Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
I think it's a major achievement for conservative Newspropaganda to have painted Harris as somebody who'd support israel in unsanctioned wars, and now is cowardly congratulating the mango mussoline for every radar station that a trillion dollar missle takes down.
On June 11 2026 06:42 KwarK wrote: Trump has declared that he loves inflation because he turned the lights off on the ship and Iran doesn’t even know.
This is so stupid, I'm sure the percentages crowd will be here shortly to share their essays about why it's actually a good thing and we're all just deeply ignorant Marxists
it is pretty sad that NYC outdoor watch parties have been banned for tonight's Knicks game. Toronto managed to have a dozen watch parties during their NBA playoff run with very few incidents.
Toronto and NYC have similar violent crime rates and property crime rates in TOronto are 40% higher.
DUring the Raptors 2019 playoff run.. i gotta say the Toronto cops were stellar. A properly prepped police force in NYC should be able to corral the watch parties with very few problems.
The decision comes a day after Madison Square Garden officials blasted the New York Police Department and Mayor Zohran Mamdani when the city unveiled its security plan, including a vast perimeter and other restrictions, for Game 4, even though U.S. President Donald Trump does not plan to attend.
James Dolan//MSG Corp does not pay property tax. This clown is getting a sweetheart deal. WIth that being the case he has to work better with the city and mayor to create great experiences for all New Yorkers.
Any how, I think James Dolan, Mamdani, and the NYPD have failed the city's average citizens. NBA Finals Watch parties are an absolute blast for average people. I am glad I got to experience several massive watch parties. Its a cryin' shame New Yorkers are getting robbed. I went to 1 game during that big NBA championship run and it cost me $3,000. In 2007, I went to an NBA playoff game and it cost me $65. So, attending a game has become impossible for the average person.
EDIT: also, if Trump really cared about the people of New York he would not have attended game 3. Him attending game 3. is what started the whole "ban outdoor watch parties" thing.
EDIT: the Knicks came back from a 29 point deficit... the largest come back in NBA Finals history. MSG is rockin'. Imagine how cool a watch party would've been?
On June 10 2026 18:06 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote] The argument has been that dyhb and you and others have said that California's inefficient election process legitimizes conservatives' conspiratorial thinking
I really have trouble seeing this as anything but the most deliberate bad-faith attempt to mischaracterize another person's posts.
Have you thought about whether the anger over why it takes weeks to find out tight election results advances conspiratorial thinking? Why is it taking so long, why can't we be like every other state (including big states) and countries? Oh, this guy knows the REAL reason why...
Voters that still don't know the outcome of tight races one week after ... or two weeks after ... or three weeks after is pouring gasoline on that fire. They aren't responsible for the fire itself, so I'm not contesting your contribution. You're just ignoring the other affects for no good reason.
How can you read anything about my posts and not come away understanding that the broken and delayed process makes an existing problem worse? Legitimizes? You read all that and say legitimizes?
What are you talking about? Those are the exact statements that support what I said that you were saying. Those quotes demonstrate that you think conspiracy theorists feel they are justified in being suspicious of election integrity because California takes a while to complete their elections. You're saying it's no wonder that this "advances conspiratorial thinking" and that this inefficiency "is pouring gasoline on that fire".
Is this a semantics issue? Are you and I using different definitions of "legitimizes"? Because you're clearly stating that California's inefficiency is making the conspiracy theorists feel that their concerns are legitimate / reasonable / understandable. The inefficiency might not be the only reason why conspiracy theorists freak out over California elections, but it gives them extra ammunition... they wonder, to quote you, "Why is it taking so long, why can't we be like every other state (including big states) and countries? Oh, this guy knows the REAL reason why..."
You are really really going to have to separate in your mind two different things. One is taking action to curb the pernicious influence of bad things in society. The other is justifying, excusing, or calling good the bad things in society. I don't think it is a semantics issue, since you are apparently having an incredibly difficult time separating these in your mind.
You're far too focused on calling people that want to fix the problem as somehow forgiving or condoning the existence of the problem in and of itself. I should call you a pretty bad math teacher if you point at a teacher going over common math mistakes on the whiteboard to say, "Look at this guy! Legitimizing bad math mistakes by writing them down on the board! Clearly, he's reinforcing in the minds of the students that shoddy solution techniques are acceptable in the world of rigorous mathematics!" Sorry, bro, but pointing out their existence and contribution to/acceleration of other ills is an entire world away from legitimization, and doesn't rank-order each mistake in terms of reasonability.
I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
On June 10 2026 23:17 dyhb wrote: [quote]I really have trouble seeing this as anything but the most deliberate bad-faith attempt to mischaracterize another person's posts. [quote][quote]How can you read anything about my posts and not come away understanding that the broken and delayed process makes an existing problem worse? Legitimizes? You read all that and say legitimizes?
What are you talking about? Those are the exact statements that support what I said that you were saying. Those quotes demonstrate that you think conspiracy theorists feel they are justified in being suspicious of election integrity because California takes a while to complete their elections. You're saying it's no wonder that this "advances conspiratorial thinking" and that this inefficiency "is pouring gasoline on that fire".
Is this a semantics issue? Are you and I using different definitions of "legitimizes"? Because you're clearly stating that California's inefficiency is making the conspiracy theorists feel that their concerns are legitimate / reasonable / understandable. The inefficiency might not be the only reason why conspiracy theorists freak out over California elections, but it gives them extra ammunition... they wonder, to quote you, "Why is it taking so long, why can't we be like every other state (including big states) and countries? Oh, this guy knows the REAL reason why..."
You are really really going to have to separate in your mind two different things. One is taking action to curb the pernicious influence of bad things in society. The other is justifying, excusing, or calling good the bad things in society. I don't think it is a semantics issue, since you are apparently having an incredibly difficult time separating these in your mind.
