Slashdot Mirror

Provisional ballots are generally not counted.

They are if they matter so what is the difference?

The whole point of voting is that off chance the election is on the margin and your vote may make a difference. I am a registered independent and voted in a primary this year, never again after looking at the results. My vote made zero difference as BOTH parties have the primaries quite wrapped up by chosen candidates. I still continue to vote in the main elections though few votes seem to matter there either.

And the ballot you cast provisionally must be the ballot for the precinct you are from.

Yes, and? I already said that, every time (well I said county, but that's usually pretty much the same thing, the exact term and region may vary state to state but each region you can legally vote in will mostly have multiple polling centers if it's of any size at all).

Also, there are several states that do not allow provisional ballots at all.

Well that's kind of misleading wouldn't you say? There you see the end result is the same in North Dakota for example which does not have provisional ballots because you don't need to register to vote..., you can vote anywhere. So while you are technically right there it does not invalidate what I am pointing out, that most people have multiple places the can go to vote if they desire.

Read through the various states provisioning ballot laws and see if YOU can find any state where there is not some mechanism to vote in different polling locations, I could not find any (the section "States That Are Exempt from Provisional Ballot Laws" includes North Dakota for example which as I noted, does not need provisional ballots).

Right now I've been calling up some people who know more about this than I. I've spoken to ND's DoC head and learned about some of their programs. They've been pushing a program called Justice Reinvestment whereby they change how their corrections system operates and reinvest the savings into making it operate even better, in a basic sense. Their legislature has a committee for this.

They actually have a system where private behavioral health service providers get paid a monthly fee for their cases, and get awards if they perform well. That means your profits are kind of crappy unless you maximize successful: addiction needs to be treated long-term, behavioral problems need to be treated, and folks need to go out and thrive in the community after going through the corrections or pre-corrections processes.

I asked about for-profit prisons and was given the indication that it doesn't really matter. If your system isn't designed to normalize people into the community, it fails. For-profit prisons need to follow the rules of the contract, and the contract can state that their job is to rehabilitate people, that they are to make these programs available, and that business is to be carried out in a certain manner. You can even do an awards contract that minimizes profits if the people in the prison aren't thriving, if solitary confinement isn't diminished to near-nothing (there are, at any given time, about THREE people in solitary in North Dakota; they don't stay there long), if people don't get put on discretionary parole early enough, and if they reoffend too frequently. You can make their income stream dependent on results.

The real problem is nobody cares. State-run prisons are drab, authoritarian pits of shame and self-loathing, a place we lock people away so we don't have to see them. They destroy prisoners just as much as the for-profit prisons because nobody has been pushed to do better.

Private, for-profit prison advocates claim these institutions are innovative and have well-developed rehabilitation programs. The truth is private, for-profit prison advocates have made figuring out how to rehabilitate inmates somebody else's problem. Until our legislators make it their responsibility, we won't see improvement--regardless of who runs the prisons.

Right now I've been calling up some people who know more about this than I. I've spoken to ND's DoC head and learned about some of their programs. They've been pushing a program called Justice Reinvestment whereby they change how their corrections system operates and reinvest the savings into making it operate even better, in a basic sense. Their legislature has a committee for this.

They actually have a system where private behavioral health service providers get paid a monthly fee for their cases, and get awards if they perform well. That means your profits are kind of crappy unless you maximize successful: addiction needs to be treated long-term, behavioral problems need to be treated, and folks need to go out and thrive in the community after going through the corrections or pre-corrections processes.

I asked about for-profit prisons and was given the indication that it doesn't really matter. If your system isn't designed to normalize people into the community, it fails. For-profit prisons need to follow the rules of the contract, and the contract can state that their job is to rehabilitate people, that they are to make these programs available, and that business is to be carried out in a certain manner. You can even do an awards contract that minimizes profits if the people in the prison aren't thriving, if solitary confinement isn't diminished to near-nothing (there are, at any given time, about THREE people in solitary in North Dakota; they don't stay there long), if people don't get put on discretionary parole early enough, and if they reoffend too frequently. You can make their income stream dependent on results.

