It's that people tend to seek out and consume information that confirms their already strongly held opinions.
It's not even just people though. The whole concept of liking something on facebook so facebook will show you more of the things that you like magnifies the echo chamber. If anything, facebook should probably be showing you less of the types of stuff that you like if they really want to try to counter the echo chamber that people live in but this isn't really workable either because then you would only see posts from distant strangers that you just happen to be facebook friends with but don't really care about.
If all states implemented something roughly equivalent that wouldn't matter. But if California did it alone, it would immediately become a magnet for the nation's sick people. There would be an incentive for people to even plan their lives that way: "I'm gonna live where taxes are low while I'm young and healthy and if I ever get a chronic illness or just get to where my medical expenses are rising, I'll move to California". So California's costs would go through the roof since they'd end up footing the bill for much of the rest of the country as well. That wouldn't work.
Obamacare was modelled off something that *was* only done at the state level in Massachusetts and regardless, plenty of other countries have to deal with having better health care than their neighbours. The simplest solution is to exempt preexisting conditions for people moving into the state but there are likely other solutions. There are enough countries with universal health care now that it would be easy to look and see how other countries handle situations of migration. The word state used to have a different meaning. People have forgotten but the word State is synonymous with Country. It was really supposed to be the United Countries of America. The United States of America was designed to be more like the European Union where each sovereign state managed their own affairs. If we moved back in that direction and let the states do what the federal government does now then this whole talk of succession would stop because what is done at the federal level would be insignificant. Instead, the way we have it now, what is done at the state level is insignificant because everything is handed down by the federal government exactly backwards from the way it was designed to be.
First off that's not allowed but even if it was, if you broke up states based on square miles then the democrats would be seriously disadvantaged. Most of the smaller states are democrat while most of the larger states are republican. The only reason the democrats have as many senate seats as they do is that they are overrepresented in the smaller eastern states.
The house and senate and the electoral college are really designed pretty well. Yes, Clinton won the popular vote but the reason the senate and house and electoral college is designed the way it is is so that small states can't overpower big states and so that overpopulated states can't overpower less populated states.
No one would want to succeed if we stopped making everything a national issue. If California would have implemented universal health care for the people in their state then there would never have been this huge fight over obamacare. Same with a host of other issues. The only reason Trump won was because Clinton has lost touch with reality and Trump supporters are fed up with the federal government forcing things on them.
the difference is we now have a president and supporters who no longer remember what it means to be Americans, what our American principles and ideals are or what they mean.
if they did, they would never have supported trump. Trump is the antithesis to those things. And supporting him means you no longer support those things.
The one thing we can probably agree on is that the people who support Trump have a completely different definition on what it means to be American and what our American principles and ideals are. Most Trump supports I know have a very good understanding of the constitution and want a limited federal government and sovereign states. That is their principles and ideals like the founding fathers originally wanted it. They don't want a national health care system or a federal department of education. They want their states to decide what is best for their state not to be force feed regulations from afar. The people in Montana have no problem with guns. They don't want a federal ban on assault rifles. If assault rifles become a problem in their state then they can take action locally to deal with it. I don't even understand the logic of something like a federal ban on assault rifles. I understand why people in Chicago might want to ban them but why do the people in Chicago want to ban them in Montana?
How about Wow, a double win! I'm all for it, as long as they take their share of the national debt with them.
Since California gives more to the Federal government in taxes than they get back in benefits, you could say that their "share of the national debt" is negative. We would owe them a rebate, in fact.
That's only if you look at money flow not who voted to spend the money where. The programs and regulations voted on by california contributed greatly to the national debt.
While it's fun to talk about, a secession will never happen. Despite Trump's blustering, and even with republican senate and house control, it's exceptionally hard to make any broad governmental changes. Though I am a little worried about the Supreme Court.
It's not the republican senate that is the problem, it is the democrat senate. The republican house would love for california to leave. The republican house plus the democrats from California could easily get the 2/3s needed to start the process. The problem there is that california only has 2 votes in the senate and there are likely a lot of democrats in the small eastern states that would not want a large portion of their liberal voting block to leave.
What so many fail to realize is that the Blue states are net exporters of Federal Tax dollars. We pay far more than $1 for every $1 of federal spending that comes back to our states. The Red states, on the other hand, suck off the teats of the blue states. You'll see no improvement, only even fewer tax dollars to support you than you already get.
