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WA Governor Race Ends
Republican Dino Rossi decided last night to not appeal yesterday's decision by Chelan judge John Bridges to let last November's governor election stand -- the closest in U.S. history -- which keeps Christine Gregoire, who won by 129 votes after two recounts, in office. The Republicans claimed that fraud and mistakes far exceeded the difference between the candidates, and that statistical analysis showed Rossi might have received more legal votes. Bridges concluded there were thousands of incorrect votes and other major problems, but that the Republicans didn't meet the high threshold of proof that the result was incorrect. He also said he feared current law will make elections problems even worse, and urged the government and voters to work to fix the system.
In races this close, call it a statistical tie, and run a revote.
You'll get a bigger turnout, and possibly a true outcome.
Jay | http://oldos.org
when accountable voting is outlawed, only outlaws will be able to vote accountable.. or something.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
GW Bush won his office through some questionable means. Not once, but twice. Every single instance of an election problem worked out in Bush's favor. When a voting machine screwed up, it was inevitably adding votes to Bush, or counting Kerry votes as votes for someone else. Right now in Ohio, there's a big scandal where money meant for investment wound up in the pockets of Republican campaigns.
t m
I predict that some people will try to mod me down to suppress the truth, but they will fail.
More information:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.h
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Rossi was a crybaby. ha ha.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I sure am glad that SlashDot covers these important technological issues because we sure won't be able to read about this story in the mainstream press.
You got the white house, give us one governor in one state.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
In sports, each coach has his own system. Sometimes they're really well crafted, honed over years of experience, and work really well. Sometimes they're stupid. However, even a crappy system can result in victory if the players all play within it.
A business works the same way, usually. A crappy boss can ruin efficiency, but a boss in business is really one of the players. Adherence to the system is the surest path to success, since only by adhering to it can you tell if it's working.
And so it is with democratic republics. The election may have various kinds of errors, but generally half the errors will be for each candidate. For that matter, the voters can be "wrong", but since it's an election the voters are not wrong, by definition.
Ask for a recount, accept the results and go back to chasing ambulances.
sigs, as if you care.
we have a small paper card, the candidates name is listed, with a circle next to it. (the name and circle are plane paper and surounded by black ink. each option is divided by a white line)
you vote by writeing a large x in the circle of the candidate you choose and place it in the ballet box. a ballet with any other marks on it except an x (yes it has to be an X)is considered spoiled. it is idiot proof to vote, and intenions are very clear.
btw, municipal elections had electronic voteing. the balet worked the same way, but was fed through a reader, face down, and into the ballet box. paper trail, and instant count.
What they should have done is follow the Constitution, which means turning to the Legislature. Bringing up a challenge in court is completely unconstitutional. I would have loved to see this go to the state Supreme Court, because I bet that's exactly what they'd say. As it stands, Rossi left the door open to another court challenge in the future since nothing was really decided here.
Have all future elections run by The Amazing Race, but "accidently" lose their maps when they're on the Pitcairn Islands. No airport, no ships, Washington State might be able to get some work done for a while.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
Tampering with Election Machine Software
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Another possibility is to extend the same law that many jurisdictions have for dealing with actual tie votes, that is to decide the election by chance, usually by flipping a coin. The difficulty with this approach (and in general with having a revote) is that whether you are discovering whether the threshold has been achieved or simply trying to decide a winner, the process of qualifying votes is the same. For instance, if you define it as being within 100 votes statewide, well then you still have to count votes to know if the difference is under the threshold, and then you are back to fighting over what is a valid vote, whether to count miscast provisional ballots, etc, etc.
A recount is more sensible, if it can be done in a uniform and fair manner, which unfortunately did not seem to be the case in Washington. If the laws were more clear about how what types of votes were valid, a recount could be performed at a much lower cost than holding a new election.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
This doesn't justify the errors in Washington, but it doesn't justify villifying one side either. Just about everyone cheated, somewhere.
I believe that it is vital, if democracy is to have any meaning, to work on developing a system that is provably reliable. It is possible to create essentially tamper-proof cryptographic signatures. If you add votes via a version control system of some kind, then sign every "version", you can "prove" the stream has not been modified since being created.
