Gee, thanks. I'm glad you appreciated our website http://ElectionMethods.org so much, because we spent a lot of time developing it.
We get replies like yours all the time. Apparently all the rigorous technical material on our site was beyond your level of comprehension. Don't feel too bad. I once thought the way you do about IRV, but I was wrong, and so are you.
Think about it this way -- and this is about as simple as I can make it for you. When you vote Lib/Repub/Dem, and the Repub is elimated before the Lib, your preference for Repub over Dem is not counted! That's just a simple fact, and if you choose to ignore it or paper it over you are only fooling yourself.
I remember this Hazel O'Leary story from the "right-wing" talk radio. Apparently everybody else was "protected" from the news that our Secretary of Energy was an airhead.
Oh, by the way, during her tenure she managed to gut the security at our nuclear labs and de-classify 10,000,000 pages of nuclear research documents. Imagine how much money she saved Iran and North Korea!
Where have you guys been? Clinton's airhead secretary of Energy, Hazel O'Leary, once did basically the same thing with regard to master/slave synchros at a nuclear power plant. She also gutted the security at our nuclear labs and de-classified 10,000,000 pages of nuclear research documents. Didn't hear about it? You must watch CNN.
The tobacco lawyers who prosecuted that huge multi-billion dollar anti-tobacco lawsuit on behalf of the federal government stood to make the equivalent of $100,000/hr. Yes, I said $100,000/hour! I kid you not. (The only reason they might not have gotten it is because their win may have been overturned. I'm not sure of the final outcome.)
By the way, guess which party those lawyers have in their back pockets.
If you guessed the Democrats, help yourself to a cigar.
I believe that the ACLU supports the free-speech rights of Nazis only because they know the Nazis are not a political threat. Neo-Nazis are a fringe group of loony-tunes, and the vast majority of people know that. If Neo-Nazism was actually threatening to gain political power, I doubt the ACLU would be supporting them. It's a PR ploy for the ACLU.
The article was extremely misleading in its claim that academics such as David Dill at Stanford are opposed to DRE voting systems. Dill does not *oppose* DREs, he just believes that they should produce a paper ballot, which should be used at least for a back-up or verification of the electronically recorded votes.
The article mentions a "chain voting scam" that backup paper ballots are supposedly vulnerable to, but it says nothing whatsoever about how the scam works. Does anyone know what this is all about?
Those ubiquitous robots that were discussed in that incredibly assinine article by Marshall Brain on slashdot a few days ago.
puncturing the greatest marketing scam of all time
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
This could puncture the greatest marketing scam of all time: "prove you love your wife by sending a truckload of your hard-earned money to a bunch of billionaires."
I just wonder, will it be a sign of true love -- or of being a sucker -- to have one of the old high-priced diamonds on your finger in a few years?
I don't know why these computers need to reboot so much, but I can guaran-double-damn-tee you they would have to reboot a lot more if they were using C or C++ instead of Ada. When something really must work, you need Ada. If you're a programmer and you don't know that, you should educate yourself.
Yes, proprietary black-box voting equipment is a terrible idea. But what are you going to do about it?
What did Linus Torvalds do about Microsoft? He didn't sit around and complain, he wrote free software to compete with them.
Well, I can't compare myself to Linus, but I did develop a free GUI for voting, and I spent enough time to jeopardize my marriage doing it.
I call it the Graphical Voter Interface or GVI. I gave it a GPL license, and I urge you to check it out. It is full-featured, and I think you will be impressed.
GVI itself is actually a fairly complete voting GUI, but it needs additional components to become part of a complete open-source, free voting system. The documentation that comes with it explains what else is needed, and I wish some of you free-software guys would get to work on them.
Trust me, your arguments against closed-source, proprietary voting systems will be much more credible if you can offer a free, open-source alternative. So get your butts in gear!
Arrow's theorem essentially rules out Condorcet because it allows "cycles." That is, the winner can be "ambiguous." But that is not really a flaw of Condorcet. It is simply a reflection of the fact that the electorate has made a truly ambiguous statement, and Condorcet can hardly be faulted for accurately reflecting that fact. Excellent methods are available for resolving the ambiguity.