Sure you pay more that $1 for every $1 you receive but your stupid social programs and regulations probably cost us $2 for every dollar you give the federal government so in some ways you are a net taker. If you took your revenue and your laws with you, the net revenue of the rest of the USA would probably increase as they no longer had to fund a bunch of stupid liberal programs.
California's federal aid goes towards programs required by the feds, but as those programs would end (or be selectively implemented if desired), their budgetary requirements would shift.
Likewise for the rest of the country. If California left, the red states could terminate all those programs required by the federal government and likely make up any lost revenue from California leaving.
California pays more to the Federal government than it gets back (it's a "maker" state not a "taker" state), and the state has a surplus.
This lose of revenue would more than be compensated for by the reduction in the size of the federal government once the red states could get rid of all the liberal programs and regulations they don't like.
nor would the US government even begin to allow one of the states to succeed from the union. That was established a long time ago by the confederate states, Texas, and Utah.
The difference is that the rest of the country didn't want them to leave. Texas wouldn't be able to leave because both the democrats and the republicans would try to stop them. If California wanted to leave, the red states would likely jump on board and getting a 2/3 majority in the house would be easy. The red states want California to leave just as much if not more than California wants to leave. The senate would really be the only roadblock because California only gets 2 votes there and there are a lot of small blue states in the east that likely wouldn't want California to leave.
Pay??? You do realize that California, along with almost every other democratic stronghold, contributes huge amounts of tax money to poorer states?
I personally wouldn't mind to see my taxes support my own state, not some farmer in Nebraska.
And so would all those farmers in Nebraska so why don't you liberals stop trying to force your one size fits all social programs down everyone else's throat. Let the state governments collect their own money to fund their own programs and have the federal government stop collecting money from the states and then giving it back to them. To name just one example, we don't need or want national health care, medicaid, or medicare. Let the states each decide how they want to handle taking care of their medical problems.
California sends far more money back up to the Federal Government than it gets back. It's the red states that are typically the subsidized ones, receiving back from the Federal Government far more than they pay into it.
Damn pesky facts...
But that money is to fund programs created by California. If California goes and takes all their stupid welfare programs with them then we lose the California tax base but more than make up for it by the reduction in federal spending.
California is a NET CONTRIBUTOR to the federal government.
For the typical/. reader, this means Californians pay more in federal taxes than they get back from the federal government.
Somebody has to pay for the food stamps all those met addicted red state degenerates receive.
Yes, California pays more taxes than they collect in tax dollars but most of the tax dollars goes to programs that California voted for so if you lost all the California tax dollars but were also able to eliminate half the government spending on idiotic things like (to use your example) providing food stamps to people on meth then we still come out ahead.
The blue half won't be paying trillions on military and other federal BS so it would be a small price to pay to make the whole state blue.
How long do you think California would last without a military? Granted we could probably reduce the size of the federal military but if California is solely responsible for defending itself against they would likely have to spend *more* than they are currently spending as they don't have the economy of scale that the USA has.
Eventually, the robots will farm for the blue half anyway. The universal basic income will take care of people's needs.
We are still a long way from robots doing all the blue collar jobs until then you are dependent on the red people to take out your trash, fix your toilets, stock your grocery stores, and all the other stuff that magically gets done for you.
Pretty much the same could be said about the immigrants (legal or illegal) and the Chinese and Mexicans that those people in the rural areas like to complain about...
I have no problem with legal immigrants. I also have no problem with increasing the quota for people coming into the USA. Heck, if we want to, meet them at the border and issue them an ID and social security card on the spot but in order to do that you need to actual vote on changing the laws. Right now the law says you have to have a work visa to work in the USA. I want the laws we have enforced until they vote on them to change. I also have a problem with the people here illegally getting to jump the line in front of the millions of people waiting their turn to legally come into the USA. If we want open borders, fine, let's discuss and vote on it but let's not have a system where it's "illegal" to come here but if you risk your life to sneak across the border and work for below minimum wage as a slave then we'll look the other way. This does no favors to anyone whether you're black, white, a legal hispanic, or an illegal hispanic. I don't want to live in a country where there is a group of untouchables that have no chance of ever getting out of poverty because they aren't considered real citizens. Close off the border, increase the quotas, and make sure everyone in the USA has the same rights as everyone else.
So you think the people who grow your food, build the things you buy and deliver them to your door... Those are the people you insult, degrade, and cast out?
