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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31619 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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People should absolutely be punished for trusting bogus information because that's how you nip that shit in the bud. If you want people to trust government officials your first, last, and only priority should be ensuring that government officials are trustworthy.

Even granting your basic premise, how does your proposed remedy accomplish this? I mean... the suggestion is literally to punish more or less random third parties, who didn't do anything wrong other than believe bad information they were given. If anyone should be punished here surely it's the people who actually dispensed the misinformation. I fail to see how your proposed remedy does anything to disincentivize the behaviour it's supposedly aimed at, because it isn't even aimed at the right people. What I do see very clearly is that it's patently unjust, for the same reason. I mean... people shouldn't be punished for stuff other people did. It doesn't get more basic than that.

people shouldn't be punished for stuff other people did.

You're not punishing "random third parties" or "someone for something someone else did" though. You're punishing people for voting illegally. The question is whether "but some dude told me I could" ought to be considered an affirmative defense for casting an illegal ballot.

You're punishing people for voting illegally

It should be ~impossible to vote illegally by mistake. It's stupid to try to fix broken procedures which allow 'illegal voting' by just punishing citizens really hard if they make a mistake.

It should be impossible to vote illegally by mistake

Is vs ought.

Trying to fixing broken procedures is a position that will draw opposition because the opposition party benefits from them, punishing individuals does not, but still has the desired effect.

Surely it makes a difference that "some dude" is a person in an official position whose job is, at least in part, to dispense accurate information about this. If anyone did anything wrong here it's them.

I guess the disagreement is largely about what kind of mens rea requirement should hold here. I don't see why voting illegally should be a strict liability thing like you apparently do, especially if the underlying goal is to prevent *intentional *voter fraud (though such votes should not be counted, if there's a way to enforce that without de-anonymizing them). Doing it with conscious intent, sure.

Surely it makes a difference that "some dude" is a person in an official position whose job is, at least in part, to dispense accurate information about this. If anyone did anything wrong here it's them.

And yet, that doesn't absolve you from following the law.

If an undercover cop tells you to commit a crime, it's still a crime.

If a military officer gives an illegal order, it's still an illegal order.

If a bureaucrat gives you the wrong application form, it's still the wrong application form.

Legitimacy doesn't derives from the government authority, nor does government authority alone absolve one from following the legitimate rules of society.

I guess the disagreement is largely about what kind of mens rea requirement should hold here. I don't see why voting illegally should be a strict liability thing like you apparently do, especially if the underlying goal is to prevent *intentional *voter fraud (though such votes should not be counted, if there's a way to enforce that without de-anonymizing them). Doing it with conscious intent, sure.

If claiming ignorance was a shield from all other laws, this might hold water, but without it it's a selective appeal for magic words. If you operate a law that only those who know the law perfectly beforehand can be penalized for, then it's not a law, it's a legal cludgeon for selective application of when 'should' applies to 'should have known.'

Not all of that (indeed, hardly any of it) is strictly true. For example:

If an undercover cop tells you to commit a crime, it's still a crime.

Sometimes. At some point it becomes entrapment; the relevant question is generally whether you showed the intention to commit some similar crime. If the cops merely provided means or informed you of a potential target, enjoy your time with bubba. But if they actively goad you into it, that's a different thing entirely. The case here is somewhere in between, it seems to me.

More generally, there are different levels of mens rea requirements already. This is not some weird form of special pleading, it's already well-established legal doctrine. For example, here's a quick summary I found on a quick Google search:

https://www.tombruno.com/articles/the-four-types-of-mens-rea/

I would argue that none of the four standards listed there are met here. Ignorance of the law isn't an excuse, true, but a total lack of morally culpable intent is.

Legitimacy doesn't derives from the government authority, nor does government authority alone absolve one from following the legitimate rules of society.

We're talking here about a "crime" that only exists because of a(n intentionally confusing) bureaucratic rule, not some well-established "legitimate rule of society".

Surely it makes a difference that "some dude" is a person in an official position whose job is, at least in part, to dispense accurate information about this

Does it? Should it?

I'm not being flippant here, that is a serious question, and part of that inferential gap that I've been talking about.

Yes. You made a good-faith effort to make sure you were on the right side of the law. That's more than most people do most of the time.

EDIT: If you check the link in the other post I'm about to put up as I type this, there's four types of mens rea listed there and the person in this example doesn't even meet the lowest one, negligence, described as "fails to meet a reasonable standard of behavior for her circumstances". Going out of your way to make sure what you're about to do is not a crime certainly meets any such standard.

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