Real competition drives innovation and makes good for customers.
... and also creates a lot of extra work for the suppliers, which is why Microsoft does everything in its power to suppress real competition whenever it can.
In my thinking this should mean the source code should be opened to the public to ensure continued trust in the system.
Looking at the source code would be interesting, but it shouldn't give you any confidence in the system. Even in the (practically unattainable) ideal case, where the code is thoroughly analyzed by all the experts and they all agree the code is correct... there is still no proof that the code everybody looked at is the code that will actually be running on the voting machines. Even if you stand over the Diebold employees and watch them compile the source code and install the resulting binary on the machine, you still don't know if that code is what will be running on the machine during the election.
The point is, having access to the (alleged) source code is no guarantee of accuracy. The only reliable guarantee of accuracy is having the system print out a paper receipt that the voter hand-verifies and turns in at the poll. Once you have that, the vote can be recounted by hand, if necessary, and any inaccuracies will be detected. Without that, no electronic system will ever be trustworthy.
To get rid of that cancer on the human race? Absolutely.
Funny, I seem to recall the given reason for the war was that Saddam was going to rain WMDs down on American cities otherwise. If Bush's real reason was to get rid of a nasty tyrant, he should have based his arguments on that, instead of making up unsupported scare stories. If the world's nuclear superpower is going to make a habit of misleading its public in order to justify otherwise-unjustifiable invasions, then we are going to be in for a rough time indeed.
If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam and his thugs would still be tossing dissidents into industrial meat grinders.
I can guarantee you there are at least a half-dozen other evil dictators who regularly do the same sorts of thing. Shall I expect another half-dozen invasions and occupations if George W. is re-elected? If you think the answer is no, then that should be your first clue that human rights abuses are not what prompts the Bush administration to go to war.
"If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison..."
... and 500+ dead American soldiers would still be alive, another 2000+ would remain healthy and un-maimed, the USA would have $250 billion more in the bank than it does now, our allies would still respect us as the moral leader of the free world, and we wouldn't be stuck in an endless Iraqi quagmire with more soldiers dying every day.
Most folks misunderstand the term "majority rule" to mean greater than 50% of the vote. However, it's meant to be the cantidate with the greater percentage of voters, not an absolute percentage or greater
You're wrong there. Majority means more than 50% of the vote. What you're talking about is called a plurality.
I'm not trying to troll here.
I suppose this should be my tip-off that I have been trolled.:^)
So you don't see a problem with putting a president in office that is not supported by 79% of the population?
What do you mean exactly by "support"? Most of the people I know voted for Bush or Gore in the 2000 election, and most of them didn't like either candidate very much. Do you consider it "support" when most of the public is forced to hold their nose and vote for a candidate they don't really like, simply because the system forces them to either vote for one of the majority candidates or throw their vote away?
With IRV, people would be free to vote for the politician they truly preferred, without worrying about their vote being counterproductive to their own interests. That would be a vast improvement over the current system, where many people say "I think minority candidate X would make the best president, but he probably won't win, and I just can't afford to let majority candidate Y get into office so I'm going to vote for the other majority candidate to make sure he doesn't." A better recipe for mediocre government I can't imagine.
The American public were not upset that GWB got less than 1/n th of the votes, they were mad because he got less than 1/2 (specifically) ofe the votes.
IRV would solve that problem, by guaranteeing that the winner had more than 50% of the votes. (not 50% of the first choice votes, but at least 50% of the voters would have recorded their support for the winner at some point in their ballot -- or exercised their right to abstain, by leaving part of their ballot blank)
The problem with runoff voting is that those who support the more radical candidates are forced to pick increasingly more moderate candidates.
That's why the "instant" style is so nice. It allows you to express your true preferences, in order, from favorite to least favorite, without being artificially limited to only a subset of the candidates.
"Bush's government" : Let's stop being so partisan and call it the United States Government, shall we?
The Republicans control the White House and both houses of the legislature. The only thing the Democrats can do at the moment to influence any decision is filibuster. How is it not Bush's government?
It's only a matter of time when someone (Al Queda?) will use the zombie network for something that will truly be noticed.
Agreed. But fighting the spammers won't prevent that. The only way to prevent that is to secure the majority of on-line PCs so they can't be zombified.
... is that Japanese engineers are allowed to explore interesting and creative new technology designs, despite every armchair critic in the world immediately telling them how stupid/unsafe/infeasible/unnecessary their prototype is.
That's why they'll eventually have their giant killer robots, while we're still optimizing the super-sized cup-holder layout for our pickup trucks.
I didn't mean to suggest that the school library should keep them, only that they are of historical value and should probably be kept somewhere. I'm sure book collectors would be happy to find them a home.
