonable for the boss to think he's being taken for a sucker, but the differences are sufficient enough that the hypo doesn't apply to 2020 Trump
If you click the Heritage link in my comment above it has documentation on over a thousand proven instances of recent (last 30 years) voter fraud in the US leading to over a thousand criminal convictions and overturning dozens of (generally local) elections. I think my priors are better supported than yours.
I will say I am familiar with that link, because I recently used that same link to disprove the supposed effectiveness of voter fraud. The person whom I had argued with had suggested that 200K fraudulent votes in the right locations would overturn the election. I took him at his word on that number, but argued that an organization whose goal is to find as much fraud as possible found less than 1% of that number over 30 years.
It also establishes that the government does have methods of detecting fraud, thus establishing that the fraud would have to either evade said methods or the audits themselves would also have to be fraudulent. This matters because the claim often pushed is that voter ID is necessary; which, even if we say elections are being stolen, if voter ID wouldn't catch it then what's the point of focusing on it? Trump repeatedly claims fraud in states that already have it.
I will say on a personal note that with regards to the whole, "if evidence existed the public would see past any attempts to bury it" idea, I'm not even sure. My personal view is that, similar to the Haitians eating cats story, I've generally become numb to claims of evidence. This is because quite frankly I've heard too many stories online that end up being bullshit with an unrelated or AI generated pictures that I figure someone with more time will sort them out. I don't even remember how many are the same ones I've already heard and have been debunked but still manage to circulate or get twisted by the repeated retellings. If you want to say I'm intellectually weak or biased, sure. I'm just telling you how humans work.
The Heritage foundation link is a database of election fraud that was proved in court. It's not an exhaustive list of all suspected of credible election fraud. It is very, very hard to put a case together that a whole state's election should be overturned because of the sheer numbers involved. If you look at one precinct, one race with fewer than 5,000 ballots, you can keep the scope of your investigation narrow and focused. If it's not just one county, one precinct cheating, but several, each not enough on its own to swing the race, but cumulative, there is a lot more to prove.
That said, I thought the Kari Lake trial did a good job and I was convinced at least. Here is a link if you would like to watch it: https://youtube.com/live/qsaOvV55XWM?si=JvRMpDKvsRvHOFhv&t=240
Fair, I do know the list is only what was proven, and "found" was not the best word. It's still a rounding error away from 0 in the context of elections.
I'm willing to give my opponent's arguments a read, but an 8-hour video of one day of a trial is rather more than I'm willing to commit. So I looked up that trial and Lake lost, because her main evidence was some bad printers that someone claimed they believed were tampered with but could not prove. That and some claims about a secret tally that were actually livestreamed and Republicans were participating in.
I'm typing up a transcript of key moments here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think I ever denied local fraud, but do any of those cases relate to national elections to congress? Or statewide elections for something like a governor? Were any of them significant enough to even have the chance to flip an election (aka not those voted in 2 states examples or single cases of a felon voting when they shouldn't. However, someone organizing hundreds or thousands of these cases would count) even if they actually didn't flip it? Have any of them been linked to the democrat or republican party or has it been for personal gain?
It might read like I'm moving the goalposts, but small scale fraud like this is consistent with "swiping a few dollars here and there" in my CEO hypo, so I've been consistent.
Being more clear now, my prior for local fraud in the middle of nowhere is way way higher than my prior for fraud for a statewide or national level election, so skimming that that fraud database doesn't really surprise me.
You can filter by fraud type by Election Overturned to see cases where the fraud affected the results of the election. Here is one in 2020 that found 3/4 of absentee ballots were not valid.
I want to note that this is a database of election fraud that was proved in court. It's not an exhaustive list of all suspected of credible election fraud. It is very, very hard to put a case together that a whole state's election should be overturned because of the sheer numbers involved. If you look at one precinct, one race with fewer than 5,000 ballots, you can keep the scope of your investigation narrow and focused. If it's not just one county, one precinct cheating, but several, each not enough on its own to swing the race, but cumulative, there is a lot more to prove.
That said, I thought the Kari Lake trial did a good job and I was convinced at least. Here is a link if you would like to watch it: https://youtube.com/live/qsaOvV55XWM?si=JvRMpDKvsRvHOFhv&t=240
Was this supposed to be a link?
Yes, sorry. Fixed now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
@Turbulent_Singularity I'm going to try to get the timestamps of the video for what are the most significant parts (I like listening to court recordings while doing other things but that doesn't mean that everyone else does.)
At 1:04:49 Maricopa County uses Ballot on Demand Printers. Both the printers and ballot readers are calibrated together. This election, they were calibrated for a 20 inch ballot.
Most important quote: "What would happen if a ballot was printed out of a Ballot on Demand printer at the vote center, if it was printed with a 19 inch ballot on a 20 inch paper, and run through the tabulator?"
Election's Director answer: "I can't answer that because we did not test for that because all our ballets were 20 inch."
Then at 1:20:00: "You recall that there were issues with ballots being rejected on November 8th, 2022, Election day, correct?