Wish I had mod points to mod this back up. As usual, someone decided to mod facts down because they would rather live in their fantasy world. The liberal white collars think it would be great if everyone had a basic income so they could all sit at home and paint, write novels, and build iphone apps. The conservative blue collars still realize that food doesn't magically appear in supermarkets and lawns don't magically mow themselves. For the foreseeable future we still need people to do the jobs that nobody else wants to do and putting everyone on food stamps is not the answer.
Many of us know what kind of person Trump and his "friends" are, and they deserve neither trust nor respect.
His friends? Oh, you mean Bill and Hillary Clinton? They were best friends before the campaign and were starting to warm up to each other again in private before the campaign even got over. I hope I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that we'll all find out that Trump is just more of the same.
The biggest difficulty with this change is the addition of polling stations and personnel to deal with the logistics of having 60-100 million people vote on the same day.
This is a non-issue. You aren't trying to get 60 million people to vote at one place. If you set up the proper amount of polling places you won't have a problem. Same with lines at polling booths. The only reason it's an issue is because the people managing it are morons. My county uses scantrons. Everyone goes to their local school. There are 3-4 people handing out ballots, about a dozen stations to vote at and 1 machine to drop your ballot in when your done. I'm in and out in under 15 minutes with the majority of the time being the time spent actually filling out the bubbles. I've never had to wait to vote and I'm not in some tiny town either. There are multiple colleges in my town too so we also have to deal with the influx of a large amount of students. Again, it's a non-issue. You know how many people live in a given area and approximately how long it takes them to vote. We have a polling place for about 1 in every 5000 people and as some of those are children and many people don't vote each polling place probably only sees around 1000 people. It's easily manageable even if every person did decide to vote.
That part seems relatively easy - just follow the platform and highlight parts that differ.
Unless the person doing the classification is unbiased which is likely impossible then they are going to add their own biases. For instance, I have seen many lists of "just the facts/positions" comparing Clinton and Trump and I can always tell which party actually created the list of positions for the candidates.
Scantron is best. Easily and understandably verified by hand, quickly countable by machine. Random audits can verify paper and program count are in agreement.
I agree. I don't understand why anyone uses anything else. We do also have a digital screen for the handicapped but I believe even that prints a completed scantron for you and if it doesn't it should.
Yes, like their main news channel being self-described as "fair and balanced"... oh, wait!
I have plenty of conservative friends that think fox news is less biased and plenty of liberal friends who disagree. I even have conservative friends that think that fox news is a little too left leaning.
I'm not sure how you even go about measuring bias. Do you find the most conservative and the most liberal person you can find and ask them? I would love to see more shows with opposing views but it would be hard to do the extremes without turning in to the Jerry Springer Show. I've found that it's easy to talk politics to people who are in the rational middle but if you get a diehard democrat or a diehard republican then they get very angry if you disagree with them. Both sides have taken the moral high ground and think anyone who disagrees with them is evil and irrational.
How is that a bullshit defense? I've heard the self-appointed security experts scream about how bad "monocultures" are for security, and Comey basically just said that there isn't a monoculture in the voting systems. That should be a good thing.
Because it would be fairly easy to buy off a few "Marys and Teds" in a few key districts. You likely wouldn't even need to buy them off. Becoming a janitor at the place where the machines are stored would probably be sufficient. Clunky and dispersed is not a security strategy. It does make it slightly harder to coordinate a large scale attack but only slightly. You lose the advantage of doing it all at once but you gain the advantage that each place has it's own security and my guess is that many of these places have almost zero security and just stick the voting machines in the janitor's closet when done.
When they come out of storage, ready for election season, they're set to factory settings.
Factory reset isn't going to do you any good if the firmware has been flashed.
What I do object to is that the machine's hardware/code is not available to the public for scrutiny.
This isn't going to do you any good either as even if you have the source code and the machine code of what is suppose to be on one of the dozens of machines, how do you verify that one or more of the machines haven't been flashed with a modified firmware?
My county uses scantrons. This seems like a reasonable compromise between quick counting and accountability. There are multiple machines. It would be easy to run the entire stack through a second or third machine to verify that the results are accurate. You could even run the stack through a 2nd machine created by a completely different company and you could also count by hand if necessary.
I don't know about California state legislation, but Federal bills are literally unreadable. You'd need a staff of dozens, all experienced in the subject matter, studying the bill to have a chance of understanding it within 72 hours.
And this is absolutely insane. We have members of congress regularly voting on bill that they themselves haven't read and don't understand. How can anyone think this is acceptable?
