Their upgrade path has never really been driven by their OS features, though. Normal people don't buy a new computer because Windows XXX has new features X, Y and Z. They buy a new computer because a new game is released that is tied to the new OS. They buy a new computer because business application vendors (including Microsoft) drop support for old versions of their software, and tie new versions to the new OS.
You know what? Your argument about "running [xxx] just fine. Not even slow" was around when XP came out (in addition to "it'll break compatibility with everything I already have"). It was around when 2000, Win ME, 98 and even 95 were released. It doesn't appear to have significantly impaired the uptake of those products (what impaired the uptake of 2k was the prospect of XP on the horizon).
New PC sales are still increasing year over year (both consumer and commercial). The rate of growth of new PC sales is decreasing, particularly in the U.S., but the market is still growing.
Re:Some artists just want to be heard...
on
CRIA Falling Apart?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why *do* so many people seem to have this base-level objection to paying for recording music?
I object to paying for duplications of recorded music (which is what is being sold) because they have next to no intrinsic value.
Copyright law has the effect of creating an artificial business model. It allows duplicators (the record labels) to create a tie between the creative process (which has intrinsic value due to scarcity) and the duplicates of the product of that process (which have next to no intrinsic value because of practically zero marginal cost). Exclusively because of the force of the state, the duplicators can then extort a price for their (next-to) zero-value product. This creates a fundamentally distorted market.
Not only is this distorted market bad for consumers, it is bad for artists as well. While their process is the only thing with intrinsic value in the system, the business model turns things on their head. The creative process is a cost-centre, not a revenue-centre in this model. New development is only funded insofar as it can increase the artificially-tied duplication business. This results in the lack of diversity apparent in the industry now. What is more, because the current artificial business-model is vastly lucrative (for the duplicators) and artists are locked in usurious contracts with the duplicators, development, discussion and examination of alternative natural business models are stifled.
What (natural) business models have worked for funding the creative process in the past? Certainly, patronage has a history, though it seems that the connection between those that benefit from the process and those that pay for the process is tenuous at best. It seems that society at large benefits from the creative process, so perhaps the search for a business model should start there. I am not suggesting the formation of a business model based on state support here - the state serves as a weak proxy for society at large... hmmm... any thoughts?
For Nvidia, intellectual property is a secondary issue. "It's so hard to write a graphics driver that open-sourcing it would not help," said Andrew Fear, Nvidia's software product manager. In addition, customers aren't asking for open-source drivers, he said.
Firstly that is a very arrogant approach, some of the best developers in the world work on open source stuff, saying it is to hard is just stupid. Or maybe it's just code for "We haven't got documentation for this stuff, and rely on the collective experience of our developers over generations of the product to keep writing drivers. Driver writing is not a revenue center but a cost center for us, and in order to contain costs, we're not going to make the upfront investment required to throw our developers at documenting this stuff to the point where we won't be embarassed."
Intellectual property issues like cross-patent licensing and 3rd party code could be addressed relatively cheaply when compared to addressing systematic deficiencies in documentation and code style. Such an effort would turn the cost structure of a hardware company on its head.
Yes, they would ultimately experience an advantage from having unpaid volunteers improving their code. However, in order for those volunteers to improve the stuff, the stuff's already got to be in good shape anyway.
Elections are complicated, even the simple things can get really broken. Again, another example, here in central ohio, polling stations which served a lot of people (the inner city ones) ended up with a severe shortage of voting machines. This is a really easy oversight to fix (which is why there were so many accusations of rigging), but it still went drastically drastically wrong.
Referring to this as an oversight is tremendously rich, given that the County elections boards and the Secretary of State's offices were advised of this potential problem repeatedly prior to the election and took no action to correct it. Furthermore all of the precincts affected by this problem happened to be precincts that voted for the opponent of the candidate for whom the highest ranking state elections official (Sec of State) held the position of co-chair of re-election campaign.
