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So what? If it is legal and we're not claiming it fatally compromises election security, what is the problem? Is the claim that these people aren't entitled to vote?
What does that mean? It's not like Republicans can't win elections, and if the media memeplex blares out left-propaganda 24/7 in an effort to "manufacture consent"*, it doesn't seem to be succeeding.
*scare quotes mine
This argument assumes that "legal" is equivalent to "moral", "acceptable". Alternatively, the laws are wrong, and the laws that establish the laws are also wrong.
Our system requires buy-in for its continued operation. What you're looking at is the metastasizing death of buy-in. People conclude that the system is not capable of operating in their interests, so they stop arguing over how to tweak the fine details and start looking for revolutionary change.
The way to prevent this is to argue that the system is, in fact, capable of operating in their interests. Our society has failed to do this in a number of ways, so people turn to the solutions promised by extremism instead.
Alright, what is the moral complaint about enabling people to exercise their right to vote, especially given that per the initial point we are not positing a fraudulent election?
What does that mean? Do these people have the right to vote? If so, why does facilitating the exercise of that right undermine buy-in? I struggle to find a charitable interpretation for this.
Your question presupposes legitimacy-by-default of the existing, highly complex political system, when the system's fundamental legitimacy is the question at hand. Two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner is likewise not a "fraudulent election".
People ultimately judge systems by the outcomes those systems deliver. Convince a large, reasonably cohesive slice of the population that the system is not capable of delivering acceptable outcomes, and they will not necessarily argue indefinitely over where exactly the system is going wrong, but may simply scrap the system and try something different.
Two people are rolling dice, and get into an argument. The first guy claims that unless the other guy can prove he's cheating and explaining exactly how the cheat works, it should be assumed that he's playing fairly. The other guy points out that his dice win too often to be fair.
From that level of information, notably, one can't actually tell in a rigorous fashion who's in the right. On the other hand, the first guy's argument flies in the face of human psychology, of how people actually work, while the second guy's argument is exactly how people have always worked and always will. You should not expect this argument to result in a return to the dice-rolling, and you should especially not expect the dice-rolling to continue indefinately.
When dealing with vast, complex systems, people observe outcomes and judge the system thereby. Our current system has delivered unacceptably bad outcomes from a Red perspective, and it's done it long enough that there's no reasonable hope that the problem can be corrected within the general processes and norms of that system. Reds therefore demand significant, revolutionary change, and are not interested in appeals to the norms or processes that they have long-since grown to deeply distrust.
If this is still mysterious to you, try looking at how black people treat react to appeals to "trust the system" when it comes to questions about the police and justice system.
Maybe your policy preferences aren't that popular? The Tories in the UK are a far more successful party than the Democrats, but no-one from Labour whines about the conduct of elections (there are debates w/r/t FPTP, but they've popped up once or twice in the last thirty years and fade in the background very quickly). See also LDP in Japan. Sometimes you just lose.
Popularity is both meaningless and irrelevant. Meaningless, because propaganda exists and is effective, to the point that it can stonewall basic facts indefinitely. Irrelevant, because popularity is not the basis for our moral axioms.
But more than that, your question presumes that our government simply and faithfully implements the will of the public. There is strong evidence to indicate that this is not the case, that elected officials, members of the judiciary, and the unelected bureaucracy have agendas of their own, which are implemented regardless of how people vote.
What I meant is that just because one 'side' seems to be more successful that doesn't at all imply that some nefarious foul play is at hand, or that some fault with the system needs to be fixed. Republicans are hardly exceptionally unsuccessful.
That's entirely true. You cannot get to a reasoned hypothesis of "I'm being cheated" simply from the observation of "I'm losing", or even "I'm losing a lot". You need observations about the nature of the loss, and particularly about patterns in those losses and how those losses occured.