You're far too focused on calling people that want to fix the problem as somehow forgiving or condoning the existence of the problem in and of itself. I should call you a pretty bad math teacher if you point at a teacher going over common math mistakes on the whiteboard to say, "Look at this guy! Legitimizing bad math mistakes by writing them down on the board! Clearly, he's reinforcing in the minds of the students that shoddy solution techniques are acceptable in the world of rigorous mathematics!" Sorry, bro, but pointing out their existence and contribution to/acceleration of other ills is an entire world away from legitimization, and doesn't rank-order each mistake in terms of reasonability.
I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
To that end... does anyone actually have a specific suggestion for improving California's election system? Like, can we identify some actual problems and posit solutions / better ways they could run it? Like, they're currently doing X, but they should really consider doing Y instead.
What about this 1) Make it impossible for dogs to be able to vote 2) Ballot deadline is... wait for it... ELECTION DAY 3) Require postmarks for posted ballots 4) Count within 2 weeks like a competent state (this prevents the non-existent strawman of "You counted too fast" from occurring which excuses anyone ever fixing anything - if CONSPIRACY THEORISTS will complain regardless, why not take 3 months to count to be super exact? - Notice I said "competent" not "normal" because "normal" is incompetent in most cases) 5) REQUIRE at least video surveillance of a ballot drop box. Take lessons from the CCP's extensive use of CCTV and apply it using tax revenue from the lucrative liberal economy of the largest state by population. 6) Ban paid ballot harvesting 7) Ban unpaid ballot harvesting 8) Require ID to vote 9) Require proof of citizenship to register to vote or use the competent apparatus of bureaucracy to otherwise verify citizenship 10) Send mail-in ballots by request only, NOT ahead of time automatically to passively maintained voter rolls
On June 11 2026 06:42 KwarK wrote: Trump has declared that he loves inflation because he turned the lights off on the ship and Iran doesn’t even know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SYLSGpOSbg&ra=m
He does have a habit of publicly talking my about the US’s secret plans. Which is obviously some sort of super amazing 4d chess people that dum people can’t figure out.
High inflation is good because it can come down which is good because low is good and therefore he loves high.
4.2% is good because it's not as high as doomsayers told us.
On June 11 2026 06:52 KwarK wrote: It will come down when oil supplies from the Gulf resume which has actually happened already because the lights are off. But even though oil is already leaving the Gulf it will come down when the war ends and the oil leaves the Gulf which it is already doing with the lights off.
Even people whose thesis is inflation is 100% oil should be able to understand that it doesn't TELEPORT.
On June 11 2026 06:52 KwarK wrote: Iran doesn’t know the lights are off. How could they, they don’t have radar. That’s how we defeated them. But now is the time to let them know.
Somehow Strait-Closing Ceasefire-Ignoring Iran's radar operators forgot to tell their missile operators. Not to mention the massive Gungan fleet of submerged mines that was supposed to blow up all the traversing ships lmfao.
On June 10 2026 23:17 dyhb wrote: [quote]I really have trouble seeing this as anything but the most deliberate bad-faith attempt to mischaracterize another person's posts. [quote][quote]How can you read anything about my posts and not come away understanding that the broken and delayed process makes an existing problem worse? Legitimizes? You read all that and say legitimizes?
What are you talking about? Those are the exact statements that support what I said that you were saying. Those quotes demonstrate that you think conspiracy theorists feel they are justified in being suspicious of election integrity because California takes a while to complete their elections. You're saying it's no wonder that this "advances conspiratorial thinking" and that this inefficiency "is pouring gasoline on that fire".
Is this a semantics issue? Are you and I using different definitions of "legitimizes"? Because you're clearly stating that California's inefficiency is making the conspiracy theorists feel that their concerns are legitimate / reasonable / understandable. The inefficiency might not be the only reason why conspiracy theorists freak out over California elections, but it gives them extra ammunition... they wonder, to quote you, "Why is it taking so long, why can't we be like every other state (including big states) and countries? Oh, this guy knows the REAL reason why..."
You are really really going to have to separate in your mind two different things. One is taking action to curb the pernicious influence of bad things in society. The other is justifying, excusing, or calling good the bad things in society. I don't think it is a semantics issue, since you are apparently having an incredibly difficult time separating these in your mind.
You're far too focused on calling people that want to fix the problem as somehow forgiving or condoning the existence of the problem in and of itself. I should call you a pretty bad math teacher if you point at a teacher going over common math mistakes on the whiteboard to say, "Look at this guy! Legitimizing bad math mistakes by writing them down on the board! Clearly, he's reinforcing in the minds of the students that shoddy solution techniques are acceptable in the world of rigorous mathematics!" Sorry, bro, but pointing out their existence and contribution to/acceleration of other ills is an entire world away from legitimization, and doesn't rank-order each mistake in terms of reasonability.
I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s.
On June 10 2026 23:40 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote] What are you talking about? Those are the exact statements that support what I said that you were saying. Those quotes demonstrate that you think conspiracy theorists feel they are justified in being suspicious of election integrity because California takes a while to complete their elections. You're saying it's no wonder that this "advances conspiratorial thinking" and that this inefficiency "is pouring gasoline on that fire".
Is this a semantics issue? Are you and I using different definitions of "legitimizes"? Because you're clearly stating that California's inefficiency is making the conspiracy theorists feel that their concerns are legitimate / reasonable / understandable. The inefficiency might not be the only reason why conspiracy theorists freak out over California elections, but it gives them extra ammunition... they wonder, to quote you, "Why is it taking so long, why can't we be like every other state (including big states) and countries? Oh, this guy knows the REAL reason why..."