BTW, in Canada, we generally discourage electionsofficials (with the weight of the law) the practice of engaging in partisan activities (like, say, acting as co-chair of the election campaign of one of the candidates in the election you are running).
However, if voting fraud is an issue, it will not be a small margin. It is doubtful that someone will try to fraud for only a couple of votes
Then clearly, you underestimate the skills and resources of your adversary. It is precisely small margins that are concerning. Remember, a small margin of votes can be changed in a close race without producing statistically significant differences from polling (and exit-polling) to raise suspicion. Such small changes, well placed, can have a significant effect on the overall race.
If you think that people do not have the skill to predict where small vote count frauds will make a difference, you need to visit the "gerrymandering" page on wikipedia, particularly the "Gerrymandering computer technology" heading.
1. Open source. We need to be able to trust these systems and how can we do that without being able to examine the code behind them?
Indeed, I concur
2. Paper records kept for the government. Just in case there is a trust issue, this is a backup method for the recount.
So long as these records contain a human readable indication of an individual voter's intent, and were verified by the voter at vote-time.
3. Paper records for the voter. Worst case, every voter has a copy of their own vote. Hard to use for a recount, but could help identify irregularities.
Absolutely, uncategorically, under no circumstances. Proof of vote makes wholesale coercion, vote-buying and vote-selling methods practical.
Ummm... The returns do come in fast... The last election, we knew who our prime minister was going to be before the polls closed on the West Coast. Hand counted paper ballots are a highly scalable solution because counting is highly parallelizable. You don't have one team counting 200 million ballots...
"I say that because this is the first incident ever being reported where an SSL cert was obtained illegitimately."
What makes you say that the SSL cert was obtained illegitimately? The holder of the cert was the legitimate owner of the domain in the CN. The Organization name in the cert does not match any registered trademark, is not confusingly similar to any registered trademark, and is not confusingly similar to any non-trademarked name of a major institution.
McDonald's served their coffee at about 40 degrees F hotter than is standard in the industry, and didn't inform its customers of this fact.
The McDonald's quality assurance manager admitted in discovery that at the temperature at which it was served, the coffee was not fit for consumption
Liebeck's unchallenged expert witness (expert in thermodynamics applied to human skin burns) testified that had the coffee been served at a temperature consistent with the rest of the industry, the coffee would have cooled before inflicting third-degree burns.
McDonald's assertion that they keep the coffee so hot because customers intend to take the coffee home or to work to drink it is contradicted by their own market research indicating most customers intend to drink the coffee in the car.
There were 700 previous cases where complaints were filed and McDonald's made no changes to their policies
Whereas in the US voters are voting for people to represent them, and NUMEROUS referendum items. Canadian votes can be tallied quickly because we have so little to add up. Even using the Canadian system US votes would still take a MUCH longer time to tally.
Manual vote tallying is highly parallelizable. Presumably, if there are a large number of races on a ballot, there are individuals with an interest in each of those races - so there should be people willing to act as scrutineers for those races. If the races were presented on separate ballots, the race for State Senator could be counted by one group of people, while the race for dog catcher could be counted by another.
The problem is, in many jurisdiction, the manufacturers appear to effectively run the elections, not the elections officials. The elections officials lack the knowledge of process or system to be able to challenge the manufacturers or properly and fully understand the current electoral system.
This is a red herring. The manufacturers have made almost zero effort to deal with accessibility. Some have made efforts completely limited to helping the blind vote. None have made real efforts helping the severely mobility impaired. None have made any real efforts to help the deaf and blind. How can we deal with this?
Braille templates braille templates that fit over a ballot are provided for in Canadian statute. They allow the blind and deaf-blind to vote without assistance marking.
Family / election official assistance Canadian law provides for a voter to request that a family member / election official accompany them into the booth to assist in voting under certain circumstances.