On this point, we disagree. An example of why would be the Supreme Court. We spent decades fighting to secure the SC, and now we've got it, and it still doesn't matter. When blues held the SC, they got decisions like Roe and Obergefell, decisions that instantly rewrote law nationwide and fundamentally reshaped our culture. The SC has never delivered such a decision for Red Tribe, and from the evidence I've seen I'm confident it never will. It has handed down decisions that should have done this, but they have simply been ignored by Blue areas. Those areas have gotten away with it because they, not the Court, hold the actual political and social power, and that power is not accessible through the standard political process. When the court rules in ways they approve of, they deploy that power to enforce the decision. When it rules in ways they disapprove of, they withhold that power, and the decision is rendered ineffective.
This could all be disproved by pointing to a decision analogous to Roe or Obergefell or indeed any of the other landmark victories Blues secured through the courts over the last century or more, a decision that imposes Red values on Blues, forcing them to have their laws invalidated and their values trod upon for the indefinite future. Success means actually getting your way. The existing system is not set up to allow Reds any appreciable chance of getting their way. It is set up to keep them down and facilitate their victimization by an increasingly hostile Blue tribe bent on stamping out Red values wherever they can be found. Why cooperate with such a system? Why continue playing a game you're not permitted to win?
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When the system's legitimacy is being questioned because of people exercising their right to vote, I think it's reasonably to ask why.
Why are they convinced of this?
The other guy claims that, but considering the other guy wins about half the time, we have to question whether or not his objection is in good faith or he is just being a sore loser.
What outcomes? Reds win half the time (frequently despite having less than half the electorate). If you mean the culture war, it turns out there's no vote you can cast or election you can win that will make your kids respect you.
You are the only one in this thread arguing that "the system's legitimacy is being questioned because of people exercising their right to vote". I'm pretty sure that you insist on this argument because it is one you think you can win. But in fact, what I and @Butlerian are claiming is that "there's no vote you can cast or election you can win that will make your kids respect you". You are willing to make that argument when it is convenient to you, and are not willing to recognize it when it is made against you.
Laws and votes are not the basis of a functional society. "your kids respecting you" is an overspecified description of the actual basis of a functional society, which we might generalize as "cooperation and compromise based on mutual respect and shared interests between a supermajority of the population". That happy state is the precondition for the votes and the elections to actually work their magic. But you don't appear to want to talk about that, so you keep attempting to collapse the discussion down to "people exercising their right to vote". I consider this dishonest, but hardly surprising at this late date.
I can't stop you from sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting "people exercising their right to vote". I can only note that such narrowly specified heuristics observably go away when the vote doesn't go the way your tribe likes; see the general angst over the electoral college, which you yourself hint at above. So it's all about the rules when the rules are convinient, and it's all about the principles when the principles are convinient, and as long as you're the umpire, you win every argument. And that's well enough, only you aren't actually the umpire. There isn't actually an umpire. There's just tribes, and conflict between them.
Two people can play dice, each win half the rolls, and still have one person clean the other out: simply have the one person's wins be big-stakes, and the other person's wins be small stakes. Simple stuff. "you've won half the rolls, it's just that I win the rolls where there's actually money at stake" is not a persuasive argument for keeping the game going.
Too many for the margin to contain, but to list a scant few: The difference in outcomes between Obergefell and Heller, as a case study for the inequities of the courts as a remedy generally. The manifest inability to control school curricula, even when you win elections, as a case study on the inadequacy of electoral remedy. The collapse of "free speech" norms and ideology once they became inconvenient to Blue Tribe culture as a case study in the general inadequacy of informal norms as a social remedy. Blue Tribe economic warfare against Red tribe as a case study in the inadequacy of economic remedy.
Blue tribe is determined to crush Red Tribe in every facet of social, economic and political life. When Reds object, Blues point out that what they're doing isn't illegal. When Reds point out that some of it actually is illegal, Blues point out that selective enforcement of the laws isn't illegal. The lesson to be drawn from this sequence of events isn't to try to draft laws better, it's to stop treating the law as though it were worthy of respect as an impartial, shared institution.
How else shall I interpret Butlerian up when they say:
So far, no one has furnished an explanation as to why legally lowering the effort bar so as to improve turnout is cheating. You dismissed the legal concern and raised the prospect of a moral objection, but danced around providing any specific moral objection. Simply repeating "people no longer feel their interests aren't being represented and are questioning the legitimacy of the system" isn't useful because it's not in dispute. Very clearly people are questioning the legitimacy of the system. The question is why, and in particular why the point raised above undermines their perception of legitimacy.