You are really really going to have to separate in your mind two different things. One is taking action to curb the pernicious influence of bad things in society. The other is justifying, excusing, or calling good the bad things in society. I don't think it is a semantics issue, since you are apparently having an incredibly difficult time separating these in your mind.
You're far too focused on calling people that want to fix the problem as somehow forgiving or condoning the existence of the problem in and of itself. I should call you a pretty bad math teacher if you point at a teacher going over common math mistakes on the whiteboard to say, "Look at this guy! Legitimizing bad math mistakes by writing them down on the board! Clearly, he's reinforcing in the minds of the students that shoddy solution techniques are acceptable in the world of rigorous mathematics!" Sorry, bro, but pointing out their existence and contribution to/acceleration of other ills is an entire world away from legitimization, and doesn't rank-order each mistake in terms of reasonability.
I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
On June 11 2026 00:31 dyhb wrote: [quote]You are really really going to have to separate in your mind two different things. One is taking action to curb the pernicious influence of bad things in society. The other is justifying, excusing, or calling good the bad things in society. I don't think it is a semantics issue, since you are apparently having an incredibly difficult time separating these in your mind.
You're far too focused on calling people that want to fix the problem as somehow forgiving or condoning the existence of the problem in and of itself. I should call you a pretty bad math teacher if you point at a teacher going over common math mistakes on the whiteboard to say, "Look at this guy! Legitimizing bad math mistakes by writing them down on the board! Clearly, he's reinforcing in the minds of the students that shoddy solution techniques are acceptable in the world of rigorous mathematics!" Sorry, bro, but pointing out their existence and contribution to/acceleration of other ills is an entire world away from legitimization, and doesn't rank-order each mistake in terms of reasonability.
I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s.
Any argument predicated on changing the mind of a conspiracy theorist by performing some kind of action is simply flawed.
It's a basic fact.
If "conspiracy theorists" are fundamentally implacable then nobody should worry about aggravating their condition either.
On June 11 2026 00:31 dyhb wrote: [quote]You are really really going to have to separate in your mind two different things. One is taking action to curb the pernicious influence of bad things in society. The other is justifying, excusing, or calling good the bad things in society. I don't think it is a semantics issue, since you are apparently having an incredibly difficult time separating these in your mind.
You're far too focused on calling people that want to fix the problem as somehow forgiving or condoning the existence of the problem in and of itself. I should call you a pretty bad math teacher if you point at a teacher going over common math mistakes on the whiteboard to say, "Look at this guy! Legitimizing bad math mistakes by writing them down on the board! Clearly, he's reinforcing in the minds of the students that shoddy solution techniques are acceptable in the world of rigorous mathematics!" Sorry, bro, but pointing out their existence and contribution to/acceleration of other ills is an entire world away from legitimization, and doesn't rank-order each mistake in terms of reasonability.
I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s.
Any argument predicated on changing the mind of a conspiracy theorist by performing some kind of action is simply flawed.
It's a basic fact.
There's no way you all are too dense to see dhyb isn't talking about changing the minds of conspiracy theorists. dyhb is talking about how to help prevent the conspiracy theorists from changing the sorts of minds of what many here have referred to as some variation of the "impressionable lurker".
Also not that they'd turn said lurker into a full blown flat earther overnight, but help send them down a dark path.
Basically exactly the reason many people here recently gave for incessantly shitposting with/about right-wingers.
On June 11 2026 01:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote] I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s.
Any argument predicated on changing the mind of a conspiracy theorist by performing some kind of action is simply flawed.
It's a basic fact.
There's no way you all are too dense to see dhyb isn't talking about changing the minds of conspiracy theorists. dyhb is talking about how to help prevent the conspiracy theorists from changing the sorts of minds of what many here have referred to as some variation of the "impressionable lurker".
Also not that they'd turn said lurker into a full blown flat earther overnight, but help send them down a dark path.
Basically exactly the reason many people here recently gave for incessantly shitposting with/about right-wingers.
We're obviously not too dense to see that, given that we've been talking about whether or not "this will prevent conspiracy theorists from changing minds" is a realistic perspective, based on the past decade of Trumpism.
come on now, you know you want to say Mocking And Gawking
with a conspiracy theorist or a conservative on a TL forum is not nearly as high-stakes as changing election laws at the whim of conspiracy theorists or to placate biased conservatives. Changing voting regulations needs to be handled extremely delicately, and so far, the two justifications have been "because California takes longer than other states" and "because of conspiracy theorists", and those two justifications don't seem to be sufficient for many people to agree that something needs to be done.
Seeing how I have yet to see an argument in favor of California actually needing three weeks to count the votes, it is hard for me to understand why this argument has lasted multiple pages. They should obviously be more efficient.
On June 11 2026 01:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote] I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s.
Any argument predicated on changing the mind of a conspiracy theorist by performing some kind of action is simply flawed.
It's a basic fact.
There's no way you all are too dense to see dhyb isn't talking about changing the minds of conspiracy theorists. dyhb is talking about how to help prevent the conspiracy theorists from changing the sorts of minds of what many here have referred to as some variation of the "impressionable lurker".
Also not that they'd turn said lurker into a full blown flat earther overnight, but help send them down a dark path.
Basically exactly the reason many people here recently gave for incessantly shitposting with/about right-wingers.
This is a fundamental misidentification of the spread vector of conspiracy theories.
In the context of this particular theory, its spread has little to do with the speed at which California counts its vote and more to do with a moron with a big megaphone saying that the election is rigged.
On June 10 2026 23:40 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote] What are you talking about? Those are the exact statements that support what I said that you were saying. Those quotes demonstrate that you think conspiracy theorists feel they are justified in being suspicious of election integrity because California takes a while to complete their elections. You're saying it's no wonder that this "advances conspiratorial thinking" and that this inefficiency "is pouring gasoline on that fire".