DRE machines with a VVAT Such machines can have the accesibility features possible in a normal DRE (though rarely implemented) like audio, braille, alternative input mechanisms. Currently, the only reasonable VVAT is a paper representation of the votes, so these voters may not be able to take advantage of the VVAT, but they are no further behind than they would be with DREs w/o a VVAT. If an acceptable, standardized electronic VVAT is produced (as hypothesized by the CalTech folks - requires that we be able to build 3rd party readers...), then the disabled could take advantage of the VVAT.
It is utterly offensive to suggest that able-bodied individuals with no perceptual or motor impairments ought to allow their vote to be corrupted for the sake of hypothetical accessibility improvements for a small percentage of the population when there are other ways of addressing these issues.
Some kinds of election fraud are still possible: A voter could conceivably cast several ballots in different ridings by establishing a fake address for each vote. An extremely dextrous and courageous counter might, as you suggest, be able to add or remove some small number of ballots (the process would be similar to a Vegas dealer stealing chips).
Both of these methods have 2 problems. One, the perpetrator must be physically present at the polling place (and in the case of the first method, some large number of polling places throughout the day) and has a very high risk of immediate detection and apprehension, and two, only very small skims could occur. With the first example, a single person could practically introduce an error of 1 ballot per polling station (approx 1000-5000 votes). With the second example, a counter could introduce an error of 2-4 votes per poll (approx 200-500 votes) at a _very_ high risk of being caught, in a locked room, surrounded by candidates' reps in close proximity with a vested interest in ensuring that he doesn't get away with the scheme.
Under an electronic system, one person could change 250 million ballots... allow a company like Diebold to conceal any evidence of election fraud simply by arguing that their code is protected And even with source code being provided, evidence could be concealed until well after the damage was done. Thought exercise: How damaging would it be to now find incontrovertible evidence that the 2000 Presidential election was rigged and would have gone to Gore were it not for the rigging (Regardless of whether the perpetrator could be caught and punished)? What's more, the individual perpetrator may not be able to be conclusively identified merely from forensic audits of the source code. Compare this to the cheater who drives from poll to poll. If he is caught doing this, it happens at the poll, on election day, and it is clear who did the deed. The same holds for the dishonest counter. The dishonest programmer is either lounging on the beach in the Caymans, or planted enough evidence to hose one of his colleagues.
Pencil can be erased and changed. Rather difficult to do under the watchful eyes of candidates' representatives and other poll clerks / returning officers.
There might be problems with what is crossed out, especially in the case where somebody thought they were wrong, crossed something out and then realized it was right anyway Allow the voter to receive another ballot.
If we give them another ballot, it might be a problem to keep track of who has had how many. Simple algorithm. Voter asks for new ballot. if name is crossed out { ask for spoiled ballot; mark ballot as spoiled across its face; place spoiled ballot in envelope marked "spoiled ballots"; provide new ballot;} else { cross name out; provide new ballot;}
it leaves the possibility open of the election officials submitting those multiple ballots See above. Spoiled ballots clearly marked as such, whole procedure conducted in the open. Counts conducted at the polling place.
How many extra ballots do we assume we'll need beyond the number of people registered to vote in this precinct for mistakes While not necessarily representative, these numbers match my experience. In Alberta's most recent provincial general election, there was a spoil rate (ballots returned, not placed in box, elector given another ballot) around 0.05%
Relying on the voter to police the election official... is a dangerous policy because it assumes people know to enforce that and that they will actually do it even if they do know Indeed. But if the entire process is open, with candidates' representatives (whose interests are diamtetrically opposed), we can rely on the candidates' reps to do their jobs.
Election results could be in and tallied the minute the polls closed in a precinct and the final results could be known the minute the last poll closed. Of course in practice this does not occur. That said, would you not sacrifice half an hour to an hour to count votes if it meant you could be assured the votes would be counted correctly. That's about how long it takes to count the votes at the polling stations in Canada. Vote counting paralellizes and scales well.
And in fact, there is no ambiguity there when that ballot is evaluated in the legislative context it's used in. Under the Canada Elections Act, such a marked ballot would indeed be void.