Since you are so interested in election methods, please take a look at http://ElectionMethods.org/evaluation.htm
Yes, but how can we be sure "the numbers are accurate" when the Democrats wouldn't even allow poll workers to ask for identification before someone votes? Or when they don't require proof of citizenship to register to vote?
If you read the material at http://ElectionMethods.org, you will see that we consider Condorcet (CSSD variation) to be the "best" system. We recognize that Approval is not ideal, but it has two *huge* advantages: it is as simple as conventional plurality, and it requires no new voting equipment. These are indispensible to getting it adopted on a large scale.
As for Arrow's theorem, yes we know all about it. It is based on criteria that Arrow postulated. Nothing more, nothing less. If you don't understand that, you don't understand his theorem. But don't feel bad: his theorem is widely misinterpreted.
If Bork said that a business owner should be free to discriminate against racial minorities, I agree with him. What business does the government have telling businesses who they can and cannot hire?
And if a business owner rejects a better black person in favor of,say, a less qualified or less experienced white, who suffers the most? If you said the business owner himself, pass go and collect $200.
Yes, Ada was designed from the ground up for reliability, and experience has shown that it substantially reduces bugs, particularly post-deployment bugs, the most expensive kind. I'm amazed that nobody else mentioned this. Oh well, nobody will read this comment anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, thanks. I'm glad you appreciated our website http://ElectionMethods.org so much, because we spent a lot of time developing it.
We get replies like yours all the time. Apparently all the rigorous technical material on our site was beyond your level of comprehension. Don't feel too bad. I once thought the way you do about IRV, but I was wrong, and so are you.
Think about it this way -- and this is about as simple as I can make it for you. When you vote Lib/Repub/Dem, and the Repub is elimated before the Lib, your preference for Repub over Dem is not counted! That's just a simple fact, and if you choose to ignore it or paper it over you are only fooling yourself.
Regards,
Russ Paielli
IRV is a mistake. It only gives the illusion of helping minor parties win. Approval Voting is what we need. See ElectionMethods.org
I remember this Hazel O'Leary story from the "right-wing" talk radio. Apparently everybody else was "protected" from the news that our Secretary of Energy was an airhead.
Oh, by the way, during her tenure she managed to gut the security at our nuclear labs and de-classify 10,000,000 pages of nuclear research documents. Imagine how much money she saved Iran and North Korea!
Where have you guys been? Clinton's airhead secretary of Energy, Hazel O'Leary, once did basically the same thing with regard to master/slave synchros at a nuclear power plant. She also gutted the security at our nuclear labs and de-classified 10,000,000 pages of nuclear research documents. Didn't hear about it? You must watch CNN.
The tobacco lawyers who prosecuted that huge multi-billion dollar anti-tobacco lawsuit on behalf of the federal government stood to make the equivalent of $100,000/hr. Yes, I said $100,000/hour! I kid you not. (The only reason they might not have gotten it is because their win may have been overturned. I'm not sure of the final outcome.)
By the way, guess which party those lawyers have in their back pockets.
If you guessed the Democrats, help yourself to a cigar.
I believe that the ACLU supports the free-speech rights of Nazis only because they know the Nazis are not a political threat. Neo-Nazis are a fringe group of loony-tunes, and the vast majority of people know that. If Neo-Nazism was actually threatening to gain political power, I doubt the ACLU would be supporting them. It's a PR ploy for the ACLU.
By the way, are you aware that the Nazis were left-wing socialists? You should be.
If you honestly think that Iraq never had WMDs, you, sir, are a genuine moron. And you claim that viewers of Fox News have been mislead? Amazing.
Congratulations on the first intelligent post on Slashdot regarding the PATRIOT Act. Well, not literally the first, but you get my drift.
Take a look at my Graphical Voter Interface.
All right all you yahoos, let's get to the truth of the matter.