The real problem is nobody cares. State-run prisons are drab, authoritarian pits of shame and self-loathing, a place we lock people away so we don't have to see them. They destroy prisoners just as much as the for-profit prisons because nobody has been pushed to do better.

Private, for-profit prison advocates claim these institutions are innovative and have well-developed rehabilitation programs. The truth is private, for-profit prison advocates have made figuring out how to rehabilitate inmates somebody else's problem. Until our legislators make it their responsibility, we won't see improvement--regardless of who runs the prisons.

Looks like I missed North Dakota, Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Connecticut and one from Minnesota, that's just mentioned in their journal.

Glad the Norris link was helpful. Still hope you check out the"Skills of Xanadu" links... Yeah, it's hard to know when to "barge" and when not to...

Your County Currency link was off, but I found this:
http://countycurrency.org/

Reminds me a bit of LETS:
http://www.lets-linkup.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Although, from the fist link: "Don't think of LETS points like dollars. Think of them as favours. LETS Favours. ... The LETS group's function is to act as a bookkeeper for their members' activities; keeping record of these 'favours' and putting the members' accounts into debit or credit accordingly. An account that is in credit identifies a member who has given more favours than he has received, and an account that is in debit identifies a member who has received more favours than he has given. These credits have no value and cannot be exchanged for cash. Their only purpose is to keep track of each member's involvement in the group so they can aim to bring their accounts back to zero -- a sign of fair and equitable participation in the system. ..."

And:
http://banknd.nd.gov/
"Welcome to Bank of North Dakota (BND). As the only state-owned bank in the nation, we act as a funding resource in partnership with other financial institutions, economic development groups and guaranty agencies."

Although they presumably don't issue currency except as debt like any other conventional bank. But one can wonder how far debt lending could go at he state level these days with Fed support.

See also on having adequate currency as the cause of the American Revolution (assuming it is true):
"How Benjamin Franklin Caused the Revolutionary War"
http://www.opednews.com/articl...

Jane Jacobs was big on cities having their own currencies. She especially values currency fluctuations between cities as markers of how well cities were doing processes like import replacement. She pointed out how national currencies could hurt most cities (while perhaps benefiting the capital city). Reading her work, I realized how the Euro was a big step backwards for most Europeans, especially in a computer age where translating currencies using current values (over a network) was a fairly easy problem to solve technically. The Euro shows the folly of trying to have a common currency without a common form of governance for the people who use it.

When I've thought about currencies, I eventually realized that a currency is implicitly a constitution. It's backed in a sense by an community and is only as strong as the governance of that community, which controls how much of the currency is issued and the official rules for exchange it. When a currency loses value relative to other currencies, it mostly reflects an assessment of the community or its governance that stands behind the currency as a medium of exchange. In that sense, the county currency idea fits a definable unit of governance -- the county.

As for getting back to the countryside with technology, my wife and I moved to the Adirondack park more than ten years ago. When we first arrived we had only dialup, but a couple years after that paid the cable company US$4000 to extend cable about a half mile to us so we could get broadband speeds. Money well spent as far as ROI. It was only computer networking that let us live in such a remote area and still be able to do consulting projects. And dialup speeds were getting more and more problematical, with people sending multi-megabyte files and asking us if we got them, and having to say, well, it will take a couple hours to download... I spent 2.5 years recently supporting NBCUniversal's broadcast operations and writing new software for them to con

North Dakota already has had earthquakes.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/north_dakota/history.php

https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/ndnotes/ndn4_h.htm

I have also begun sending it to everyone I know.

While you are at it, please, warn everyone you know of the dangers of waking up in a tub of cold water without a kidney, and about a kid dying, but wanting to collect as many e-mail addresses as possible. Oh, and don't forget that famous Neumann-Marcus cookie recipe. The world must know at once!

http://www.nd.gov/ndgs/NDNotes/ndn9_h.htm There are lots of fossils of sea creatures in west at all elevations. Most creationists would say that dragons were the remaining dino decendants of the ones who went on the ark.