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Dude. LMGTFY link... I can't find anything. I'm like 5 pages in. I LITERALLY CANNOT find the claim, and suspect you can't either, or else you would have given me a link. Instead you perform a CLASSIC gish-gallop, throwing out a ton of detailed questions and zero actual answers nor any actual claims. I decide to call you out on one specific piece of bullshit and you dodge the question.
You know what I DO see? Articles like this that cite some of these affidavits. They are poor quality. Misunderstandings of proper procedures, claims that poll workers were grumpy with observers, even one that talks about how he just can't believe so many military members voted Biden. Seriously? What else do I see? Oh yes, an example of a judge who looked at evidence directly in Michigan and called it "generalized speculation" and "simply not credible". You have a great article here that also mentions some of these allegations. And this is only one example of many. For example:
This is not only NOT evidence ("I heard someone else say...") but this claim is literally impossible and has been proven false. These are the kinds of allegations we are talking about. There were dozens of lawsuits and rather than instantly suspect some sort of conspiracy among both GOP and DNC nominated judges alike, doesn't it sound much more likely that there's just nothing there? I strongly suspect that this likely nonexistent Target gift card buying falls under this category: "I was talking with my neighbor and HE said that someone offered him a gift card to vote" is very different than "I had a man knock on my door and offer me a gift card for my ballot, which I reported to the police and there is a paper trail proving it". Organized door canvassing is very obvious and that kind of vote-buying is very blatant. I find it extremely unlikely that such an effort occurred on any sort of scale undetected beyond a single affidavit.
You accuse "commenters like me" of moving goalposts or playing a motte-and-bailey game, but I could just as easily (and supported by evidence galore) say that the theories of how fraud happened are far worse offenders. What exact fraud occurred? Was it coordinated? Was it widespread? Please answer clearly. Bonus points for having the same opinion back in 2020, unchanged.
You want a specific claim? I claim, and practically everything seems to back this up, that 1) no deliberate county or larger scale coordinated efforts exist to fraudulently manipulate either vote totals or ballots, 2) that any fraud that did occur was both sporadic and unfocused in nature, and 3) occurred in roughly comparable scales to decades long precedent for electoral fraud, perhaps with a very modest allowance for Covid complications independent of the actual people on the ballot. I think that captures at least the gist of it. Notice the scale component. It matters. It's not just some motte-and-bailey, it's literally the criteria for determining how much we should care both as individuals, societies, and government bodies about fraud!! I of course support prosecuting individuals if it has any material deterrent effect, and increasing election funding and transparency, but otherwise why bother fighting a problem that doesn't really matter?
I do love that you provided a lone example, the Gableman report. I assume it's this one?. The one that recommends decertification of the results, which is both meaningless grandstanding from a practical standpoint and agreed by virtually everyone to be specifically illegal and unconstitutional? That aside, of course there are some good suggestions and some bad ones too that I do hope the legislature discusses, but most of them are process-oriented. In terms of content the report appears to focus on some Zuckerberg money that was sent to some counties to improve their election processes and help with extra covid costs. Which... well you might feel that it was bad, but the so-called statistical reasoning that appeared elsewhere in the thread about its supposed impact on vote turnout looks highly suspect to me. And more importantly a Bush-nominated judge explicitly allowed the money, which was upheld on appeal. So basically the process was followed just fine. Yes, I do read primary sources where practical and needed, thank you very much. And it's also... not even a fraud allegation, no vote counts nor ballots were changed. I can't emphasize this enough.
It's helpful here to separate the whole "voter disenfranchisement" (or "voter suppression" or whatever term is in vogue) debate on some level from the "fraud" one, as they are in many ways different cans of worms, and we've been talking about fraud. I think the former is beyond our scope... but notably, it is an absolutely massive paradigm shift to move AWAY from fraud/vote-buying/hacking/etc. and into the realm of, for lack of a better phrase, regular but high-stakes political maneuvering that's part of the normal lower-d democratic process (for better or worse). They are two different worlds.
I say that but I just can't help myself but to mention: Gableman's report also contains hilarious statements such as the following, where he - and I kid you not - forgot to include a citation, instead leaving in a "(CITE)" placeholder instead, like I did way back in high school once:
And, I assume, the reason no citation could be found easily is that the statement is... well, literally and objectively wrong. The phrase is old and has been used in both partisan and nonpartisan contexts. Just one example here from 1976 (of many possible) I plucked out of a google search that explicitly refers to "nonpartisan get-out-the-vote activities". It's the cumulative impact of things just like that which make the whole effort seem amateurish and further reduces my trust in the source.
How do you think we could make this a productive dialogue? You're demanding a specific links to an incident which you've already admitted in your own comment you don't really care about and wouldn't affect your thinking. We've moved from "hints" of vote-buying to now implicitly demanding a bullet-proof criminal conviction with enough scope to affect the outcome of the election in Nevada or else it doesn't really matter.