Of course, some of those may be the ones that bring the big bucks on eBay.
Agreed... the fact that the weeders found these books remarkable enough to post comments about them suggests that these books are of interest and shouldn't be thrown away...
This is bullshit. There is a number of ways to anonymously indicate that the vote is flawed. For instance, voters could be asked to indicate on the receipt whether or not the receipt is correct, and put it in a ballot box.
Hmm.... this would lead to an easy way for a group of people to throw an election into doubt, by anonymously indicating that their ballots were flawed. i.e. If you think you can't win the election, you could nullify it by getting people to check the "machine messed up my vote" box even when it didn't.
So what's the difference between reading a candidate's name on paper, and reading it on the screen?
Not much. But there is a big difference when it comes to writing on the paper... you can do "illegal" things on the paper that would invalidate your ballot. A computer can ensure that your ballot will be valid.
Or do the machines speak names out loud?
Yes. Many of them can, if the person isn't able to read the text (for whatever reason).
We don't care who they tried to vote for. That's a null vote, and that's that.
That is the standard solution, but throwing away someone's vote is undemocratic and undesirable, so if there is now a better solution available (e.g. a touchscreen that makes the voter's vote is valid before it gets submitted), why not use it?
An electronic terminal can error-check your ballot and give you a chance to correct any mistakes before you turn the ballot in. If you mess up a paper ballot and don't catch the mistake yourself, your vote won't count and you'll never know that you were disenfranchised.
Electronic terminals are able to provide additional assistance to blind or illiterate people, by showing pictures of the candidates and reading the text aloud into headphones, if necessary.
Electronic terminals make more sophisticated forms of voting (like IRV, Condorcet, etc) practical, and thus more likely to eventually be approved.
The free market doesn't always produce the optimal outcome.
I see you haven't learned the fundamental trick of libertarianism: Take whatever result the market gives you, and define that result as "optimal".
For example, "tainted ground water" is an optimal result, because it minimized cleanup costs for the computer parts manufacturer, and it creates a new market opportunity for selling bottled water to everyone. See, the system works!:^)
Thanks for the info... while I think Approval Voting would be an improvement over first-past-the-post, I still prefer IRV over approval. Here is a page describing why:
Then, by your analogy, just as Sony makes VHS decks, do you expect to see a Unix-based Microsoft OS?
It's not out of the question... certainly if Apple could do it, so could MS... as soon as they get over their ideological impairment, of course.
And as much as I like your analogy, let me play devil's advocate: VHS was unstoppable because it hit critical mass in terms of the number of decks out there.
True, quite similar to what happened with Windows. But despite MS's big head start in user base, if Open Source can get the same tasks done easier and cheaper than Windows then Window's market share will decrease in response. That's the market for ya. At some point the balance will shift so that Open Source becomes the primary software development target, at which point Windows' decline will accelerate sharply.
In the 1980's, everybody agreed that Beta was better than VHS in most respects... however, the Beta format was tightly controlled by a single company, while VHS technology was accessible to any company that wanted to develop a product with it.
It's now twenty years later... how many people do you know that use a Beta deck?
Of course... but when Time magazine starts deleting articles that are no longer politically expedient, it is also our right to call them on it and expose their revisionist shennanigans. Time does try to present itself as a professional, objective news magazine, and assuming they want to keep that reputation, the "it's my data and I'll do what I want to" defense isn't going to fly.
I thought it was "bumbling, incompetent, folksy retard surrounded by cunning, devious criminal masterminds who stand off-camera and play him like a marionette"?
Slashdot Mirror
Looking at the source code would be interesting, but it shouldn't give you any confidence in the system. Even in the (practically unattainable) ideal case, where the code is thoroughly analyzed by all the experts and they all agree the code is correct... there is still no proof that the code everybody looked at is the code that will actually be running on the voting machines. Even if you stand over the Diebold employees and watch them compile the source code and install the resulting binary on the machine, you still don't know if that code is what will be running on the machine during the election.
The point is, having access to the (alleged) source code is no guarantee of accuracy. The only reliable guarantee of accuracy is having the system print out a paper receipt that the voter hand-verifies and turns in at the poll. Once you have that, the vote can be recounted by hand, if necessary, and any inaccuracies will be detected. Without that, no electronic system will ever be trustworthy.
Funny, I seem to recall the given reason for the war was that Saddam was going to rain WMDs down on American cities otherwise. If Bush's real reason was to get rid of a nasty tyrant, he should have based his arguments on that, instead of making up unsupported scare stories. If the world's nuclear superpower is going to make a habit of misleading its public in order to justify otherwise-unjustifiable invasions, then we are going to be in for a rough time indeed.
