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WA Governor Recount Ends With 42-Vote Difference
Republican Dino Rossi came out on top of the gubernatorial recount in Washington state, beating Democrat Christine Gregoire by 42 votes. He had won the initial count by 261 votes. King County (where Seattle is) gave Gregoire a 245-vote swing. It's expected that the Democrats will call for a partial hand recount, which they would have to pay for (25 cents per vote), unless they end up winning the recount.
Common sense would say:
All elections, unless statistcally impossible, should have a hand recount after the fact, to be finished before the election day. Computer count(secure terminals, obviously, what a REQUIRED paper trail) and what not are fine, they give media the fast count. But those numbers arn't stuck until
1. the thought-to-be losing candidate drops out, or
2. the hand recount confirms the count
if there is any reasonable doubt about the process, the losing candidate(s) can petition a judge that says "X happened, that could have changed how votes were counted, please recount them after fixing this" the judge rules on wether it is reasonable for a recount(not in terms of winning/losing, but in terms of fraud or miscalculation) and then is so ordered.
HOWEVER, true common sense would say:hey, this system (two party, PDC, Diebold-esque voting flaws) we have is bullshit, we need to fix it. Personally IRV looks like the best fix, with electionic machines certified as safe with peer/government reviewed code and testing with a federally mandatory paper trail... and/or hand ballots.
But I am open to ideas
>Why is a hand recount infallible? What
happens when the counter loses count?
A human makes random mistakes, if they are to miscount X%, it is likely that that X% is even distributed amongst the candidates. A computer doesn't, it tends to make non-random errors... Such as the case where a computer was counting ballots that voted all-democrat and tallying them for the Libertarian party... This actually swung the election to the wrong candidate.
Besides which, the human recount can be, obviously re-recounted, if needed.
>How does that prevent a candidate from winning
by fewer than 100 votes?
My points here were a bit off topic, it was more in reference to the ballot/voting system as a whole. However, if the Govenor didn't get 51% of the vote, IRV would have kicked in.
>I suspect
far more votes that 100 were lost this way in WA
You may very well be right, but this has nothing to do with physical vs. computer ballot counting. It is a potential weakness of all mail-in systems. However, things like ballot day are pretty likely to get sent out the day of. The USPS isn't THAT stupid, they arn't going to hold over(or not do everything they can to avoid holding over...) mail-in ballots on the last day of voting. They would knowingly(if they did it on purpose) be tampering with the election.
Because I believe EVERYBODY should be pro-life- you signed up for it by being born into a social species. Sorry about that- next life maybe you should be born as something that isn't social and doesn't interact with others of their own species.
Humans are not the only social species. Many animals live in herds and hunt/shelter together. Many of them also eat their young if they're weak and sick and leave the old or wounded to die. Many human cultures do/used to do that too... protecting the weak goes against nature's "design". I'm not saying we should kill off the weak and diseased or anything like that... but just because we interract with others of our own species doesn't mean we need to interract in ways you approve of. You can make other arguments, but don't make broad claims about "characteristics of species" because nature is cruel at times and nature doesn't care about individuals.
Moreover, I happen to believe that there's more to life than having a pulse. If I were vegetative, I would much rather die with dignity than have air and blood bt pumped through my body by someone like you claiming to be "alive".
You are entitled to your beliefs and you're entitled to try and convince other people of your beliefs, but get off your high horse. There's more than one way to look at things, and to claim that you're right and everyone who disagrees with you isn't is intellectually dishonest.