"Do you recall tabulators rejecting ballots at at least 70 vote centers during Election Day?"
Election's Director Witness: "Yes, I recall that there was about 70 different vote centers that we sent technicians out to to change printer settings at because our tabulators were not reading those ballots."
"Would a disruption such as experienced - would you agree with me that there was a disruption on November 8th, 2022, on the election?"
Election's Director Witness: "I would say that we had some printers that were not printing ballots dark enough to be read in by tabulation. Voters had legal options to participate with voting, so I do not count that as a disruption."
"Did you hear of any reports of wait times over 60 minutes?"
Election's Director Witness: "Yes I did."
"What is the target wait time in your model, do you know?"
Election's Director Witness: "On average, half an hour."
"Did you ever become aware of multiple reports at various voting centers where wait times exceeded 2 hours?"
Election's Director Witness: "Our data shows some locations approaching 2 hours, but not exceeding it."
"If a 19 inch ballot image was put on a 20 inch paper, in the 2022 General Election, would that be a failure of your election process?"
Election's Director Witness: "If that would happen, which I don't know how it would, yes. It would have been a mistake."
Next edit will be a while, but I will type stuff up for the printer specialist witness when he comes up.
I might watch the whole thing later, but what you showed me so far hasn't really moved me. All I think now is "there were a few technical problems. Wait times were longer than expected because of these technical problems. A 19 inch image ballot would probably be rejected from the tabulator in 2022. A 19 inch ballot image was used in 2020, but in 2022, they used a 20 inch image"
Here is the evidence that I'd be looking for after learning that
what is error rate of the printer and tabulator? How about in past elections? How about in other states or countries, if used abroad? Is this a normal type of machine error? Is it human error? How easy is it to make this human error e.g. is it as simple as closing a document without saving, or is it more akin to changing the font, font size, margins, line spacing, columns, etc "by accident"?
were all or most of the technical problems and delays in red areas? (would need to adjust for number of machines per county or polling station to see if there was bias). Same analysis as above to check for that bias in other elections, past and present, in Arizona and not.
is there evidence this 19 inch image ballot problem was intentional in anyway? Right now, especially given 19 inch images were used in 2020, it seems like a mistake. If this problem was in all or mostly red areas, it would be evidence of intention. If printing 19 inch ballots when you are supposed to print 20 inch ballots is as easy as misclick, that is evidence of a mistake.
Sorry, it's taking a while to type up the other testimony. Responding to your points, supported by the expert witness testimony:
Error rate is high though expert was not permitted to see every ballot. Witness was provided a sample of 348 from 6 vote centers, 50 of them had been rejected due to being printed incorrectly. He could see the same, very visible error, on other ballots he was not allowed to inspect ballots on. This error could not have been machine error. It was 100% intentional, would need to have been inserted by someone running a script on the printer from a secure laptop or by someone from the Election Management System setting the ballot definitions.
Maricopa is a mixed county, with a substantial number of blue and red precints., you can layer by party majority. There is a voter suppression issue, where if this happened in primarily red areas it could be considered voter suppression due to extended lines. If this happened primarily in blue counties, it could have been a way to force the ballots into "duplication" where ballots could have been triplicated, quadrupled, etc.
One witness, Steve Richner, testified that they don't count the number of ballots they transport to main tabulation center (where all the rejected ballots would go.) They count them at the main tabulation center, but not at the voting center. This is a vulnerability.
If it is proven to be intentional, (and the expert witness is very sure), then what is the intention? The only reason someone would intentionally cause a wide spread printer/tabulator error is to affect the election in some way. Maybe they were trying to throw it in favor of Kari Lake! But with the testimony at hand, I don't think it's possible to say that there was no significant, widespread fraud.
It was determined that it could not have done accidentally. The expert explained that security protocols on the print spooler and the Election Management System mean that it would need to be done intentionally or with willful negligence. All the ballot definitions are tested before the election.
Information Security Officer witness testimony begins around the 2 hour mark. (the 8 minutes before this was boring stuff establishing his credentials as an expert in root cause analysis and other things.) Honestly, the whole hour is worth listening to, but I will type out my best, though incomplete, transcript.
He reviewed the FOIA publicly available information, and then was permitted to examine ballots the day before the trial from 6 vote centers. The ballots had been re-tabulated for the recounts, and Maricopa county was unable to "map them back" so chain of custody "system of record" was broken when he did his inspection.
Plaintiff lawyer: "Were some of the ballots that you inspected duplicated ballots?
Information Security Officer Witness: Yes sir, some of them are.
Plaintiff lawyer: "And what is a duplicated ballot?"
Information Security Officer Witness: Duplicated ballots are when there is an issue with a ballot and it cannot be read through the tabulation system. Therefore it is duplicated, and that duplication is then run through the system.
And is that duplication then the ballot that is actually tabulated and counted?
Information Security Officer Witness: Yes sir, the way the process works is that the original ballot needs to have the duplication ID, which Maricopa did. The part where they failed in the statue is that the duplication ballot is supposed to be easily relatable ot the original ballot. They could not find the duplicate ballot that was tabulated.