Slashdot Mirror
It's that people tend to seek out and consume information that confirms their already strongly held opinions.
It's not even just people though. The whole concept of liking something on facebook so facebook will show you more of the things that you like magnifies the echo chamber. If anything, facebook should probably be showing you less of the types of stuff that you like if they really want to try to counter the echo chamber that people live in but this isn't really workable either because then you would only see posts from distant strangers that you just happen to be facebook friends with but don't really care about.
If all states implemented something roughly equivalent that wouldn't matter. But if California did it alone, it would immediately become a magnet for the nation's sick people. There would be an incentive for people to even plan their lives that way: "I'm gonna live where taxes are low while I'm young and healthy and if I ever get a chronic illness or just get to where my medical expenses are rising, I'll move to California". So California's costs would go through the roof since they'd end up footing the bill for much of the rest of the country as well. That wouldn't work.
Obamacare was modelled off something that *was* only done at the state level in Massachusetts and regardless, plenty of other countries have to deal with having better health care than their neighbours. The simplest solution is to exempt preexisting conditions for people moving into the state but there are likely other solutions. There are enough countries with universal health care now that it would be easy to look and see how other countries handle situations of migration. The word state used to have a different meaning. People have forgotten but the word State is synonymous with Country. It was really supposed to be the United Countries of America. The United States of America was designed to be more like the European Union where each sovereign state managed their own affairs. If we moved back in that direction and let the states do what the federal government does now then this whole talk of succession would stop because what is done at the federal level would be insignificant. Instead, the way we have it now, what is done at the state level is insignificant because everything is handed down by the federal government exactly backwards from the way it was designed to be.
First off that's not allowed but even if it was, if you broke up states based on square miles then the democrats would be seriously disadvantaged.
Most of the smaller states are democrat while most of the larger states are republican. The only reason the democrats have as many senate
seats as they do is that they are overrepresented in the smaller eastern states.
The house and senate and the electoral college are really designed pretty well. Yes, Clinton won the popular vote but the reason the senate
and house and electoral college is designed the way it is is so that small states can't overpower big states and so that overpopulated states
can't overpower less populated states.
No one would want to succeed if we stopped making everything a national issue. If California would have implemented universal health care for the people in their state then there would never have been this huge fight over obamacare. Same with a host of other issues. The only reason Trump won was because Clinton has lost touch with reality and Trump supporters are fed up with the federal government forcing things on them.
the difference is we now have a president and supporters who no longer remember what it means to be Americans, what our American principles and ideals are or what they mean.
if they did, they would never have supported trump.
Trump is the antithesis to those things.
And supporting him means you no longer support those things.
The one thing we can probably agree on is that the people who support Trump have a completely different definition on what it means to be American and what our American principles and ideals are. Most Trump supports I know have a very good understanding of the constitution and want a limited federal government and sovereign states. That is their principles and ideals like the founding fathers originally wanted it. They don't want a national health care system or a federal department of education. They want their states to decide what is best for their state not to be force feed regulations from afar. The people in Montana have no problem with guns. They don't want a federal ban on assault rifles. If assault rifles become a problem in their state then they can take action locally to deal with it. I don't even understand the logic of something like a federal ban on assault rifles. I understand why people in Chicago might want to ban them but why do the people in Chicago want to ban them in Montana?
Since California gives more to the Federal government in taxes than they get back in benefits, you could say that their "share of the national debt" is negative. We would owe them a rebate, in fact.
That's only if you look at money flow not who voted to spend the money where. The programs and regulations voted on by california contributed greatly to the national debt.
While it's fun to talk about, a secession will never happen. Despite Trump's blustering, and even with republican senate and house control, it's exceptionally hard to make any broad governmental changes. Though I am a little worried about the Supreme Court.
It's not the republican senate that is the problem, it is the democrat senate. The republican house would love for california to leave. The republican house plus the democrats from California could easily get the 2/3s needed to start the process. The problem there is that california only has 2 votes in the senate and there are likely a lot of democrats in the small eastern states that would not want a large portion of their liberal voting block to leave.
What so many fail to realize is that the Blue states are net exporters of Federal Tax dollars. We pay far more than $1 for every $1 of federal spending that comes back to our states. The Red states, on the other hand, suck off the teats of the blue states. You'll see no improvement, only even fewer tax dollars to support you than you already get.