Gish gallop? When you make a variety of general assertions about topics you have little knowledge about, my string of questions are trying to get you to recognize what you don't really know. The truth is you don't know much with respect to Bush v. Gore or how that compares to Trump's election contests or other lawsuits about the election. I didn't skip along from refusing to spoonfeed you a link to an affidavit you don't care about to spam a bunch of other examples or topics. You're the person who brought Bush v. Gore up. I've specifically talked about 2 specific examples total, the gift-card incident and the Trump election contest in GA (which you've entirely ignored).
This is what a gish-gallop looks like:
can't find specific case I described which you don't really care about anyway? Okay, let's spam a bunch of derpy articles from journalists who have curated examples which you think shows those examples and allegations are nonsense, and therefore use that set in order to make claims and implications to reinforce your belief generally about the affidavits, the lawsuits, the contests, and the election
this is what you rely on regularly; spam responses to google searches which you read the titles of and convince you something is the majority or even near universal belief when it simply is not
this is the classic gish-gallop and the classic fallacy which it's used with
Don't you find it slightly interesting that when you search "example of X fraud" on google, it feeds you a bunch of articles which reinforce your belief that there wasn't any fraud, really, and basically everyone agrees with you about that?
That's not the lone example. I've specifically and repeatedly mentioned the Georgia election contest for both evidence of fraud as well as an example of how "due" "process" wasn't followed. You've ignored this for 3 comments now. I also mentioned the John Eastman disbarment hearing in response to you claiming Trump had trouble finding lawyers implying it's because his cases were so bad (as an aside, there were many lawsuits not connected with Trump which he had no control or involvement with whatsoever. IIRC, he was only directly involved with <5). In it, Eastman gives an excellent breakdown of a flurry of election lawsuits all over the country as the bar attorney attempts to trip him up in a CLASSIC gish-gallop similar to the one you've attempted here. Gableman, his first witness , was something mentioned in the context of that hearing. Also, I didn't mention the report at all and was referring to his testimony.
and even if I did mention the interim report (I didn't), alleging sending investigators out and finding people who voted who aren't legally allowed to vote is, in fact, alleging fraud and changing vote totals; I cannot emphasize this enough
frankly, I don't think continuing this is productive or that you're genuinely interested in this topic so forgive me if this is my last response
I do appreciate the response actually, even if it does happen to the the last. I do like to reassess my beliefs on occasion, though I've yet to see any reasoning or evidence forcing a reassessment, to be honest.
I guess from a bit more of a meta view, it feels a bit to me that maybe this comes down to a bit of a, for lack of a better word, epistemological disagreement? Sure, I'm not spending hours and hours scouring primary sources, but there are journalists who literally get paid to do so and report their findings. I know media trust is always a little sensitive, but my general sense is that enough journalists actually care and/or do their jobs that if there was real meat in these allegations we'd at least get a "recent findings in GA raise questions" article or two from at least one reputable publication. Wouldn't an actual election scandal be helpful for viewership numbers that journalists chase to the exclusion of all else, according to some? And I feel like I'm also capable of putting stories through a moderately decent sniff test. Many articles for example immediately after the election included examples of claims and then what the official response was. In most if not all cases, my assessment was that the official responses fully addressed each concern with high-quality information without suspicious gaps or non-answers.
So in that context, repeating a litany of detailed questions about e.g. Oregon election procedures that require far more effort to respond to than to type, feels like it's unclear if those are real questions, rhetorical ones, or simply aspersions about my subject matter expertise or lack thereof. Right? That's how it felt to me at least. And frankly, it's a little insulting that you are claiming that I somehow "have little knowledge about" these things when you yourself have done near zero legwork to back yourself up.
I mean, do you propose some other method of finding the truth? How did you arrive at your conclusion that the election was seriously questionable? That's an honest question.
In some sense maybe you are right about the Target Gift Card Fraud being ultimately unimportant, but I think the phrasing and quality of evidence can still serve as a basis for getting a sense of scale. That's why I brought up the example of hearsay about a neighbor being VERY different in its implications than a directly observed canvasser offering bribes -- they both can be described fairly as "someone was handing out gift cards for checking unsealed ballots". Yes of course I would read the source if linked. Yes, I made a good faith effort to find it. I was actually quite frustrated I could not, which led me to the completely defensible and logical conclusion that it must not exist other than you misremembering something!!! I focused on the report because I frankly hate video as a format and would rather do almost anything else other than watch court recordings (text is far superior for finding relevant portions of a longer topic efficiently).