The vote would be in the form of a written-out XML file, so that it was absolutely clear as to what a vote was. Signatures would be in the form of an RSA public-key signature, where the signer was the voting machine, not the voter.
The first "signature" would cover the first vote. The second would cover both the first and second votes plus the first signature, etc.
This would prevent tampering, but it would also prevent database corruption as votes could only be added via the intended interface, as the signature entry would not be present.
There are other methods. I've suggested before that you could have "anonymous" encryption - unassociated private keys, with the voter using a public key they were provided with as their "voter registration card". That way, the vote would still be anonymous, but as only valid decryption keys would be used, only valid encryption keys could be used to generate the vote and provably only used once.
Indeed, you wouldn't even need high-tech voting. Anti-counterfeit measures used on currency would work just as well on ballot papers. Voting stations would then need to account for every ballot paper (unused, discarded, vote) going through them. It would make it considerably harder to add votes prior to the election, or for anyone to swipe a ballot box in transit and change the contents.
In the first two cases, system errors would not add valid information and therefore not produce fake votes, and the requirements to perpetrate electoral fraud (by a voter, candidate or party) would be raised sufficiently high to put it beyond the reach of the usual suspects.
In the third case, the bar would be lower than with the high-tech solutions, but definitely raised from where it is now. The idea is not to make fraud impossible, but to put it beyond the reach of "opportunists" and outside the realm of "accidents". There will always be people who try to beat any system, but you can reduce the number of people who have the skill to succeed from a few hundred million to a few hundred.
In other words, we don't need faulty systems in this day and age. Faulty systems are a choice, not a necessity, and I personally regard them as a remarkably stupid choice.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why can't we develop a more accurate system for counting votes? With our current resources, the court contest in Washington should have been a moot point: we should have known the exact vote totals without room for doubt.
I think a reasonable margin of victory could be at about 0.1%. For ten millions votes, you would need to win by 10,000. For 100,000 votes, that's only 100 votes.
Currently, Washington State does have a method whereby close elections are handled without long, drawn-out challenges. The legislature can refuse to accept any result with a majority vote. If there was any candidate for the legislature to exercise this power, the governor's race of 2004 was it. It was too close and there were too many weird things happening. It was a Democrat controlled legislature and they refused to accept responsibility, instead telling the courts to fix it. The courts made the right decision and explained that the remedy that should be applied can't be applied because they are bound by the law as it is written. The voters are going to have to have the final say on whether the legislators made the right decision or not.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Ok, I'm conservative and live near Seattle, and even I don't believe this bullshit. There are a lot of pissed off people here for sure, but this one case isn't going to change people's perceptions all that much.
I'm just happy to see the Democrats now running amok and raising taxes and pushing an agenda where getting a Botox injection is treated something like a crime. I have at least some measure of faith that while the people of our great state are left-leaning, they have a lot more common sense than to buy into this agenda. There have been huge anti-tax movements in this state, which has impacted nearly every liberal agenda item, both social and economic. The Democrats have more to fear from the initiative to repeal their centerpiece gas tax than they do from the judge's decision yesterday.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
In standard parliamentary procedure (in other words, how group of people agree to thigns), if you don't have a majority behind a candidate you vote again until you do. Robert's Rules sets the standard pretty high by default - not a plurality, but a majority. It isn't fair to have the group ruled by a candidate that actually represents a minority of the group.
What this means is that in order to win, one of the candidates will have to do something to gain the support of people who wouldn't normally support him. If they can't do this, then they obviously can't lead the entire group.
A "Dark Horse" candidate is a third party candidate that represents the smallest minority of three. However, sometimes the group may compromise by elected the Dark Horse rather than one of the two leading candidates in the event none of them can get the support they need. In the Washington election, that would be the equivalent of a large group of republicans and democrats backing Ruth Bennet, the libertarian candidate, because it is a good compromise and will probably represent all three groups better than any of the other candidates could.