Is this a semantics issue? Are you and I using different definitions of "legitimizes"? Because you're clearly stating that California's inefficiency is making the conspiracy theorists feel that their concerns are legitimate / reasonable / understandable. The inefficiency might not be the only reason why conspiracy theorists freak out over California elections, but it gives them extra ammunition... they wonder, to quote you, "Why is it taking so long, why can't we be like every other state (including big states) and countries? Oh, this guy knows the REAL reason why..."
You are really really going to have to separate in your mind two different things. One is taking action to curb the pernicious influence of bad things in society. The other is justifying, excusing, or calling good the bad things in society. I don't think it is a semantics issue, since you are apparently having an incredibly difficult time separating these in your mind.
You're far too focused on calling people that want to fix the problem as somehow forgiving or condoning the existence of the problem in and of itself. I should call you a pretty bad math teacher if you point at a teacher going over common math mistakes on the whiteboard to say, "Look at this guy! Legitimizing bad math mistakes by writing them down on the board! Clearly, he's reinforcing in the minds of the students that shoddy solution techniques are acceptable in the world of rigorous mathematics!" Sorry, bro, but pointing out their existence and contribution to/acceleration of other ills is an entire world away from legitimization, and doesn't rank-order each mistake in terms of reasonability.
I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
To that end... does anyone actually have a specific suggestion for improving California's election system? Like, can we identify some actual problems and posit solutions / better ways they could run it? Like, they're currently doing X, but they should really consider doing Y instead.
What about this 1) Make it impossible for dogs to be able to vote 2) Ballot deadline is... wait for it... ELECTION DAY 3) Require postmarks for posted ballots 4) Count within 2 weeks like a competent state (this prevents the non-existent strawman of "You counted too fast" from occurring which excuses anyone ever fixing anything - if CONSPIRACY THEORISTS will complain regardless, why not take 3 months to count to be super exact? - Notice I said "competent" not "normal" because "normal" is incompetent in most cases) 5) REQUIRE at least video surveillance of a ballot drop box. Take lessons from the CCP's extensive use of CCTV and apply it using tax revenue from the lucrative liberal economy of the largest state by population. 6) Ban paid ballot harvesting 7) Ban unpaid ballot harvesting 8) Require ID to vote 9) Require proof of citizenship to register to vote or use the competent apparatus of bureaucracy to otherwise verify citizenship 10) Send mail-in ballots by request only, NOT ahead of time automatically to passively maintained voter rolls
Thank you for the list! We want to make sure that any changes would be addressing the issue (speeding up the process without sacrificing accuracy). I think some of these make a lot of sense, while others don't seem to be particularly relevant.
Just to dismiss a few that I don't think address the problem: #6 and #7 are allowed by most states*, so ballot harvesting (allowing someone else to hand in your ballot for you) doesn't seem to be creating this specific issue that California has. *34 states allow other people to return your ballot on your behalf: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_collection_laws_by_state
Similarly, I think #1 is just a reference to how one Republican woman committed voter fraud in California around 2021-2022 by getting her dog to vote in an election ( https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/orange-county-dog-registered-to-vote-flaws-in-california-voting-system/ ). She was charged with five felonies, and I don't think the one-in-a-million example of a Republican stupidly committing election crimes is really holding up the broader California election process.
I'm also not sure why #10 exists, as long as addresses are kept up-to-date (which can be easily confirmed online or by mail every few years). Sending out optional mail-in ballots encourages more voting, and that's what we want to happen. I think it's wiser to increase the efficiency of counting votes, not reduce the number of votes being cast.
#8 and #9 also don't seem to be slowing down the vote-counting process, and we've already had conversations about how important those are (or aren't) when it comes to voter fraud.
I could see the rest of your list potentially making some sense, especially if we compare how other states do things to how California does things. For example, looking at your #2 (ballot deadline is Election Day), I'm okay with this as long as there are enough days ahead of Election Day for early voting. That leads to the question "how many early voting days is *enough* early voting days?", so I'd defer to what the other 49 states typically allow: https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting
In the source above, there's a column called "duration of early voting", which thankfully includes the relevant information: the number of days available for early voting. The numbers are generally between 0 and 30 for each state, although South Dakota seems to be an outlier with 45-46 days of early voting. California is at 29 - basically a full month - and their early voting deadline is already on Election Day.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you mean for #2 is that the ballot needs to be received by Election Day so that it could potentially be counted on Election Day, not merely put in the mailbox by Election Day. (The controversy surrounding California counting ballots a week or two late seems to be that those ballots were appropriately placed in the mail by Election Day, but the mail didn't get delivered until a few days later.*) And that's a legitimate concern, so California ought to find a way to improve the speed of their mail delivery, or maybe shift those 29 days of early voting back a week, so that California voters still have the same amount of time to vote early but the deadline for early voting would become a week before Election Day, so that we can reasonably expect the mailed ballots to arrive by Election Day. What are your thoughts on my underlined idea? California still keeping 29 days of early voting (plenty of other smaller states allow for that many days) but having that period start earlier, so that it also ends earlier than Election Day, giving more time for the mail to be delivered by Election Day?
*More about that: "Those ballots are accepted so long as they are dropped at secure locations received by elections offices by 8 p.m. local time on election day or postmarked by that date and returned by the following Tuesday, according to state law. The extended deadline and other administrative requirements mean it can take days or weeks to finalize the tallies of any given election — a process state officials argue is slowed further by the sheer volume of incoming ballots." https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5917066-supreme-court-mail-in-ballots/
On June 11 2026 02:31 dyhb wrote: [quote]I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
[quote]I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s.