The point of bringing up minoritarian structures in American democracy (I was in fact referring to Congress and to state legislatures far more than to the EC) is not to claim they are illegitimate but to point out that conservatives claiming the system is rigged against them is wildly at odds with reality, where they enjoy strong political geography, a dominant position in the courts (where they can point to a string of judicial victories), and a huge news media ecosystem that plays to their tastes.
The point of saying "it turns out there's no vote you can cast or election you can win that will make your kids respect you" is that conservatives' core issue has very little to do with political power (which they have plenty of) and everything to do with the very rapid loss of cultural hegemony.
One of the core elements of cooperation and compromise based on mutual respect and shared interests between a supermajority of the population in a democratic society is that you don't threaten to flip the table when you lose.
I see no basis for thinking this is true. If someone wins half the time but insists their wins don't count and your wins are cheating, they're probably just a sore loser.
The difference in outcomes between Rucho v. Common Cause and Shelby v. Holder as a case study for the inequities of the courts as a remedy generally. The manifest inability to control police misconduct as a case study on the inadequacy of electoral remedy. The collapse of "free speech" norms and ideology once they became inconvenient to Red Tribe culture as a case study in the general inadequacy of informal norms as a social remedy. Red Tribe economic parasitism of the Blue Tribe as a case study in the inadequacy of economic remedy. I could keep substituting in liberal grievances, but I don't really see the point. Sometimes you lose, even when it feels like you ought to have won. That doesn't mean the game is rigged.
"Cultural Hegemony" is political power. Elected offices and Judicial benches and Laws passed are means to an end: the shaping of the society and culture we have to live in. It doesn't matter what the laws you pass say if people just ignore them. It doesn't matter what Rights you have rights on paper if the system won't protect or enforce them. Alternatively, you can skip the paper and simply go straight to the enforcement. Mandatory legalization of abortion nation-wide did not require a Constitutional Amendment; Judges simply asserted it into law. Meanwhile, the Second Amendment is a dead letter, even when the same court delivers decisions upholding it; suddenly the Judges' assertions have no force beyond the doors of their chambers. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that the power in question is not held by the Supreme Court, but is in fact held and wielded through "cultural hegemony".
Cultural hegemony, as you've noted, can't be voted on. It can only be fought over. Therefore, we need to fight over it if we wish to see our values upheld. We need either cultural dominance or cultural independence. Without them, the formal structures are useless.
By itself, no, it doesn't. To get to the conclusion that the game is rigged, you need to look at how and why you lost. It's possible you did something wrong, chose the wrong strategy, just hit a run of bad luck, whatever. But we have many decades of evidence to look at, and my assessment of that evidence is that the game is, in fact, rigged. Power does not actually work the way the purported rules of the game claim it should. The law says that it's illegal to get a gang together and beat your opponents in the street when they attempt to exercise their first-amendment rights to free speech. Only, local governments can simply order the police to stand down, and the justice system can employ "prosecutorial discretion", and the press can selectively ignore the violence of its partisans, or even lie about who committed it. The law says you can employ self-defense against people attacking or threatening you, but those laws can be ignored and you can be prosecuted regardless.
Law is a coordination mechanism, and not even the most powerful one. The same goes for elections, judicial benches, and so on. No law gave Blues the right to riot and burn their way across the country in 2020, but they did it anyway, they derived significant benefits from the exercise, and they suffered no significant punishment. That's what power looks like, and that power is not shared with or accessible by my tribe under the existing formal system.
Unfortunately for this argument, we have the actual history of table-flipping. Weather Underground bombers attempted to flip the table, and were rewarded with tenure. Black revolutionaries attempted to flip the table, and were rewarded with tenure. Blacks as a community have repeatedly attempted table-flipping, and are rewarded with their policy preferences being cemented into law. 2020 was the culmination of a widespread, highly coordinated exercise in table-flipping, and it was rewarded with vast cultural and political power.