Where there are problems is where the subjective standard of intent is in the statute governing the election - like, say, Florida, where the standard _was_ intent.
"List #1- The Felon list that a 1998 Florida statute required the state to compile. This was a list of possible felons (including people names similar to convicted felons)."
This was a list where the match criteria between the list of felons and the voting rolls were hideously inadequate, requiring only 3 points of coincidence between records to be considered a match, discarding middle names, discarding titles (Jr., Sr., etc.). The list lacked social security numbers, and relied on items that cannot reliably establish a match. The list was later (after the election) found to have a 95% false-positive proportion. What's more, the list also used race as a match criteria. Since the list of felons contained a significantly higher percentage of blacks than the general population, this magnified the effect of false-positives on non-felon black voters.
"The intent of this list was to get as many possible matches as they could, but being on this list DID NOT mean you were prevented from voting. This list was then forwarded to the individual county elections supervisors, and they were required to verify the names as actual convicted felons BEFORE any action was taken."
They were advised to verify the names prior to the election, but in some cases they were given less than 60 days to do so. Only 2 counties in Florida actually followed up and performed this verification. Most simply scrubbed the list. What's more, Florida does not allow for provisional ballots that would allow disputed votes to be cast, and held in escrow until the dispute was resolved.
"List #2- The actual voter registration. Only people on the felon list that were verified by the individual counties as actual felons were removed from this list, and even then they were given 30 days written notice with a process to appeal."
This is, in fact untrue. Notice was given in some counties, but not in all. Details of an appeal process were not provided in the notices in many counties. Some counties lacked an appeal process. The appeal process was not consistent across those counties that did have one.
"An Jeb Bush had absolutely nothing to do with this."
But Jeb Bush _did_ direct the illegal disenfranchisement by refusing registration of convicted felons who had their rights restored in other states prior to moving to Florida. Bush was aware of Supreme Court decisions that directed him to allow the registration of any convicted felon from another state who had had his rights restored by his state of origin prior to moving to Florida.
"And the firm that compiled the list (DBT) was contracted by a democrat named Ethel Baxtor."
And the details of the contract were changed by Harris, directing DBT not to bother with confirmation of the status of these people by phone call or other methods. Moreover Harris dictated the match criteria, and dictated the loosening of the match criteria.
"Do you honestly think that #1, diebold is going to rig the election for Republicans, and #2, the CEO would publically announce his intentions to rig the election for the Republicans 2 years before the election?"
Do you honestly think that we should accept a lack of independance and impartiality from people and companies to whom we entrust our elections?
Which is why absentee voting should go back to requiring you to demonstrate cause for mail-in ballots (travelling out of country for an extended period, in the military overseas,...). If you can't make it on election day, you ought to be able to make it to in-precinct early voting.
And Canada uses the counterfoil system as well, on ballots where you mark an X in the circle beside the candidate you want... - plus the ballot is initialled by the poll-clerk before he hands it to you.
Great. Now you are able to prove vote. Which means you can be extorted into proving your vote.
How about a system where interested observers with oppositional interests in the outcome of the election (we'll call them scrutineers) observe the entire conduct of an election.
Let's say that this system starts with a solid box with a hole cut in the top just large enough to allow the insertion of pieces of paper (that we'll call ballots), but so small that these pieces of paper cannot be removed through the hole. (we'll call it a ballot box). Before voting starts, the top of the box is removed, the aforementioned "scrutineers" observe and confirm that the "ballot box is empty". The top is replaced, and sealed with a serial numbered metal seal in such a way that the top may not be removed without it being readily obvious.
Let's say that as voting occurs, this "ballot box" remains visible to all of the "scrutineers." Each voter receives a "ballot" from a poll-worker, marks the ballot in private, and then deposits that one ballot in the "ballot box." The voter can see that his intent as marked on the ballot is non-ambiguous. The "scrutineers" can see that only voters inserted ballots, and that nobody removed ballots.