Any argument predicated on changing the mind of a conspiracy theorist by performing some kind of action is simply flawed.
It's a basic fact.
There's no way you all are too dense to see dhyb isn't talking about changing the minds of conspiracy theorists. dyhb is talking about how to help prevent the conspiracy theorists from changing the sorts of minds of what many here have referred to as some variation of the "impressionable lurker".
Also not that they'd turn said lurker into a full blown flat earther overnight, but help send them down a dark path.
Basically exactly the reason many people here recently gave for incessantly shitposting with/about right-wingers.
We're obviously not too dense to see that, given that we've been talking about whether or not "this will prevent conspiracy theorists from changing minds" is a realistic perspective, based on the past decade of Trumpism.
come on now, you know you want to say Mocking And Gawking
with a conspiracy theorist or a conservative on a TL forum is not nearly as high-stakes as changing election laws at the whim of conspiracy theorists or to placate biased conservatives. Changing voting regulations needs to be handled extremely delicately, and so far, the two justifications have been "because California takes longer than other states" and "because of conspiracy theorists", and those two justifications don't seem to be sufficient for many people to agree that something needs to be done.
It is an entirely reasonable demand, surely it can’t be difficult.
I feel though it’s more a vector into another discussion, which hey fine.
It kinda ties back in to similarish discussions a while back. Namely the idea that if you do x reasonable thing, often with nothing reciprocated, then it’ll kinda rein back in the more extreme tenor of things. Which I find a bit dubious meself
I may be slightly grumpier on this than even my usual given we’re having yet more migration(racial let’s be honest) riots over here at the minute.
One could perhaps pull it back to Covid times for a second. There is an entirely reasonable theory that some pushback came from a loss of faith in institutions, say a Fauci, and if only they hadn’t done x for the ‘greater good’ then things would have been smoother. But I think it’s highly probable whatever the alternate course was in that alternate reality would have been transmuted to the proverbial stick to beat folks with
Why can't Captain Communist Mamdani go to New York state and get them to change the law that allows Dolan/MSG to pay $0 in property tax? LOL. He will be raising everyone's property taxes soon while Dolan continues to pay $0 for MSG. LOL. Mamdani never even brought this up as a possibility. What kind of revolutionary is he?
I guess with all these incidents the NYPD has to clamp down. Unfortunately, "community liaison therapists" won't get the job done. Behaviour like this requires a show of force by the police.
So far, based on all the available information i think the NYPD did a solid job last night.
On June 11 2026 01:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote] I think you're giving yourself way too much credit on what (and how) you're contributing to this conversation, especially if you look at the pushback you're receiving. The "two different things" that you're insisting I separate were both being pushed by you. You're bringing up what you perceive to be a way to reduce conspiracy theories (not accounting for what happens in real life, which is what I wrote earlier: "even if California ran more smoothly than any other state, Republicans would still make up conspiracy theories about any election they lose being rigged"), while also making statements that legitimize those conspiracy theories. You're trying to have it both ways and then complaining when people take issue with at least one (if not both) of your positions.
I have nothing to add, other than to ask you to make that differentiation in the interest of understanding your objection to my point.
While I appreciate the importance of discussing common math mistakes with students so that those errors aren't committed again, the equivalent analogy would be to discuss mistakes in reasoning with conspiracy theorists* so that those errors aren't committed again. For example, we can explain why an election taking a while doesn't imply there's foul play, and we can compare similarly low / negligible rates of fraud across different states (regardless of how long they take to complete their election). *I don't know if conspiracy theorists will understand and learn at the same rate as good-faith students, but I think that additional inconsistency in your analogy is perhaps less important to the original point you were trying to make.
I thought it was clear by now that I was talking about the ability of conspiracy theorists to spread their conspiracies among the rest of the population. You’re going back to a point nobody was making about the theorists themselves. Hence, I’m trying to understand if you’re being purposefully obtuse, or genuinely mistaken. We can’t talk about what makes fertile ground for the spread, and allay it, if every time I try to examine that you change the subject insistently.
How would their ability to spread their conspiracy theories be affected by California improving their election system? Can't they still take to social media and their echo chambers and continue to say that elections are rigged?
Isn’t understanding so much better than claiming I’m trying to legitimize it? I think so!
The length of counting and the degree to which it hasn’t been fixed, when almost every other self-respecting state counts better, is the breeding ground for suggestion. I’m sorry that incompetence and self-interest in hiding it as explanation (passed bad election law, poor leadership, poor appointments, whatever) is boring compared to the conspiracy advocate’s claim that it’s being done with intention to cheat the system. That’s a human nature issue, so take it up with your behavioral economists or cognitive psychologists.
Now take away that impetus. California has changed its election law and its administrative processes to give quicker vote counting and now is an ordinary state instead of an outlier when it comes to elections. As GH might say, the Democrats have run it for decades, and they solved the problem and can advertise it to the world. Now, there isn’t a non-conspiratorial population reminded every two years that the system is bad, hasn’t been changed, and they’ll have to keep waiting for absurd periods. They aren’t grumbling about the antiquated and poorly run system when they first catch wind of the cheating conspiracy du jour by the bad actors. You’ve already cut off big routes of the conspiracy: something underhanded is happening in the exaggerated timeline between when the first votes come in and the count is almost entirely concluded. The conspiracist must now surmount two obstacles. There’s no underlying knowledge “in the air” that the system is screwed up apart from the conspiracist’s information, and there was no knowledge that someone is successfully exploiting a flaw. They must provide more and overcome more basic doubt. That’s what I want to happen as an easy partial fix.