Sure you pay more that $1 for every $1 you receive but your stupid social programs and regulations probably cost us $2 for every dollar you give the federal government so in some ways you are a net taker. If you took your revenue and your laws with you, the net revenue of the rest of the USA would probably increase as they no longer had to fund a bunch of stupid liberal programs.
California's federal aid goes towards programs required by the feds, but as those programs would end (or be selectively implemented if desired), their budgetary requirements would shift.
Likewise for the rest of the country. If California left, the red states could terminate all those programs required by the federal government and likely make up any lost revenue from California leaving.
California pays more to the Federal government than it gets back (it's a "maker" state not a "taker" state), and the state has a surplus.
This lose of revenue would more than be compensated for by the reduction in the size of the federal government once the red states could get rid of all the liberal programs and regulations they don't like.
nor would the US government even begin to allow one of the states to succeed from the union. That was established a long time ago by the confederate states, Texas, and Utah.
The difference is that the rest of the country didn't want them to leave. Texas wouldn't be able to leave because both the democrats and the republicans would try to stop them. If California wanted to leave, the red states would likely jump on board and getting a 2/3 majority in the house would be easy. The red states want California to leave just as much if not more than California wants to leave. The senate would really be the only roadblock because California only gets 2 votes there and there are a lot of small blue states in the east that likely wouldn't want California to leave.
Pay??? You do realize that California, along with almost every other democratic stronghold, contributes huge amounts of tax money to poorer states?
I personally wouldn't mind to see my taxes support my own state, not some farmer in Nebraska.
And so would all those farmers in Nebraska so why don't you liberals stop trying to force your one size fits all social programs down everyone else's throat.
Let the state governments collect their own money to fund their own programs and have the federal government stop collecting money from the states and
then giving it back to them. To name just one example, we don't need or want national health care, medicaid, or medicare. Let the states each decide how
they want to handle taking care of their medical problems.
California sends far more money back up to the Federal Government than it gets back. It's the red states that are typically the subsidized ones, receiving back from the Federal Government far more than they pay into it.
Damn pesky facts...
But that money is to fund programs created by California. If California goes and takes all their stupid welfare programs with them then we lose the California tax base but more than make up for it by the reduction in federal spending.
California is a NET CONTRIBUTOR to the federal government.
For the typical /. reader, this means Californians pay more in federal taxes than they get back from the federal government.
Somebody has to pay for the food stamps all those met addicted red state degenerates receive.
Yes, California pays more taxes than they collect in tax dollars but most of the tax dollars goes to programs that California voted for so if you lost all the California tax dollars but were also able to eliminate half the government spending on idiotic things like (to use your example) providing food stamps to people on meth then we still come out ahead.
The blue half won't be paying trillions on military and other federal BS so it would be a small price to pay to make the whole state blue.
How long do you think California would last without a military? Granted we could probably reduce the size of the federal military but if California is
solely responsible for defending itself against they would likely have to spend *more* than they are currently spending as they don't have the
economy of scale that the USA has.
Eventually, the robots will farm for the blue half anyway. The universal basic income will take care of people's needs.
We are still a long way from robots doing all the blue collar jobs until then you are dependent on the red people to take out your trash, fix your toilets, stock your grocery stores, and all the other stuff that magically gets done for you.
Pretty much the same could be said about the immigrants (legal or illegal) and the Chinese and Mexicans that those people in the rural areas like to complain about...
I have no problem with legal immigrants. I also have no problem with increasing the quota for people coming into the USA. Heck, if we want to, meet them at the border and issue them an ID and social security card on the spot but in order to do that you need to actual vote on changing the laws. Right now the law says you have to have a work visa to work in the USA. I want the laws we have enforced until they vote on them to change. I also have a problem with the people here illegally getting to jump the line in front of the millions of people waiting their turn to legally come into the USA. If we want open borders, fine, let's discuss and vote on it but let's not have a system where it's "illegal" to come here but if you risk your life to sneak across the border and work for below minimum wage as a slave then we'll look the other way. This does no favors to anyone whether you're black, white, a legal hispanic, or an illegal hispanic. I don't want to live in a country where there is a group of untouchables that have no chance of ever getting out of poverty because they aren't considered real citizens. Close off the border, increase the quotas, and make sure everyone in the USA has the same rights as everyone else.
So you think the people who grow your food, build the things you buy and deliver them to your door ... Those are the people you insult, degrade, and cast out?
Wish I had mod points to mod this back up. As usual, someone decided to mod facts down because they would rather live in their fantasy world.