Let's say that when voting closes, the doors to the polling place are locked, the "scrutineers" and the poll-workers sit down at a table with the "ballot box." All present confirm that the seal on the "ballot box" has not been tampered with. The box is opened and all ballots inside the "ballot box" are placed on the table in plain view of all present. All present confirm that the "ballot box" is empty, and the "ballot box" is set aside temporarily. The "ballots" are now counted with the participation and observation of the "scrutineers." The final tallies are recorded on a prescribed sheet of paper. One copy of this sheet is provided to each scrutineer, and the original is taken by a poll-worker to the returning officer. The original "ballots" are sealed in an envelope, which is signed across the flap by each scrutineer and the poll-worker, and this envelope is then sealed in the "ballot box", and returned to the returning officer.
So: - The voter is assured that his unambiguously marked ballot made it into the ballot box. - The poll-workers and "scrutineers" are assured that there were no ballots in the ballot box prior to the election. - The poll-workers and "scrutineers" are assured that no ballots were removed from the box during the election or before the count. - The poll-workers and "scrutineers" are assured that only ballots from voters were added to the ballot box during the election or before the count. - The poll-workers and "scrutineers" are assured that all ballots that were placed in the ballot box were counted.
I haven't seen any of the proposed systems that would allow voters to prove their vote. The voter verified audit trail proposed by Dr. Mercuri requires that the "receipt" that is produced by the machine can be reviewed by the voter, but must then be deposited into a sealed box (like a ballot box) to serve as an audit check.
Slashdot Mirror
Their upgrade path has never really been driven by their OS features, though. Normal people don't buy a new computer because Windows XXX has new features X, Y and Z. They buy a new computer because a new game is released that is tied to the new OS. They buy a new computer because business application vendors (including Microsoft) drop support for old versions of their software, and tie new versions to the new OS.
You know what? Your argument about "running [xxx] just fine. Not even slow" was around when XP came out (in addition to "it'll break compatibility with everything I already have"). It was around when 2000, Win ME, 98 and even 95 were released. It doesn't appear to have significantly impaired the uptake of those products (what impaired the uptake of 2k was the prospect of XP on the horizon).
New PC sales are still increasing year over year (both consumer and commercial). The rate of growth of new PC sales is decreasing, particularly in the U.S., but the market is still growing.
Why *do* so many people seem to have this base-level objection to paying for recording music?
I object to paying for duplications of recorded music (which is what is being sold) because they have next to no intrinsic value.
Copyright law has the effect of creating an artificial business model. It allows duplicators (the record labels) to create a tie between the creative process (which has intrinsic value due to scarcity) and the duplicates of the product of that process (which have next to no intrinsic value because of practically zero marginal cost). Exclusively because of the force of the state, the duplicators can then extort a price for their (next-to) zero-value product. This creates a fundamentally distorted market.
Not only is this distorted market bad for consumers, it is bad for artists as well. While their process is the only thing with intrinsic value in the system, the business model turns things on their head. The creative process is a cost-centre, not a revenue-centre in this model. New development is only funded insofar as it can increase the artificially-tied duplication business. This results in the lack of diversity apparent in the industry now. What is more, because the current artificial business-model is vastly lucrative (for the duplicators) and artists are locked in usurious contracts with the duplicators, development, discussion and examination of alternative natural business models are stifled.
What (natural) business models have worked for funding the creative process in the past? Certainly, patronage has a history, though it seems that the connection between those that benefit from the process and those that pay for the process is tenuous at best. It seems that society at large benefits from the creative process, so perhaps the search for a business model should start there. I am not suggesting the formation of a business model based on state support here - the state serves as a weak proxy for society at large... hmmm... any thoughts?
Firstly that is a very arrogant approach, some of the best developers in the world work on open source stuff, saying it is to hard is just stupid.