The article was extremely misleading in its claim that academics such as David Dill at Stanford are opposed to DRE voting systems. Dill does not *oppose* DREs, he just believes that they should produce a paper ballot, which should be used at least for a back-up or verification of the electronically recorded votes.
The article mentions a "chain voting scam" that backup paper ballots are supposedly vulnerable to, but it says nothing whatsoever about how the scam works. Does anyone know what this is all about?
By the way, please read Ensuring the Integrity of Electronic Voting.
From Ensuring the Integrity of Electronic Voting:
The integrity of electronic voting in public general elections with secret ballots can be ensured only if the following precautions are taken:
* generate and use paper ballots
* use open computer architecture and open-source software
* prohibit online voting in general elections (except in rare cases)
Those ubiquitous robots that were discussed in that incredibly assinine article by Marshall Brain on slashdot a few days ago.
This could puncture the greatest marketing scam of all time: "prove you love your wife by sending a truckload of your hard-earned money to a bunch of billionaires."
I just wonder, will it be a sign of true love -- or of being a sucker -- to have one of the old high-priced diamonds on your finger in a few years?
I don't know why these computers need to reboot so much, but I can guaran-double-damn-tee you they would have to reboot a lot more if they were using C or C++ instead of Ada. When something really must work, you need Ada. If you're a programmer and you don't know that, you should educate yourself.
Yes, proprietary black-box voting equipment is a terrible idea. But what are you going to do about it?
What did Linus Torvalds do about Microsoft? He didn't sit around and complain, he wrote free software to compete with them.
Well, I can't compare myself to Linus, but I did develop a free GUI for voting, and I spent enough time to jeopardize my marriage doing it.
I call it the Graphical Voter Interface or GVI. I gave it a GPL license, and I urge you to check it out. It is full-featured, and I think you will be impressed.
GVI itself is actually a fairly complete voting GUI, but it needs additional components to become part of a complete open-source, free voting system. The documentation that comes with it explains what else is needed, and I wish some of you free-software guys would get to work on them.
Trust me, your arguments against closed-source, proprietary voting systems will be much more credible if you can offer a free, open-source alternative. So get your butts in gear!
Ya, I'd like to get my Graphical Voter Interface GVI into a distribution or two. I think it's pretty cool. Check it out.
Arrow's theorem essentially rules out Condorcet because it allows "cycles." That is, the winner can be "ambiguous." But that is not really a flaw of Condorcet. It is simply a reflection of the fact that the electorate has made a truly ambiguous statement, and Condorcet can hardly be faulted for accurately reflecting that fact. Excellent methods are available for resolving the ambiguity.
Since you are so interested in election methods, please take a look at http://ElectionMethods.org/evaluation.htm
Yes, but how can we be sure "the numbers are accurate" when the Democrats wouldn't even allow poll workers to ask for identification before someone votes? Or when they don't require proof of citizenship to register to vote?
If you read the material at http://ElectionMethods.org, you will see that we consider Condorcet (CSSD variation) to be the "best" system. We recognize that Approval is not ideal, but it has two *huge* advantages: it is as simple as conventional plurality, and it requires no new voting equipment. These are indispensible to getting it adopted on a large scale.
As for Arrow's theorem, yes we know all about it. It is based on criteria that Arrow postulated. Nothing more, nothing less. If you don't understand that, you don't understand his theorem. But don't feel bad: his theorem is widely misinterpreted.
Yes, Approval Voting is the next step in democracy.
See ElectionMethods.org.
If Bork said that a business owner should be free to discriminate against racial minorities, I agree with him. What business does the government have telling businesses who they can and cannot hire?
And if a business owner rejects a better black person in favor of,say, a less qualified or less experienced white, who suffers the most? If you said the business owner himself, pass go and collect $200.
Read this article by Robert Bork. Summary: you have probably been seriously mislead about the PATRIOT Act.
That's an easy one. Because their operating systems are written in C. Next question?
Yes, Ada was designed from the ground up for reliability, and experience has shown that it substantially reduces bugs, particularly post-deployment bugs, the most expensive kind. I'm amazed that nobody else mentioned this. Oh well, nobody will read this comment anyway.