If they can't decide on a candidate, and a majority can't be united behind one, then the position remains empty. In this case, that would be the equivalent of having the Lt. Governor step up and become governor until one can be chosen. This isn't a bad alternative because the Lt. Governor actually won a majority and is supported by both Democrats and Republicans. (He's a Lieberman-type democrat.)
If you think carefully, this is actually a good way to handle it. Rather than have a controversial and divisive leader, have one that is less controversial and more uniting.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
"I'm just happy to see the Democrats now running amok and raising taxes ... "
Yeah, because actually PAYING for infrastructure improvements (the viaduct, light rail, the monorail, the 520 bridge, etc) through taxes is liberal hogwash. Everyone knows the real way to do things: Just borrow the money and let your grandkids pay! BushCo has shown us the way.
If conservatives want to have low taxes, they need to start actually picking specific gov't services to cut, instead of just bellyaching about generalities. When you start talking about specific, real things to cut, people balk and don't want to do it. Until you can convince people to accept cuts in services, stop bitching about taxes.
"pushing an agenda where getting a Botox injection is treated something like a crime. "
What the hell does this mean? (I've been out of town for a couple of weeks, and may have missed a news item.)
If conservatives want to have low taxes, they need to start actually picking specific gov't services to cut, instead of just bellyaching about generalities.
Ok, lets start with the "Housing and Urban Development" program that gives individuals over $20k a year in housing vouchers. All they have to do is get to the top of a list to recieve it and not make more than x ammount of (reported) money a year. Followed up by slowly getting the feds out of health care (so the prices will finally come down). Say, increase the minimum age of medicare/medicaid by 1 year every few years for the next couple decades.
When you start talking about specific, real things to cut, people balk and don't want to do it. Until you can convince people to accept cuts in services, stop bitching about taxes.
Problem is more on the lines of who balks at what. What I balk at is probably different than what you balk at. Hence we could rarely (if ever) come to an agreement.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
That's a good point-- both Repbulcians and Democrats have shown themselves to be irresponsible with money, and the only real difference is how they choose to damage the economy to do it.
That's why you should vote for another party! Oh, wait, it seems the republicans and democrats have made running a third party campaing effectively illegal with their "Election reform" laws.
No big surprise there.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Yeah, I think they vote republican too. But that's the national level where we have a mass murderer in office who's flagrantly violating the constitution.
On the local level, its not clear that they voted for Rossi.
For sure all those fabricated ballots in king county were for gregoire, so that goes to show you that democrats can be just as criminal as republicans.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
The Republican judge in this case found against every point the Republicans brought up for their case, including the fraud charges.
Computer age or not, you're dealing with human processes, which can never be absolutely perfect. Even if the vote was 99.9% accurate, that still leaves 2,900 votes that may be wrongly counted.
Usually, this is no big deal since most of the time elections involve a blowout that does not end so close. This only became a problem because we're in that 0.1% margin of error.
as to the other allusion please read this Godwin's Law FAQ
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
No, Rossi tried everything he could to become governor, including the fraud that got his original cheating victory thrown out. When he originally won (by the skin of his cheating teeth), he blabbed all about how Gregoire should let him keep the office "for the good of the state", without all that "divisive" complaining. When the tables were turned, Rossi of course ignored all his own self-serving "advice", and the "good of the state", in favor of his attempts to try again in the courts himself. Then, when he got his day in court, he charged Gregoire's campaign with "fraud", but presented no evidence of fraud. Just evidence of the same kind of badly run election we've got all over the country, that usually favors the Republicans running their state election commissions.
You can try to spin this (repeated) Republican defeat in attempting to take office through a court. But it's obvious that Rossi was doing everything he could, even things he couldn't, to take the Governor's office, regardless of the merits, or the damage to Washington. Of course politicians do anything to win, but we don't have to like it.
Now that both sides have been hurt in their war over shoddy state election work, maybe there's a mutual interest in fixing the system. Continuing to fight the war after its over will only get in the way of that more important work.
--
make install -not war
mia culpa.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Your original point was that this was a voting machine issue, when clearly it was not.
