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 -
You'll note that even this article quotes this:
"Both political parties had surpassed the law-mandated maximum of 134 challengers with more than 200 each, and when election workers told GOP challengers the party had hit its limit, some began shouting about the unfair process and lack of transparency. An unidentified election worker shouted back the group was at its maximum size."
Poll watchers were kicked out (or not allowed to enter) because there were already in EXCESS of the legally mandated 134 challengers inside the room.
How is it impossible to trust when there were more than 200 Republican poll watchers INSIDE. How many before you would trust it? 300? 500? 1,000? There has to be some maximum that is enforced.
The elephant is that this was not enough! You can let more people in to challenge than the legal maximum and still people are not happy. Votes were not counted in secret. There were 200 Republican poll watchers inside the room. Even that article does not claim there were none. The biggest claim there is:
"“There were some pretty tense moments inside of this room. Basically some poll workers or some of challengers told us that there was not an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in this room throughout the entire process,”"
That's it. Not that there were no watchers, not that they were kicked out and the ballots were counted secretly. Just that the numbers were not equal.
You don't kick out election observers and board up the windows, period. I'm entirely uninterested in whatever facile justifications they give. If there is a problem, at best, you pause the counting until a satisfactory solution to all parties is agreed upon. Not kick people out, board up windows, and then plow on ahead in the chaos.
More over, I don't know what kind of weasel words these claims of the GOP having the "maximum" number even means. Did the dems have more? Then how is it a maximum? How large was the facility? Is the "maximum" some generic statute, related to the fire code, for that specific facility?
But this is exactly the back and forth that always happens. Some shit goes down that any person can plainly see is suspicious, and some just so explanation is given that we are supposed to automatically trust.
No.
You sure do, if the number of obsevers is in excess of the legal limit. What is your alternative? Break the law simply to meet your personal standard of credulity? Such an action would be just as likely to be highlighted as one of the "irregularities" that "proves" the steal as assuage your concerns.
These are all great questions that have a large bearing on whether or not anything untoward happened. Unfortunately you seem ignorant of the answers to them, despite the fact that this case was brought by you as evidence of your position. That you should then try to parlay this ignorance into further "evidence" is, charitably, wild as hell.
We do not all "plainly see" that something suspicious is happening, hence this discussion.
More options
Context Copy link
Michigan law allows one challenger per party, per absentee counting board. There were 134 absentee counting boards ergo 134 of each party should have been allowed in the room. They have to take an oath, have an ID from their organization etc. You can't just walk in. Normally, they don't get close to that, so they weren't keeping count until the room got crowded and when counted they realized they had 570 observers which included at least 227 Republican observers. At this point they elected to not let anyone else in (both Democrat and Republican) until some of those had left. That is what triggered the situation.
Your claim that there was secret counting is false. Your OWN evidence showed that (because they had reports from poll watchers inside the room). So now your claim is that there weren't enough let in. That may be true (depending on how many observers you think should be allowed in) but it is not the same thing as ballots being counted secretly.
Now obviously you can doubt the numbers provided, but just as a check, if you were shown evidence that there were 227 Republican poll watchers inside the room watching the ballots being counted AND you were sure that this was accurate, would that be enough to at least walk back the claim that ballots were being counted secretly?
More options
Context Copy link
In a similar case in Philadelphia, Trump's campaign filed for an emergency halt to the count because they claimed it was proceeding without Republican observers present, but then their lawyer had to admit to a judge that actually there were "a non zero number" of Republican observers in the room. This is part of a common pattern around that time where they'd make explosive claims only to have to walk it back significantly once they were in court where lying carried penalties.
Based on the number of blatantly frivolous claims that were credulously trotted out, I believe the concerns over electoral safeguards were generally not earnest. Instead, the overwhelming motivation was upset that Trump was losing and so they used election integrity as a pretextual facade. That's why there has been such a flood of low-quality claims (remember Sharpiegate? Italian satellites? Bamboo ballots? Dominion algorithm?) that would get dropped as soon as they fell apart, only to move on to the next thing.
IIRC this was the one where the observers were 'in the room' but kept behind barriers quite far from the actual counters, so that they couldn't actually monitor or object to anything the counters were doing -- there were photos at the time that made this quite clear. Observers who tried to approach more closely were kicked out because covid.
I'm fairly sure I've brought this up with you more than once before, and have a vague memory of you acknowledging that it was bad on one occasion -- now you are triumphantly bringing it up again as an example of Repulicans being unreasonable, and writing blog posts about it. It's a good example of what Dean has been complaining about -- you are coming off as a dishonest interlocutor here to anyone who followed events at the time and maybe went to the trouble of digging up links for you.
If the claim in court, where you do need to be very specific, was that people weren't allowed in, but they were and just kept far away, then the claim should reflect that, right?
More options
Context Copy link
The blog post is dated Nov 5, 2020 and it was just a copy of one of my motte reddit post. I don't recall the issue with the Philadelphia observers being kept behind barriers, but either way that's not the claim the Trump lawyers went with in court. I also don't recall what exchange you're referring to, I was able to dig up this conversation where I tried to ascertain the worst-case scenario from the Georgia water main incident, but that doesn't seem to be what you have in mind.
I take allegations of dishonesty very seriously! That's why I keep offering my full motte archives for others to scrutinize. If I'm ever being dishonest or whatever (as Dean constantly insists I am) then it should be effortless to demonstrate this. You're citing an exchange that you claim to be a good example of my dishonesty, but it's based off your memory. If you're remembering correctly, then I will acknowledge error and issue a public apology. But if you're misremembering, I would appreciate an apology from you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I bet pauses in counting wouldn’t arouse any suspicions…
The mistake you’re making is conflating “suspicious” with “malicious” and “impactful.”
Here, there was intense scrutiny over the counting and too many observers causing issues such that an election official took action to resolve things. The intense scrutiny led to an irregularity that you are treating as conclusive evidence that shenanigans were afoot.
It’s a bit of circular reasoning that you can’t be pulled out of unless you acknowledge that the strangeness did not stop observation and that there is no evidence showing actual misdeeds with the ballot counting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link