Or maybe it's just code for "We haven't got documentation for this stuff, and rely on the collective experience of our developers over generations of the product to keep writing drivers. Driver writing is not a revenue center but a cost center for us, and in order to contain costs, we're not going to make the upfront investment required to throw our developers at documenting this stuff to the point where we won't be embarassed."
Intellectual property issues like cross-patent licensing and 3rd party code could be addressed relatively cheaply when compared to addressing systematic deficiencies in documentation and code style. Such an effort would turn the cost structure of a hardware company on its head.
Yes, they would ultimately experience an advantage from having unpaid volunteers improving their code. However, in order for those volunteers to improve the stuff, the stuff's already got to be in good shape anyway.
Elections are complicated, even the simple things can get really broken. Again, another example, here in central ohio, polling stations which served a lot of people (the inner city ones) ended up with a severe shortage of voting machines. This is a really easy oversight to fix (which is why there were so many accusations of rigging), but it still went drastically drastically wrong.
Referring to this as an oversight is tremendously rich, given that the County elections boards and the Secretary of State's offices were advised of this potential problem repeatedly prior to the election and took no action to correct it. Furthermore all of the precincts affected by this problem happened to be precincts that voted for the opponent of the candidate for whom the highest ranking state elections official (Sec of State) held the position of co-chair of re-election campaign.
BTW, in Canada, we generally discourage elections officials (with the weight of the law) the practice of engaging in partisan activities (like, say, acting as co-chair of the election campaign of one of the candidates in the election you are running).
However, if voting fraud is an issue, it will not be a small margin. It is doubtful that someone will try to fraud for only a couple of votes
Then clearly, you underestimate the skills and resources of your adversary. It is precisely small margins that are concerning. Remember, a small margin of votes can be changed in a close race without producing statistically significant differences from polling (and exit-polling) to raise suspicion. Such small changes, well placed, can have a significant effect on the overall race.
If you think that people do not have the skill to predict where small vote count frauds will make a difference, you need to visit the "gerrymandering" page on wikipedia, particularly the "Gerrymandering computer technology" heading.
1. Open source. We need to be able to trust these systems and how can we do that without being able to examine the code behind them?
Indeed, I concur
2. Paper records kept for the government. Just in case there is a trust issue, this is a backup method for the recount.
So long as these records contain a human readable indication of an individual voter's intent, and were verified by the voter at vote-time.
3. Paper records for the voter. Worst case, every voter has a copy of their own vote. Hard to use for a recount, but could help identify irregularities.
Absolutely, uncategorically, under no circumstances. Proof of vote makes wholesale coercion, vote-buying and vote-selling methods practical.
Ummm... The returns do come in fast... The last election, we knew who our prime minister was going to be before the polls closed on the West Coast. Hand counted paper ballots are a highly scalable solution because counting is highly parallelizable. You don't have one team counting 200 million ballots...
"I say that because this is the first incident ever being reported where an SSL cert was obtained illegitimately."
What makes you say that the SSL cert was obtained illegitimately? The holder of the cert was the legitimate owner of the domain in the CN. The Organization name in the cert does not match any registered trademark, is not confusingly similar to any registered trademark, and is not confusingly similar to any non-trademarked name of a major institution.
And what would you do with options that don't have a dilutive effect (those executed with treasury stock rather than issuing new stock for ex.)?
Whereas in the US voters are voting for people to represent them, and NUMEROUS referendum items. Canadian votes can be tallied quickly because we have so little to add up. Even using the Canadian system US votes would still take a MUCH longer time to tally.
Manual vote tallying is highly parallelizable. Presumably, if there are a large number of races on a ballot, there are individuals with an interest in each of those races - so there should be people willing to act as scrutineers for those races. If the races were presented on separate ballots, the race for State Senator could be counted by one group of people, while the race for dog catcher could be counted by another.
The problem is, in many jurisdiction, the manufacturers appear to effectively run the elections, not the elections officials. The elections officials lack the knowledge of process or system to be able to challenge the manufacturers or properly and fully understand the current electoral system.