Just give up now. You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
Botox is now being taxed with a "sin tax" in the same way that cigarettes and liquor are. Last I knew, Tacoma was still trying to outlaw smoking in public establishments, as though it were a crime to smoke. (For the record, I stopped smoking 20 years ago and I hate it. But I don't have a "right" to go into a smoke-free bar. If they want my business then they have to provide me with a smoke-free environment.)
they need to start actually picking specific gov't services to cut, instead of just bellyaching about generalities.
I'm all over user fees. Want to drive on a new road then pay a toll. What sold me on the $30 tabs was that much of my car tab money was being diverted to other purposes, like public transportation and police/fire services. If you want the stuff then pay for it directly. I'd gladly pay $5/trip to get into and out of Seattle if I didn't have to sit in rush hour traffic.
Just borrow the money and let your grandkids pay! BushCo has shown us the way.
I totally agree. Being a conservative, I just don't understand this whole deficit spending logic of the current administration. But I hope you'll agree with me that the same holds true for the Social Security Trust Fund. Otherwise you're a hypocrite.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
It will take several things:
Valid voter verification:
Voter registration will have to have some kind of at-the-poll-verifiable biometric data. For example, to get a voter registration card, you will have to present either a picture ID, a fingerprint, or something else that you can bring with you to the polls. When you vote, your photo-id or fingerprint or whatever will be matched up to your voter-registration records, if they don't match, you get to vote provisionally. Anyone registering late or on election day will vote provisionally. If they could possibly swing the outcome of any race, provisional ballots will be verified at the least possible inconvenience to the voter, but in some cases, visiting the voter will be necessary. If all elections are certain before provisional ballots are cast, or the election is decided during such counting, the remaining ballots would remain uncounted but recorded as part of the voter turnout. Yup, your vote might not count.*
Valid Vote Verification
Electronic ballots must, of course, provide a human-readable printout that the voter can inspect. Paper ballots must be scanned at the time of voting and unreadable ballots rejected so the voter can redo the ballot. Valid ballots should also generate a human-readable printout the voter can inspect, in case of errors with the vote-counting machine.
*In states where the actual number or percentage of voters voting for losing candidates actually matters, all votes must be counted. For example, if a state says your Presidential Candidate must get 4% of the vote to get automatic ballot access, then all provisional ballots in that state must be counted until it is certain he does or does not have 4%.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Godwins law? I'm amazed you deny the holocaust. Its well documented. But you must because you believe that it never happened and thus any reference to it is a reference to fiction.
But the fact is it did happen, and there are reasons it happened, and as they say "those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it".
Godwins law was meant for people who had no argument and were just calling people names. But it is invoked by those who have no counter argument-- ironically-- to call those who do names.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
From the Seattle Times (emphasis mine): [Judge] Bridges said there was no evidence to suggest fraud, intentional misconduct or any attempt to manipulate the election. He said election officials "attempted to perform their responsibilities in a fair and impartial manner."
... clear and convincing evidence that improper conduct or irregularity procured Ms. Gregoire's election," the judge said.
Now please stop spreading your lies.
While he had stern words about how King County ran the election, Bridges said that even there, Republicans failed to show any intentional wrongdoing.
"While there is evidence of irregularities, as there appears to be in every election based on the testimony of various county election officials, there is no
I love how my comment is moderated as a troll, but the parent, which really IS a troll, isn't.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
'One of the most famous pieces of Usenet trivia out there is "if you mention Hitler or Nazis in a post, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in".'
As to saying I was denying the holocaust or some such drivel You must be a loon. You alluded to nazis not me. Neither do I nor does the FAQ defend them. And as far as I am concerned you invoked Godwin's law, and I see no reason to argue with an unbalanced mind. However I cannot let such an accusation go un-challenged. However will ignore you in the future.
as the author points out in;
'3. Author's Note on the Holocaust Over the years, I have received several emails regarding this FAQ regarding the Holocaust itself, either disputing the holocaust or the numbers listed in this FAQ. I'd just like to make it clear that I don't have any particular desire to debate these points; this FAQ is meant to point out and explain a quirk of human nature, not to codify the history of World War II. '
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Wow, lots of firetossing here. I'll just reply to the first of many.