I'm of course much more interested in an allegation like one much upthread where you claim "We're not talking about millions of votes needing to swap, but appx. 40,000 in any of 5 different states, any of which would change the outcome if a single one did something as simple as requiring canvassing hundreds of thousands of votes which had no signed chain of custody receipts (and no election officials have yet been charged despite this being a crime in multiple states like AZ)."
Let's look together! Maybe this could inform in terms of how, today, I might look into an allegation. Googling for chain of custody problems, there seems to be a very worrying Georgia Star article claiming there are a lot of custody receipts missing, potentially a lot of votes. Maybe that's it? But wait, no, looks like there's also an article that seems pretty well researched with plenty of specifics that looks credible. They located all but 8 of ~1500 of the custody receipts, and with one county person saying she was alone and another saying she was too busy. But only 78,000 drop box ballots were submitted, so even assuming maximum fraud for the missing cases, I don't think that implies all that many ballots. Hundreds maybe? Bad, possibly deserving investigation (which the article implies but doesn't outright state is ongoing), but not election-tipping (the margin was what, 12k?). I don't default to assuming fraud of course, given its historical rarity etc etc. which I've mentioned, but on balance this doesn't seem to be something that makes me doubt the whole election. I don't see any reason to doubt the quality of the reporting nor the response from the elections department, do you?
Okay okay, looks like you mentioned AZ originally, maybe you weren't referring to GA, so lets keep looking and wait! Look here! A hit from some random message board linking the same original aggregator thegatewaypundit (which has overt calls to action at the bottom of their articles, not a great sign of an unbiased source) that led me to the Georgia Star article before. Maybe this is a lead? 740,000 votes worth with missing documentation? Tracing, tracing... Oh. Original source appears to be a "resolution to reclaim Arizona's electors" from some MAGA guy running for office whose Twitter... oh he's reposting a 9/11 conspiracy theory, stuff about the rapture, US government child abduction, all within the last two days or so. Credibility down the toilet and I'm not going to scroll that far back in his history, which is filled with basically the classic Twitter reposting of any and all theories about fraud, so I think I'm okay dismissing him as a serial reposter/hearsay guy.
Hmm, that also doesn't seem like what you might be referring to. Let's keep looking. I also come across a nice report again with a seeming good quality that seems a partial response to I guess it's Kari Lake's claim and lawsuit about 300,000 worth of missing chain of custody documents? I sort of dislike "fact checks" despite their usefulness and know they can have unfair assessments, especially in their "ratings" which don't always match the long-form responses but this one has what, on its face, appears to be a good summary of the case results:
Hmm. We see not only no evidence of wrongdoing, but also the process working (trial granted for strongest counts) as well as the one possibly questionable action affecting... 50 ballots. I think this is probably the claim you were referring to, and decide to stop my search.
If you see a flaw in my investigation technique, I'm all ears. But you can only go through this same source-seeking process so many times, obtain a totally reasonable and believable answer from a good source or sources before you start to assume a pattern. Yes, assumptions bad, but I mean, that's multiple times now across the last few days that you've had plenty of chances to bring up evidence and have not produced anything but either disproven or questionable or small-scale stuff. And, not a single actual link. Only a sort of vague 'hey go dig this way'. So the question really needs to be asked:
If this isn't how a normal interested citizen investigates, then how should they??? What are your actual expectations? Please help me out here. I cannot see what's so wrong about this kind of moderate depth dive that discovers little and decides to resurface.
The question of, well does that make it okay for the system to persecute or come down hard on people with doubts (or more) about the results? To an extent I actually agree with you. I think your original comment made some good points. For example, the disbarment attempt seems a bit much. However at the same time I do think I have the faith that the proceeding will end up being fair. It's also a bit of an interesting question exploring "how bogus does a bogus case have to be" to deserve to lose a law license? Rules prohibit, I forget the exact phrase, but roughly "knowingly arguing something blatantly unconstitutional or being grossly negligent in not knowing how blatantly illegal what you're arguing is" and say it is deserving of punishment "up to and including" revocation of the license. There might be a smaller punishment. There might be the other angle about duty to client vs. duty to fact/good faith that comes up. But painting it as the only reason more lawyers didn't join up is patently unfair, and mixes up cause and effect. Lawyers were already dropping off cases like flies even before their integrity came into question, quite a contrast to 2000 where lawyers flooded into Florida in short order. And I truly do think that it was a case of, they agree to take a look at the evidence and decide that the chances of victory are extremely low. At least that's my impression. My certainty on that particular isn't incredibly high I will concede.
All this to say, bringing it back, that near as I can figure, you just start with a baseline, strong distrust of all things justice system and government and media at once, while I do not? And that might truly be an irreconcilable difference. We all, epistemically, at some point decide to place our trust in some people or organizations more than others, on some sort of basis (whether passed on from another person of trust, personal experience, personal logical reasoning, etc). Perhaps that might be a more productive, other thread kind of question to explore.
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