Look here for concerns on Nedap
It is utterly offensive to suggest that able-bodied individuals with no perceptual or motor impairments ought to allow their vote to be corrupted for the sake of hypothetical accessibility improvements for a small percentage of the population when there are other ways of addressing these issues.
Some kinds of election fraud are still possible: A voter could conceivably cast several ballots in different ridings by establishing a fake address for each vote. An extremely dextrous and courageous counter might, as you suggest, be able to add or remove some small number of ballots (the process would be similar to a Vegas dealer stealing chips).
Both of these methods have 2 problems. One, the perpetrator must be physically present at the polling place (and in the case of the first method, some large number of polling places throughout the day) and has a very high risk of immediate detection and apprehension, and two, only very small skims could occur. With the first example, a single person could practically introduce an error of 1 ballot per polling station (approx 1000-5000 votes). With the second example, a counter could introduce an error of 2-4 votes per poll (approx 200-500 votes) at a _very_ high risk of being caught, in a locked room, surrounded by candidates' reps in close proximity with a vested interest in ensuring that he doesn't get away with the scheme.
Under an electronic system, one person could change 250 million ballots... allow a company like Diebold to conceal any evidence of election fraud simply by arguing that their code is protected And even with source code being provided, evidence could be concealed until well after the damage was done. Thought exercise: How damaging would it be to now find incontrovertible evidence that the 2000 Presidential election was rigged and would have gone to Gore were it not for the rigging (Regardless of whether the perpetrator could be caught and punished)? What's more, the individual perpetrator may not be able to be conclusively identified merely from forensic audits of the source code. Compare this to the cheater who drives from poll to poll. If he is caught doing this, it happens at the poll, on election day, and it is clear who did the deed. The same holds for the dishonest counter. The dishonest programmer is either lounging on the beach in the Caymans, or planted enough evidence to hose one of his colleagues.
And in fact, there is no ambiguity there when that ballot is evaluated in the legislative context it's used in. Under the Canada Elections Act, such a marked ballot would indeed be void.
Where there are problems is where the subjective standard of intent is in the statute governing the election - like, say, Florida, where the standard _was_ intent.
Really? How would you go about marking this ballot so there would be ambiguity and some sort of dispute over who you voted for?
"List #1- The Felon list that a 1998 Florida statute required the state to compile. This was a list of possible felons (including people names similar to convicted felons)."
This was a list where the match criteria between the list of felons and the voting rolls were hideously inadequate, requiring only 3 points of coincidence between records to be considered a match, discarding middle names, discarding titles (Jr., Sr., etc.). The list lacked social security numbers, and relied on items that cannot reliably establish a match. The list was later (after the election) found to have a 95% false-positive proportion. What's more, the list also used race as a match criteria. Since the list of felons contained a significantly higher percentage of blacks than the general population, this magnified the effect of false-positives on non-felon black voters.
"The intent of this list was to get as many possible matches as they could, but being on this list DID NOT mean you were prevented from voting. This list was then forwarded to the individual county elections supervisors, and they were required to verify the names as actual convicted felons BEFORE any action was taken."
They were advised to verify the names prior to the election, but in some cases they were given less than 60 days to do so. Only 2 counties in Florida actually followed up and performed this verification. Most simply scrubbed the list. What's more, Florida does not allow for provisional ballots that would allow disputed votes to be cast, and held in escrow until the dispute was resolved.
"List #2- The actual voter registration. Only people on the felon list that were verified by the individual counties as actual felons were removed from this list, and even then they were given 30 days written notice with a process to appeal."
This is, in fact untrue. Notice was given in some counties, but not in all. Details of an appeal process were not provided in the notices in many counties. Some counties lacked an appeal process. The appeal process was not consistent across those counties that did have one.
"An Jeb Bush had absolutely nothing to do with this."
