Here's the thing about the "massive voter fraud" claims re: mail in voting. The right-wing will do things like post stories about a bunch of unused mail-in ballots being thrown away and post that as proof of voter fraud. Why? How? Because someone COULD HAVE misused those ballots.

Same thing with ballots that go to the wrong place, ballots that are sitting in people's unsecured mailboxes, etc. How could there NOT be massive voter fraud? All those ballots just sitting there?

And the answer sounds like nonsense: well, there isn't.

It's the same reason that we can have a system where millions of people have mail that arrives every day and is put in an unlocked and unguarded receptacle and sits there until they have a chance to bring it in. HOW COULD THAT WORK? ANYBODY COULD TAKE IT.

You know what the main thing that stops us from all just defecating on the lawns of people we hate, or don't know, is?

Sure, there are laws. But it's not like there are barriers. It's not like anyone's watching for it.

The main thing is: we do't do that.

That's it. That's the main thing.

A three foot chain link fence does nothing to keep someone from coming into your yard but as long as you've got one, most people won't do it.

A lot of people won't cut across a person's yard period. What stops us? Us.

I've brought this up before, but: picture the baggage claim at an airport. We all have, theoretically, somewhere on us a little claim stub to match our luggage and prove that it's ours. How often do you have to use it, if your luggage didn't go missing somewhere along the way?

There are people who steal luggage and there are people who've had luggage stolen, but on the whole, this system where hundreds of strangers, sometimes thousands, are all clustered together in big clusters in a big room with each other's things, works out.

If you were to propose the baggage claim system in a vacuum, in a world where it didn't exist, the response would be, "Well that's ridiculous. It would never work. You'd have a massive theft problem. The honor system? People are animals."

Theft happens in airports but not on the scale it could, given how quickly people are moving, how many people there are, how scattered our attention is, and how little the surveillance/security apparatus around us cares about your makeup case in particular.

And when we get into something like ballots... I don't want to suggest the law is meaningless because the law, like a three foot high chain link fence, matters.

You've got to sign your ballot. You have to attest under penalty of law that it's yours and it's true and valid.

People who *unknowingly* return a ballot they weren't entitled to cast get prosecuted, that's how seriously we take it. And the same Republicans who go "HOW CAN THIS WORK?" take that as proof that it doesn't.

A bunch of unused ballots winding up in the trash doesn't prove there is fraud. Those ballots weren't cast. That's the opposite of fraud. "But the opportunity is there!" Yeah, and everybody who saw it, didn't take it. Wouldn't dream of it, or knew it was schmuck bait if they did.

We are social animals. We live in a society. We go along with things, frequently to an alarming degree. Vote-by mail "can't work" for the same reason a supermarket check-out line can't work. Who's going to wait? Everybody's going to want to be first. Nothing actually stops them.

Our whole political system, our whole legal system, works (again, to an alarming degree) on the assumption that people will basically go along with things. Donald Trump knows this! He exploits it by not going along with anything he doesn't want to, knowing no one will do anything

Our entire judicial system and also the whole elected office thing depends on the idea that having people swear to things is a reliable system. Is that right? Is that wrong? I mean, what's even the alternative? There isn't one. Societies function on trust.

Everything is a three-foot chain link fence of dissuasion, sometimes with a posted no trespassing sign and sometimes there's a dog or even a person with a shotgun, but ultimately it all falls apart if most people don't honor the chain link fence regardless.

How could there be no massive voter fraud with mail-in voting?

Mostly, because there isn't. Because we don't do that. Because it's not worth the risk, but even without the actual consequences, we don't do that.

What I'm talking about here is a social contract, which is part of a functioning society. In theory conservativism is all about this - "moral fiber" and "shared values" and "we used to care about each other" and so on.

As you might have noticed, conservatives actually hate this.

They don't want a functioning society where people look out for one another, they don't want a world where we stay out of each other's yards because we just do, they want a world where no one else has a three foot fence and they've got guns and dogs.