Because I hate to break it to you, but it’s unlikely that you magically compel Trump & buds to accept that he lost 2020 and stop spreading whatever happens in 2028 if his successor loses. You are somewhat limited in what you can change. Fix what you can, and keep working on what you can’t. Prepare for yourself a better field to defend and argue from, because I guarantee you that possessing better ground for argument beats marketing to the public your excuses for failure.
All of that would be nice, but that's a complete fantasy. It's incredibly naive and it's wrong.
We already know - for a fact - that none of what you're hypothesizing could even remotely come true. An improved California election system would not lead to what you're hoping would happen. I wish it could! I wish it would. But that fairy tale has been utterly disproven over the past decade - not because of California's specific situation, but because we know incontrovertibly that conspiracy theorists will still continue to stubbornly spout the same bullshit even if they've been proven factually incorrect and even if things change. They've already decided that things are rigged, regardless of reality.
There's endless goalpost-moving when it comes to conspiracies, and several posts have recently explained this. Those conspiracy theorists already have the next ten conspiracies lined up for why California is rigged. If California is suspiciously too slow, then fixing that means that California is suspiciously too fast, or just plain old always suspicious *because it's California and let's just distrust California because can you really trust those guys*? And surely improving California's system is toooootally a cover-up because now those Californians know we're on to 'em, and a million other ridiculous lines... you can't win with these people, even if you attempt to address their (fake) concerns.
As I mentioned earlier, if people wanted to take a look at why California has slow election results and try to figure out legitimate ways to improve California's efficiency, then that would be a fine goal. But none of that happened. Instead, people were talking about just how suspicious California's situation is, and could we really blame the conspiracy theorists when California is such an outlier, and maybe addressing this will "cut off big routes of the conspiracy".
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s. Let them change the goalposts to their own satisfaction. Most are too far gone and will need one-on-one patient intervention. You ever talk to someone that blames Russia for 2016 and effortlessly switches to the Jews or AIPAC for 2024? But their goals to convince others just got harder because of … bare competence. Maybe I’m discovering that you’ve given up on competence as well as declaring that it wouldn’t matter, but I wouldn’t go that far yet.
So fix the broken system, and if you’re right on this unstated infinite gullibility hypothesis, no harm done. I’m less pessimistic and cynical than you on that subject.
You can't prove to a flat earther that the world is round. No amount of incontrovertible evidence is good enough. Conspiracy theorists are not reasonable people.
There you go muttering about today’s conspiracists and not tomorrow’s.
Any argument predicated on changing the mind of a conspiracy theorist by performing some kind of action is simply flawed.
It's a basic fact.
If "conspiracy theorists" are fundamentally implacable then nobody should worry about aggravating their condition either.
Perfect argument against the SAVE Act.
On June 11 2026 20:47 Liquid`Drone wrote: Seeing how I have yet to see an argument in favor of California actually needing three weeks to count the votes, it is hard for me to understand why this argument has lasted multiple pages. They should obviously be more efficient.
I've yet to see an argument why faster counting is a desirable thing for any reason other than "conspiracy theorists (who we all agree will say false and dumb shit regardless) might theorize something slightly different". Faster counting doesn't result in an earlier change of administration, and there's still plenty of time for any lawsuits about the fairness of the primary (the general election is in November).
Let's be real, conservatives are making a stink about this because they don't want to talk about America losing the War in Iran (adjudicated rapist Donald Trump literally compared the war to Vietnam this week), inflation rising, gas and grocery prices spiraling, many of the the Epstein files still being illegally withheld, ICE receiving more funding than the entire military of Russia, mass shootings still happening every week, etc. Republican unpopularity is literally breaking records and they know they will lose the upcoming midterms if done fairly. They need something to bitch about even though nobody has demonstrated even the tiniest reason why faster counting would positively affect anyone's life. It's bitching for the sake of bitching.
On June 11 2026 04:56 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: To that end... does anyone actually have a specific suggestion for improving California's election system? Like, can we identify some actual problems and posit solutions / better ways they could run it? Like, they're currently doing X, but they should really consider doing Y instead.
What about this 1) Make it impossible for dogs to be able to vote 2) Ballot deadline is... wait for it... ELECTION DAY 3) Require postmarks for posted ballots 4) Count within 2 weeks like a competent state (this prevents the non-existent strawman of "You counted too fast" from occurring which excuses anyone ever fixing anything - if CONSPIRACY THEORISTS will complain regardless, why not take 3 months to count to be super exact? - Notice I said "competent" not "normal" because "normal" is incompetent in most cases) 5) REQUIRE at least video surveillance of a ballot drop box. Take lessons from the CCP's extensive use of CCTV and apply it using tax revenue from the lucrative liberal economy of the largest state by population. 6) Ban paid ballot harvesting 7) Ban unpaid ballot harvesting 8) Require ID to vote 9) Require proof of citizenship to register to vote or use the competent apparatus of bureaucracy to otherwise verify citizenship 10) Send mail-in ballots by request only, NOT ahead of time automatically to passively maintained voter rolls
Thank you for the list! We want to make sure that any changes would be addressing the issue (speeding up the process without sacrificing accuracy). I think some of these make a lot of sense, while others don't seem to be particularly relevant.
Buddy. Your question is verbatim:
To that end... does anyone actually have a specific suggestion for improving California's election system? Like, can we identify some actual problems and posit solutions / better ways they could run it? Like, they're currently doing X, but they should really consider doing Y instead.
Your question is not "make it go faster, only speed, fast only, nothing else."
If I were to guess what happened in your head is "I will ask them what can be improved, and since everything except the speed is perfect because California, the only possible response is therefore how to make it faster." Even though your own stance is it's not a problem that it just takes a while.
Or you just forgot what you asked already.