So you inspected the original ballot that was duplicated?
Information Security Officer Witness: Yes sir
And your understanding of Arizona law is that the duplicate ballot and the original ballot are supposed to be maintained together, physically?
Information Security Officer Witness: Yes that's a EAC requirement. [EAC is US Elections Assistance Commission.]
And the duplicate ballot which was the ballot that was counted, was not there?
Information Security Officer Witness: No sir, it was not.
Out of the 348 that were set aside, how many were printed from a ballot on demand printer?
Information Security Officer Witness: [lengthy answer, I'm not typing it all out, ended by] 48 of those existed because there was a 19 inch image of a ballot printed on a 20 inch paper.
It's your testimony on inspections of these ballots, that you determined that there was a 19 inch ballot image projected on a 20 inch ballot paper?
Information Security Officer Witness: Yes that is accurate.
How did you determine that it was a 19 inch ballot image projected on a 20 inch paper?
Information Security Officer Witness: These ballot images are a PDF file that is stored with configuration settings, which is created on the EMS, in this case EED. That application creates the style, the definition. It is loaded on the tabulator, how it is evaluated when the image is created. That is a print job, to use the common term, that is sent to the printer.
And how did you determine that it was a 19 inch ballot image projected on a 20 inch paper?
Information Security Officer Witness: I can determine that 100% of the ballots are projected, because the mechanics of aprinter, the feeds are not always accurate. On the 20 inch ballots you can see the same borders of the image. On the 20 inch ballots you can see the corners in the feed. On the 19 inch ballots you can see the corners well within the margins.
Did you physically measure the ballots?
Information Security Officer Witness: Yes I did, with a ruler
Given your experience and training with electronic voting systems for 9 years, can you tell what the cause of a 19 image being projected on a 20 inch paper would be?
Information Security Officer Witness: Yes, there are only two ways it can happen.
Can you tell the court the two ways?
Information Security Officer Witness: One way is by changing printer adjustments, making the printer settings override the image file. The other is through the application side. If so, there would have to be a 19inch ballot definition.
Where does that definition reside?
Information Security Officer Witness: Based on the testimony, it was on the laptop that was connected to the printer, the print spooler, that controls the print jobs.
Is there any way, in your opinion, for a 19 inch ballot image to be projected on a 20 inch ballot by accident?
Information Security Officer Witness: No sir. Because the setting in the configurations in the procedures that are used, cannot allow that. These are not a "bump against the printer, and the settings change." I reviewed the evidence, and the printers are configured via script. This takes away the human error of someone mis-coding the instructions on the printer.
Is it permissible to have two different ballot definitions in the same election with respect to the ballot image?
Information Security Officer Witness: No sir. If you have two different styles, you are assessing them differently. That can also produce forgery, there is only supposed to be one ballot style per voting options (people in same regional election).
What effect would a 19 inch ballot image projected on a 20 inch piece of paper have when it is placed in these vote center tabulators?
Information Security Officer Witness: It would cause it to be rejected. According to Dominion's documentation, they perform hundreds of checks on the physical paper ballot that is inserted. They state that it can reject the ballot for incorrect margin. It causes a paper jam issue. A tech, Aaron Smith, reported that these same errors occurred in Maricopa county during the election - there were paper jams errors, and when he examined there was no paper.
What is your understanding of Mr. Smith's role during the 2022 election?
Information Security Officer Witness: He followed every procedure he was instructed to follow. He put a good solid effort forward to resolve the issues, it finally came to the point he could not resolve the issues according to the procedures and he requested a replacement tabulator, which happened to be misconfigured.
Witness is asked about his printer experience. He goes into his extensive experience with printers, including solving security issues with top secret printing.
Do you have any concern about the security of the ballots given your findings yesterday?
Information Security Officer Witness: If it is ok with the court, I have to answer this in two ways. First, I observed that ballots were being put out and sampled. I observed more improperly imaged ballots that were not inspected that were there. To answer the question, those should be secured. I handle everything from physical security to accrediting buildings for classified information storage, I have been a classified courier. As a forensic investigator I understand everything about chain of custody. And what I will say is, the facility, and security, and chain of custody at the buik and tabulation center is highly inaccurate and those ballots can be tampered with.
Information Security Officer Witness: For example, security seals were only placed on the boxes that we inspected, and that was due to the court order.
On the cross examination:
I believe you testified that you examined some ballots that had been duplicated, and you testified that the duplicates were not kept next to the ballots?
Mr Jarett said that it would take them a week to try to find them.
I am running out of space and time tonight. Tomorrow I will try to cover the next witness. Sorry this project is taking a while. I did not want to be the person who drops a long video without a written summary/transcript, but making things takes time.
One of the things most astonishing to me is how little concern is given this. The Plaintiffs are reminded that they only have 6 hours to present their case. The judge says that he "doesn't want anyone burning the midnight oil on this." This is a case that could change who the Governor of the State is and the judge doesn't want it to be given significant time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link