Your argument is that the respect comes first. This is not the case. Values come first, and if they are compatible, a basis for mutual respect and shared interests exists. Blues engaged in open-ended self-modification of their values, and the result is that their current values are flatly incompatible with those of my tribe. We do not share a common understanding of the good, of what's right, what's legal, what's acceptable. Their current values make them a serious threat to my tribe, and they are evidently unwilling to leave me alone. They will facilitate lawless violence against me. They will attempt to destroy me economically and politically. They will weaponize "shared institutions" against me. They will do these things, because they have done them, and loudly declare that it was good to do them and that they should do more.
I am not under the impression that any of this is persuasive to you. I learned a long time ago that internet arguments don't persuade people, and as you demonstrated with your closing paragraph, selective framing can arbitrarily assign "victim" and "victor" status regardless of the facts. It's entirely possible that this is what I'm doing above, that I'm dead wrong or even lying, and it's not actually possible to prove otherwise. One can present the argument, make predictions, and observe results. That's all.
My prediction, as it has been for some time, is that the above narrative is decisively persuasive to Reds, and will continue to be for the forseeable future. The Supreme Court will never deliver an actual cultural victory to Reds. Cooperation will not bear fruit, and what successes they gain they will gain by fighting for them, by breaking institutional norms and structures, by going outside the existing system. Conflict will continue to escalate, leading to worsening crises. Norms and institutions will go on degrading and collapsing, because there's no foundation to sustain them.
Because the point is partisan advantage, not shared ideals. Why this rule? Why now? If the answer is "because it helps them win elections", and if that answer generalizes to norm-breaking generally, people lose trust in the norms. It's not what they're doing, it's why they're doing it. Appeals to sacred values don't help, because we've long concluded that the stated sacred values are a sham.
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Here's a hypothetical scenario: in the near future someone discovers that superpowered mutants exist. But they're willing to cooperate with the government and we don't get X-Men style mutant persecution. Now, the government hires a mutant to drive through the streets of the city using his precognitive powers to discover who's sleeping late, but would vote for the Democrat if woken up and reminded to vote. Then, only those people get reminded to vote. Republicans who sleep late don't get reminded.
Would this be fair? After all, all that's involved is people exercising their right to vote, and the ones who aren't woken up could have woken up if they weren't so careless.
Of course not, because of the partisan selectivity. But that isn't really the case for mail-in ballots etc. They're mostly Democrat in many places, sure, but conversely that must mean in-person voters tilt Republican. In which case, by your estimation polling by in-person booths is unfair too because it leans towards one set of people.
The existing laws provide a set of standards thtat we've chosen, that ensures that some mostly-Democrat and some mostly-Republican groups both vote. Arbitrarily changing the rules lets you manipulate the result fo the election.
In-person booths is not manipulation of the election because the rules for in-person booths were part of the existing process that was decided in the agreed upon manner. Suddenly adding new rules for mail-in ballots is outside of that process.
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In the specific context here--2020 election rules changes, justified on the basis of "COVID emergency"--I wouldn't be so quick to concede that they were legal. Many of the people making structural changes on a state or county level did not have the legal authority to do so, and while there were lawsuits after the fact, the bell could not be unrung.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/wisconsin-supreme-court-outlaws-ballot-drop-boxes-elections-2022-07-08/
Wisconsin's state Elections Commission approved the use of ballot drop boxes in the 2020 election. The above article describes the state Supreme Court's decision that this was contrary to the requirements of state law, nearly two years after the fact.
Did the people responsible go to jail? Did they suffer any consequences at all?
Does the letter of the law matter if it isn't followed? Does the letter of the law matter if the punishment for breaking it is a shrug and a sad face, maybe a brief soliloquy about how mistakes were made, whaddayagonnadoaboudit?
Despair is a sin. There is no bottom to that pit.
I've read your posts for several years, and found them to be eloquent and far far more painfully persuasive than I wished. I do not have a factual rebuttal for the broad sweep of your arguments that either of us would find adequate. I'm not here to blow sunshine up your ass, but for your own sake, please don't reject the ability to see hope when (or if!) it arrives, even in the smallest amounts.
We should not hope only when it is reasonable to do so. Perhaps the horse will learn to sing.
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