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Just to dismiss a few that I don't think address the problem: #6 and #7 are allowed by most states*, so ballot harvesting (allowing someone else to hand in your ballot for you) doesn't seem to be creating this specific issue that California has. *34 states allow other people to return your ballot on your behalf: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_collection_laws_by_state
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Similarly, I think #1 is just a reference to how one Republican woman committed voter fraud in California around 2021-2022 by getting her dog to vote in an election ( https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/orange-county-dog-registered-to-vote-flaws-in-california-voting-system/ ). She was charged with five felonies, and I don't think the one-in-a-million example of a Republican stupidly committing election crimes is really holding up the broader California election process.
Joke framing.
She registered the dog to vote, and cast votes. The dog's registration was never caught by the system and she was in no danger of criminal prosecution. She turned HERSELF in AFTER the affair to expose the flaw. If you knew what a white hacker is you would instantly know the sentiment and the point.
But here's what happened to the votes. The California vote was counted. The federal vote was NOT counted. This means California's elections are less secure than the United States. California's answer was to propose cross-checking voter rolls with pet registrations (lmfao). As though a dog has to be real for you to register it to vote. That's pathetic. You can fix that or I can vote for someone who will use the Insurrection Act to bring California elections back under the umbrella of American democracy by having the National Guard run them if California is too incompetent to handle it. The dog loophole is alive and well. Never patched.
This is why even if your question did not specifically say the open-ended "improve," you have no standing whatsoever to put a fence around what I think is a problem or pigeonhole the issue. I am not interested in California counting dog votes more quickly.
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I'm also not sure why #10 exists, as long as addresses are kept up-to-date (which can be easily confirmed online or by mail every few years). Sending out optional mail-in ballots encourages more voting, and that's what we want to happen. I think it's wiser to increase the efficiency of counting votes, not reduce the number of votes being cast.
They aren't. They can't be. That's why #10 exists. This works in the systems of our reasonable Swiss colleagues for example who have to tell the government within 2 weeks of when they move where their residence is or something. That is never happening in the US.
"Fix this thing." "Um I'm not sure if that applies unless that thing were broken in which case you should fix it."
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: #8 and #9 also don't seem to be slowing down the vote-counting process, and we've already had conversations about how important those are (or aren't) when it comes to voter fraud.
If you allow dogs to vote and your system of taking longer to count the vote than normal does not make up for it by being robust enough to remove dog registrations and dog votes, you need to do one of 1) start using the extra counting time to remove the dog votes, 2) prevent dogs from voting to begin with, or 3) burn the thing down.
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I could see the rest of your list potentially making some sense, especially if we compare how other states do things to how California does things. For example, looking at your #2 (ballot deadline is Election Day), I'm okay with this as long as there are enough days ahead of Election Day for early voting. That leads to the question "how many early voting days is *enough* early voting days?", so I'd defer to what the other 49 states typically allow: https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting
In the source above, there's a column called "duration of early voting", which thankfully includes the relevant information: the number of days available for early voting. The numbers are generally between 0 and 30 for each state, although South Dakota seems to be an outlier with 45-46 days of early voting. California is at 29 - basically a full month - and their early voting deadline is already on Election Day.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you mean for #2 is that the ballot needs to be received by Election Day so that it could potentially be counted on Election Day, not merely put in the mailbox by Election Day. (The controversy surrounding California counting ballots a week or two late seems to be that those ballots were appropriately placed in the mail by Election Day, but the mail didn't get delivered until a few days later.*) And that's a legitimate concern, so California ought to find a way to improve the speed of their mail delivery, or maybe shift those 29 days of early voting back a week, so that California voters still have the same amount of time to vote early but the deadline for early voting would become a week before Election Day, so that we can reasonably expect the mailed ballots to arrive by Election Day. What are your thoughts on my underlined idea? California still keeping 29 days of early voting (plenty of other smaller states allow for that many days) but having that period start earlier, so that it also ends earlier than Election Day, giving more time for the mail to be delivered by Election Day?
*More about that: "Those ballots are accepted so long as they are dropped at secure locations received by elections offices by 8 p.m. local time on election day or postmarked by that date and returned by the following Tuesday, according to state law. The extended deadline and other administrative requirements mean it can take days or weeks to finalize the tallies of any given election — a process state officials argue is slowed further by the sheer volume of incoming ballots." https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5917066-supreme-court-mail-in-ballots/
"Secure" locations do not have to have CCTV surveillance under California law.
Here's a new fix it idea: 11) Fire everyone who has touched anything along with anyone who has never met a basic standard of competence and ban them from ever working for the state again. But that might fuel the conspiracy fires of Republicans who believe for purely ideological reasons that the California government is incompetent or worse.
On June 11 2026 04:56 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: To that end... does anyone actually have a specific suggestion for improving California's election system? Like, can we identify some actual problems and posit solutions / better ways they could run it? Like, they're currently doing X, but they should really consider doing Y instead.
What about this 1) Make it impossible for dogs to be able to vote 2) Ballot deadline is... wait for it... ELECTION DAY 3) Require postmarks for posted ballots 4) Count within 2 weeks like a competent state (this prevents the non-existent strawman of "You counted too fast" from occurring which excuses anyone ever fixing anything - if CONSPIRACY THEORISTS will complain regardless, why not take 3 months to count to be super exact? - Notice I said "competent" not "normal" because "normal" is incompetent in most cases) 5) REQUIRE at least video surveillance of a ballot drop box. Take lessons from the CCP's extensive use of CCTV and apply it using tax revenue from the lucrative liberal economy of the largest state by population. 6) Ban paid ballot harvesting 7) Ban unpaid ballot harvesting 8) Require ID to vote 9) Require proof of citizenship to register to vote or use the competent apparatus of bureaucracy to otherwise verify citizenship 10) Send mail-in ballots by request only, NOT ahead of time automatically to passively maintained voter rolls
Thank you for the list! We want to make sure that any changes would be addressing the issue (speeding up the process without sacrificing accuracy). I think some of these make a lot of sense, while others don't seem to be particularly relevant.
