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 -
Judicial power trumps state power, and left-aligned judges have been prolific at stopping Republican attempts at legislating electoral security; why would they be any more cooperative in investigations obstructed by hyperblue municipal bureaucracies? Beyond that, while fraud has been something generally talked about, it was not a matter du jour of the 2016 electoral cycle or the 2020 electoral cycle, its prominence today is novel to post-9/11 American political discourse.
Money is an incentive for defection, but there must be an interested purchasing party and goods to deliver. Daniels is a porn star who had evidence of having had sex with the President, of course she was going to be handsomely compensated for the story. A poll worker would have no story merely saying "This many ballots were fraudulently filed," even an interested party would not likely pay them, because that testimony is worth nothing.
The procedure for striking ballots as fraudulent is not a poll worker coming forward and saying "I fraudulently filled 10,000 ballots." The procedure is the poll worker comes forward and says "I applied a secret watermark to these 10,000 ballots; forensic expert team A will prove all 10,000 watermarks are identical and were indeed produced by the same process and human hand rather than being an artifact of printing or processing; forensic expert team B will prove I am the individual who produced that watermark all 10,000 times."
Goes to court. Forensic teams successfully tie poll worker to a ballot. Yes, a ballot, 1 ballot.
9,999 hearings to go, because every single ballot must be individually proved as fraudulent, else a legal ballot be illegally struck. See the scope of the problem?
You also assume this as a complex process requiring many people be aware. We don't know how many people are required to flip elections because the process is closed to audit. It could take dozens, it could take hundreds, it could take a handful of people placed at the exact link in the chain where boxes of fake ballots can be introduced and laundered with boxes of legal ballots. We don't know, and this by the way is and has been my entire point throughout my time talking about fraud on this site. When I say "We have no way of knowing" I am describing the act of criminal fraud. It is tax fraud for a corporation to have numbers closed to audit and it is electoral fraud for a government to have ballot numbers closed to audit.
Republicans would still likely take the matter to court if they believed fraud existed. Also, Bush v Gore was famously decided in Bush's favor. Kerry supported a lawsuit by Green and Libertarian candidates. There was an interesting result in that one in that the random recount was found to be rigged but beyond that didn't seem to go anywhere.
I would note a correlation between its recent prominence and a candidate who makes a lot of wild claims.
I covered the interested party aspect already - Fox News. Or how abut the Heritage Foundation? Or Donald Trump himself? Hell, even without any evidence, claim to be a poll worker who found fraud and Trump will organize a parade for you.
I won't claim to be a legal expert, but this doesn't seem right. And even if it were, again the news itself would be something Trump would never ignore.
Yes, I do think it would lean on the complex side. Even a precision strike requires getting said people into that exact position. I don't think election fraud is 100% impossible, but I think this is a Russell's Teapot situation. I don't think that equal skepticism is being applied to claims of fraud being true as is applied to claims supposedly disproving said claims.
I can't say I strongly oppose more auditing, outside of that I suspect the only result of it would be that the people predisposed to believe in election fraud will latch on some innocuous detail and/or create a new appeal to missing information. I don't agree that Democrats have as much of a stranglehold on the gears of politics that their opponents can't and/or won't stop them. If they did Trump would be kept nowhere near power.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link