If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam and his thugs would still be tossing dissidents into industrial meat grinders.
I can guarantee you there are at least a half-dozen other evil dictators who regularly do the same sorts of thing. Shall I expect another half-dozen invasions and occupations if George W. is re-elected? If you think the answer is no, then that should be your first clue that human rights abuses are not what prompts the Bush administration to go to war.
You're wrong there. Majority means more than 50% of the vote. What you're talking about is called a plurality.
I'm not trying to troll here.
I suppose this should be my tip-off that I have been trolled.
What do you mean exactly by "support"? Most of the people I know voted for Bush or Gore in the 2000 election, and most of them didn't like either candidate very much. Do you consider it "support" when most of the public is forced to hold their nose and vote for a candidate they don't really like, simply because the system forces them to either vote for one of the majority candidates or throw their vote away?
With IRV, people would be free to vote for the politician they truly preferred, without worrying about their vote being counterproductive to their own interests. That would be a vast improvement over the current system, where many people say "I think minority candidate X would make the best president, but he probably won't win, and I just can't afford to let majority candidate Y get into office so I'm going to vote for the other majority candidate to make sure he doesn't." A better recipe for mediocre government I can't imagine.
The American public were not upset that GWB got less than 1/n th of the votes, they were mad because he got less than 1/2 (specifically) ofe the votes.
IRV would solve that problem, by guaranteeing that the winner had more than 50% of the votes. (not 50% of the first choice votes, but at least 50% of the voters would have recorded their support for the winner at some point in their ballot -- or exercised their right to abstain, by leaving part of their ballot blank)
That's why the "instant" style is so nice. It allows you to express your true preferences, in order, from favorite to least favorite, without being artificially limited to only a subset of the candidates.
Actually it's the Republicans who are playing the hate speech card this year.
The Republicans control the White House and both houses of the legislature. The only thing the Democrats can do at the moment to influence any decision is filibuster. How is it not Bush's government?
Agreed. But fighting the spammers won't prevent that. The only way to prevent that is to secure the majority of on-line PCs so they can't be zombified.
That's why they'll eventually have their giant killer robots, while we're still optimizing the super-sized cup-holder layout for our pickup trucks.
I didn't mean to suggest that the school library should keep them, only that they are of historical value and should probably be kept somewhere. I'm sure book collectors would be happy to find them a home.
Agreed... the fact that the weeders found these books remarkable enough to post comments about them suggests that these books are of interest and shouldn't be thrown away...
put it in a ballot box.
Hmm.... this would lead to an easy way for a group of people to throw an election into doubt, by anonymously indicating that their ballots were flawed. i.e. If you think you can't win the election, you could nullify it by getting people to check the "machine messed up my vote" box even when it didn't.
Not much. But there is a big difference when it comes to writing on the paper... you can do "illegal" things on the paper that would invalidate your ballot. A computer can ensure that your ballot will be valid.
Or do the machines speak names out loud?
Yes. Many of them can, if the person isn't able to read the text (for whatever reason).
That is the standard solution, but throwing away someone's vote is undemocratic and undesirable, so if there is now a better solution available (e.g. a touchscreen that makes the voter's vote is valid before it gets submitted), why not use it?
That's a rather good idea... which browsers support doing this?
I see you haven't learned the fundamental trick of libertarianism: Take whatever result the market gives you, and define that result as "optimal".
For example, "tainted ground water" is an optimal result, because it minimized cleanup costs for the computer parts manufacturer, and it creates a new market opportunity for selling bottled water to everyone. See, the system works!
Thanks for the info... while I think Approval Voting would be an improvement over first-past-the-post, I still prefer IRV over approval. Here is a page describing why:
It's not out of the question... certainly if Apple could do it, so could MS... as soon as they get over their ideological impairment, of course.
And as much as I like your analogy, let me play devil's advocate: VHS was unstoppable because it hit critical mass in terms of the number of decks out there.
True, quite similar to what happened with Windows. But despite MS's big head start in user base, if Open Source can get the same tasks done easier and cheaper than Windows then Window's market share will decrease in response. That's the market for ya. At some point the balance will shift so that Open Source becomes the primary software development target, at which point Windows' decline will accelerate sharply.
It's now twenty years later... how many people do you know that use a Beta deck?
Of course, where it breaks down is in the I/O
Of course... but when Time magazine starts deleting articles that are no longer politically expedient, it is also our right to call them on it and expose their revisionist shennanigans. Time does try to present itself as a professional, objective news magazine, and assuming they want to keep that reputation, the "it's my data and I'll do what I want to" defense isn't going to fly.
I thought it was "bumbling, incompetent, folksy retard surrounded by cunning, devious criminal masterminds who stand off-camera and play him like a marionette"?