To that end... does anyone actually have a specific suggestion for improving California's election system? Like, can we identify some actual problems and posit solutions / better ways they could run it? Like, they're currently doing X, but they should really consider doing Y instead.
Your question is not "make it go faster, only speed, fast only, nothing else."
If I were to guess what happened in your head is "I will ask them what can be improved, and since everything except the speed is perfect because California, the only possible response is therefore how to make it faster." Even though your own stance is it's not a problem that it just takes a while.
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Just to dismiss a few that I don't think address the problem: #6 and #7 are allowed by most states*, so ballot harvesting (allowing someone else to hand in your ballot for you) doesn't seem to be creating this specific issue that California has. *34 states allow other people to return your ballot on your behalf: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_collection_laws_by_state
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Similarly, I think #1 is just a reference to how one Republican woman committed voter fraud in California around 2021-2022 by getting her dog to vote in an election ( https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/orange-county-dog-registered-to-vote-flaws-in-california-voting-system/ ). She was charged with five felonies, and I don't think the one-in-a-million example of a Republican stupidly committing election crimes is really holding up the broader California election process.
Joke framing.
She registered the dog to vote, and cast votes. The dog's registration was never caught by the system and she was in no danger of criminal prosecution. She turned HERSELF in AFTER the affair to expose the flaw. If you knew what a white hacker is you would instantly know the sentiment and the point.
But here's what happened to the votes. The California vote was counted. The federal vote was NOT counted. This means California's elections are less secure than the United States. California's answer was to propose cross-checking voter rolls with pet registrations (lmfao). As though a dog has to be real for you to register it to vote. That's pathetic. You can fix that or I can vote for someone who will use the Insurrection Act to bring California elections back under the umbrella of American democracy by having the National Guard run them if California is too incompetent to handle it. The dog loophole is alive and well. Never patched.
This is why even if your question did not specifically say the open-ended "improve," you have no standing whatsoever to put a fence around what I think is a problem or pigeonhole the issue. I am not interested in California counting dog votes more quickly.
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I'm also not sure why #10 exists, as long as addresses are kept up-to-date (which can be easily confirmed online or by mail every few years). Sending out optional mail-in ballots encourages more voting, and that's what we want to happen. I think it's wiser to increase the efficiency of counting votes, not reduce the number of votes being cast.
They aren't. They can't be. That's why #10 exists. This works in the systems of our reasonable Swiss colleagues for example who have to tell the government within 2 weeks of when they move where their residence is or something. That is never happening in the US.
"Fix this thing." "Um I'm not sure if that applies unless that thing were broken in which case you should fix it."
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: #8 and #9 also don't seem to be slowing down the vote-counting process, and we've already had conversations about how important those are (or aren't) when it comes to voter fraud.
If you allow dogs to vote and your system of taking longer to count the vote than normal does not make up for it by being robust enough to remove dog registrations and dog votes, you need to do one of 1) start using the extra counting time to remove the dog votes, 2) prevent dogs from voting to begin with, or 3) burn the thing down.
On June 11 2026 21:12 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I could see the rest of your list potentially making some sense, especially if we compare how other states do things to how California does things. For example, looking at your #2 (ballot deadline is Election Day), I'm okay with this as long as there are enough days ahead of Election Day for early voting. That leads to the question "how many early voting days is *enough* early voting days?", so I'd defer to what the other 49 states typically allow: https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting
In the source above, there's a column called "duration of early voting", which thankfully includes the relevant information: the number of days available for early voting. The numbers are generally between 0 and 30 for each state, although South Dakota seems to be an outlier with 45-46 days of early voting. California is at 29 - basically a full month - and their early voting deadline is already on Election Day.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you mean for #2 is that the ballot needs to be received by Election Day so that it could potentially be counted on Election Day, not merely put in the mailbox by Election Day. (The controversy surrounding California counting ballots a week or two late seems to be that those ballots were appropriately placed in the mail by Election Day, but the mail didn't get delivered until a few days later.*) And that's a legitimate concern, so California ought to find a way to improve the speed of their mail delivery, or maybe shift those 29 days of early voting back a week, so that California voters still have the same amount of time to vote early but the deadline for early voting would become a week before Election Day, so that we can reasonably expect the mailed ballots to arrive by Election Day. What are your thoughts on my underlined idea? California still keeping 29 days of early voting (plenty of other smaller states allow for that many days) but having that period start earlier, so that it also ends earlier than Election Day, giving more time for the mail to be delivered by Election Day?
*More about that: "Those ballots are accepted so long as they are dropped at secure locations received by elections offices by 8 p.m. local time on election day or postmarked by that date and returned by the following Tuesday, according to state law. The extended deadline and other administrative requirements mean it can take days or weeks to finalize the tallies of any given election — a process state officials argue is slowed further by the sheer volume of incoming ballots." https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5917066-supreme-court-mail-in-ballots/
"Secure" locations do not have to have CCTV surveillance under California law.
Here's a new fix it idea: 11) Fire everyone who has touched anything along with anyone who has never met a basic standard of competence and ban them from ever working for the state again. But that might fuel the conspiracy fires of Republicans who believe for purely ideological reasons that the California government is incompetent or worse.
Did you seriously just write all that, just to skip the most important part? My suggestion of how to actually deal with the biggest issue California is facing when it comes to their elections taking too long (based on your #2)? The underlined part of my post... Please respond to it.
EPT
we were bad.