Dude, it was a joke.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
You say you don't deny the holocaust, but you would say that a holocaust survivor talking abou the parallels between nazi germany and america is violating goodwins law, and is therefore a "loon".
Godwins law is based on the premise that it can't happen here. It is this kind of denial that lets it happen. What do you think the people who lived thru germany
Today, on Lew Rockwell.com I found the following:
Those were the magic words of the time: "Papiere Bitte. (Translation: "Papers, Please.") Hearing those words, even now, causes dull echoes of sounds akin to bodies hitting dirt, or bullets penetrating flesh to thud into my mind. Because, if those papers weren't correctly in order, or, if you were a Jew sneakily present in any place (including the grocery store) which displayed the usual "NO JEWS OR DOGS ALLOWED" sign, you were dead meat - literally. And, yes, of course I'm talking about my childhood as a little Jewish kid in Nazi Germany.
No one ever forgets stench. Whether it is a long-forgotten encounter with a ripe skunk, or a ripe egg, or a ripe decomposing body, once one of those odors has been brain-documented, then even the slightest tinge of such an aroma pops back up immediately, along with the circumstances under which it first offended the nostrils.
And, that's what's happening now. I smell the long-forgotten skunk, the long-forgotten rot of fascism. What is happening all around can no longer be denied. What I ran away from so desperately in 1938 is coming back full circle. Only the jack-boots have not yet arrived.
America quite literally saved my life. The love and gratitude deep in my heart for this country will never go away. But I'm scared now. Haunted by deep fear for the generations to come, who may wind up as I did - looking over their shoulders, scurrying for cover, mute with terror. And it hurts.
Think I'm some kind of elderly nut-job neurotically manufacturing dictatorship? Well, let's look at the 82 billion dollar defense bill passed just a few weeks ago, which (with a vote tally of 100 to 0) had the Real ID Act hidden inside it. This law allows a national identification process in which each and every person in the U.S.A. will be on computer.
This ID will be based on driver's license applications, although it isn't just for driving. Just like the infamous "Internal Passport" of Nazi Germany, no one will need it unless needing to fly, cash checks, apply for jobs, walk the streets, enter federal buildings - or drive. As stated in Time magazine on May 15, 2005, "If you are a wealthy recluse with liquid assets, it doesn't concern you." Everyone else better watch out! Well, maybe that wealthy recluse had better watch out also. After all, he/she might be of a forbidden religion, or of suspicious racial origin.
Legal "ID Theft" and legal "illegal surveillance"? The Real ID Act links driver's licenses of all states, creating a data base including the private details of every single U.S. citizen. It mandates that your driver's license share a common machine-readable digital photo of you, all the better to track your every movement. It hands the federal government unfunded mandate power to dictate what data all states must collect for license holders, including everything from fingerprints to retinal scans. And, if you don't drive, you'll still need to submit to the national ID card. How else, after all, will the cop who doesn't like the shape of your face, or the fact that you are (God Forbid) wearing a turban get to arrest you? Yes, "Papiere Bitte" has come home to roost.
And, folks, that's only the beginning. More technically sophisticated techniques will be implemented as they occur. If the Nazis had had electronic surveillance, phone bugging and all else that the Patriot Act not only condones but advises, there would have been an even tighter grip on the populace.
After all, the Patriot Act is modeled directly after Gestapo methods: Those 3:00 AM home intrusions - without warrant or reason for arrest - will get
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Republican Dino Rossi decided last night to not appeal
Yes, but who decided to split the infinitive?
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
You are a nutball.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It's sad. America had a good run and I suppose it will happen here, mimicking Germany's history all too close. It is not a question of If it will happen anymore. It is a question of When.
Neither candidate has any kind of mandate. In races as close as this (definition of "close" left as an exercise for the reader), perhaps you divvy up the governor/vice-governor offices and cabinet positions so as to divide power and policy making within the executive branch. Might not work, but it is a thought.