But Jeb Bush _did_ direct the illegal disenfranchisement by refusing registration of convicted felons who had their rights restored in other states prior to moving to Florida. Bush was aware of Supreme Court decisions that directed him to allow the registration of any convicted felon from another state who had had his rights restored by his state of origin prior to moving to Florida.
"And the firm that compiled the list (DBT) was contracted by a democrat named Ethel Baxtor."
And the details of the contract were changed by Harris, directing DBT not to bother with confirmation of the status of these people by phone call or other methods. Moreover Harris dictated the match criteria, and dictated the loosening of the match criteria.
"Do you honestly think that #1, diebold is going to rig the election for Republicans, and #2, the CEO would publically announce his intentions to rig the election for the Republicans 2 years before the election?"
Do you honestly think that we should accept a lack of independance and impartiality from people and companies to whom we entrust our elections?
Which is why absentee voting should go back to requiring you to demonstrate cause for mail-in ballots (travelling out of country for an extended period, in the military overseas,...). If you can't make it on election day, you ought to be able to make it to in-precinct early voting.
And Canada uses the counterfoil system as well, on ballots where you mark an X in the circle beside the candidate you want... - plus the ballot is initialled by the poll-clerk before he hands it to you.
Great. Now you are able to prove vote. Which means you can be extorted into proving your vote.
How about a system where interested observers with oppositional interests in the outcome of the election (we'll call them scrutineers) observe the entire conduct of an election.
Let's say that this system starts with a solid box with a hole cut in the top just large enough to allow the insertion of pieces of paper (that we'll call ballots), but so small that these pieces of paper cannot be removed through the hole. (we'll call it a ballot box). Before voting starts, the top of the box is removed, the aforementioned "scrutineers" observe and confirm that the "ballot box is empty". The top is replaced, and sealed with a serial numbered metal seal in such a way that the top may not be removed without it being readily obvious.
Let's say that as voting occurs, this "ballot box" remains visible to all of the "scrutineers." Each voter receives a "ballot" from a poll-worker, marks the ballot in private, and then deposits that one ballot in the "ballot box." The voter can see that his intent as marked on the ballot is non-ambiguous. The "scrutineers" can see that only voters inserted ballots, and that nobody removed ballots.
Let's say that when voting closes, the doors to the polling place are locked, the "scrutineers" and the poll-workers sit down at a table with the "ballot box." All present confirm that the seal on the "ballot box" has not been tampered with. The box is opened and all ballots inside the "ballot box" are placed on the table in plain view of all present. All present confirm that the "ballot box" is empty, and the "ballot box" is set aside temporarily. The "ballots" are now counted with the participation and observation of the "scrutineers." The final tallies are recorded on a prescribed sheet of paper. One copy of this sheet is provided to each scrutineer, and the original is taken by a poll-worker to the returning officer. The original "ballots" are sealed in an envelope, which is signed across the flap by each scrutineer and the poll-worker, and this envelope is then sealed in the "ballot box", and returned to the returning officer.
So:
- The voter is assured that his unambiguously marked ballot made it into the ballot box.
- The poll-workers and "scrutineers" are assured that there were no ballots in the ballot box prior to the election.
- The poll-workers and "scrutineers" are assured that no ballots were removed from the box during the election or before the count.
- The poll-workers and "scrutineers" are assured that only ballots from voters were added to the ballot box during the election or before the count.
- The poll-workers and "scrutineers" are assured that all ballots that were placed in the ballot box were counted.
I haven't seen any of the proposed systems that would allow voters to prove their vote. The voter verified audit trail proposed by Dr. Mercuri requires that the "receipt" that is produced by the machine can be reviewed by the voter, but must then be deposited into a sealed box (like a ballot box) to serve as an audit check.
If you know about it, and continue to drive it, and it injures someone, then yes, it's your fault.
Fine. Then hire somebody.
You don't drive a dangerous vehicle because you don't know how to change the brakes, do you?
I disagree with the proposal, but this is definitely not the right reason.