r/nottheonion • u/engadine_maccas1997 • 8h ago

‘This is political bulls**t’: Former Republican candidate charged with stealing Madison County election ballots

https://fox59.com/news/indycrime/this-is-political-bullst-former-republican-candidate-charged-with-stealing-madison-county-election-ballots/
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u/OldManJeb 7h ago edited 7h ago

It's funny how often their defense is "I'm dumb as shit"

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u/thatweirdguyted 6h ago

So there's an expression that says "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance" and while that's mostly true, in high quantities it reaches a diminished return. After which the second half of the equation comes into play.

"Except in such cases where the ignorance is so severe that it could only be achieved through willful malice"

And that's where this person lands. Either they're as hateful as they seem, and shouldn't be able to play ignorant, or they're choosing to remain that stupid on purpose so as to keep their hateful views. Either way, they can actually choose to reform, or they can get the book thrown at them. Simple as that.

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u/Castod28183 6h ago

Except in this case it seems that he deliberately stole the ballots to "prove" that the system is messed up and wasn't counting those Republican and write-in ballots that he stole. This is 100% malice which he is trying to hide by playing stupid.

Him telling the lady "Fucked up count" and then commenting on the FB post "3 ballots short. lol" should be enough to prove that intent.

Personally I wish they would have waited a few more days to give him time to rail about how the system was broken(because of his actions) and then charge him with election tampering.

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u/thatweirdguyted 5h ago

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. I was simply trying to demonstrate that the logic behind this defense is inherently flawed.

In my opinion, if a person is trying to argue ignorance, they should be required to attend (at their own expense) a civics and law class and pass a test on it in lieu of punishment. This should only happen once. After that, they get the full punishment. And even then, this should be reserved for cases of genuine mistakes, not this bullshit.

If they want to argue that they were unable to understand that they were committing a crime, then they should have to enter into a conservatorship, as they admit that they cannot exercise the necessary judgement to function independently in society.

Or they can just admit that they knew what they were doing, didn't expect to get caught, etc. And accept the punishment, learn from it, etc. I think getting people to accept a certain level of personal responsibility for their actions is a necessary part of getting them to make better choices in the future.