The liberal white collars think it would be great if everyone had a basic income so they could all sit at home and paint, write novels, and build iphone apps.
The conservative blue collars still realize that food doesn't magically appear in supermarkets and lawns don't magically mow themselves.
For the foreseeable future we still need people to do the jobs that nobody else wants to do and putting everyone on food stamps is not the answer.
Many of us know what kind of person Trump and his "friends" are, and they deserve neither trust nor respect.
His friends? Oh, you mean Bill and Hillary Clinton? They were best friends before the campaign and were starting to warm up to each other again in private before the campaign even got over. I hope I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that we'll all find out that Trump is just more of the same.
The biggest difficulty with this change is the addition of polling stations and personnel to deal with the logistics of having 60-100 million people vote on the same day.
This is a non-issue. You aren't trying to get 60 million people to vote at one place. If you set up the proper amount of polling places you won't have a problem. Same with lines at polling booths. The only reason it's an issue is because the people managing it are morons. My county uses scantrons. Everyone goes to their local school. There are 3-4 people handing out ballots, about a dozen stations to vote at and 1 machine to drop your ballot in when your done. I'm in and out in under 15 minutes with the majority of the time being the time spent actually filling out the bubbles. I've never had to wait to vote and I'm not in some tiny town either. There are multiple colleges in my town too so we also have to deal with the influx of a large amount of students. Again, it's a non-issue. You know how many people live in a given area and approximately how long it takes them to vote. We have a polling place for about 1 in every 5000 people and as some of those are children and many people don't vote each polling place probably only sees around 1000 people. It's easily manageable even if every person did decide to vote.
That part seems relatively easy - just follow the platform and highlight parts that differ.
Unless the person doing the classification is unbiased which is likely impossible then they are going to add their own biases. For instance, I have seen many lists of "just the facts/positions" comparing Clinton and Trump and I can always tell which party actually created the list of positions for the candidates.
Scantron is best. Easily and understandably verified by hand, quickly countable by machine. Random audits can verify paper and program count are in agreement.
I agree. I don't understand why anyone uses anything else. We do also have a digital screen for the handicapped but I believe even that prints a completed scantron for you and if it doesn't it should.
Yes, like their main news channel being self-described as "fair and balanced"... oh, wait!
I have plenty of conservative friends that think fox news is less biased and plenty of liberal friends who disagree. I even have conservative friends that think that fox news is a little too left leaning.
I'm not sure how you even go about measuring bias. Do you find the most conservative and the most liberal person you can find and ask them? I would love to see more shows with opposing views but it would be hard to do the extremes without turning in to the Jerry Springer Show. I've found that it's easy to talk politics to people who are in the rational middle but if you get a diehard democrat or a diehard republican then they get very angry if you disagree with them. Both sides have taken the moral high ground and think anyone who disagrees with them is evil and irrational.
How is that a bullshit defense?
I've heard the self-appointed security experts scream about how bad "monocultures" are for security, and Comey basically just said that there isn't a monoculture in the voting systems. That should be a good thing.
Because it would be fairly easy to buy off a few "Marys and Teds" in a few key districts. You likely wouldn't even need to buy them off. Becoming a janitor at the place where the machines are stored would probably be sufficient. Clunky and dispersed is not a security strategy. It does make it slightly harder to coordinate a large scale attack but only slightly. You lose the advantage of doing it all at once but you gain the advantage that each place has it's own security and my guess is that many of these places have almost zero security and just stick the voting machines in the janitor's closet when done.
When they come out of storage, ready for election season, they're set to factory settings.
Factory reset isn't going to do you any good if the firmware has been flashed.
What I do object to is that the machine's hardware/code is not available to the public for scrutiny.
This isn't going to do you any good either as even if you have the source code and the machine code of what is suppose to be on one of the dozens of machines, how do you verify that one or more of the machines haven't been flashed with a modified firmware?
My county uses scantrons. This seems like a reasonable compromise between quick counting and accountability. There are multiple machines. It would be easy to run the entire stack through a second or third machine to verify that the results are accurate. You could even run the stack through a 2nd machine created by a completely different company and you could also count by hand if necessary.
I don't know about California state legislation, but Federal bills are literally unreadable. You'd need a staff of dozens, all experienced in the subject matter, studying the bill to have a chance of understanding it within 72 hours.
And this is absolutely insane. We have members of congress regularly voting on bill that they themselves haven't read and don't understand. How can anyone think this is acceptable?