I disagree, while I like many of electoral-vote.com's procedures, he still falls victem to a basic misunderstanding of statistics. The vote master (what he calls himself) and pretty much every news article I have read regarding polls always refer to spreads withing hte margin of error as "statistical ties", "dead-heats", or other such verbage. Such conclusions are not supported by statistical theoryHere is a good write-up on the definition of margin of error. Basicly, if two candidates' poll numbers are within the margin of error but (just barely), then in fact there is a statistical procedure to quantify what the probability is that one poll result is indeed higher than the other. The poll results are actually a mean and each has an associated distribution which is governed by the number of samples. Margin of error is defined as the range that the true mean could lie with either a 90, 95, or 99 percent probability (I think most use a 95 percent confidence interval). Anyway, the only case where you really can't get an (useful) information from the results is when both candidates have the same mean results.
Lets try an example: lets assume that Kerry has 46% and Bush has 42% and there is a 4% margin of error. Lets further assume that margin of error was based on a 95% confidence interval. This means that there is a 95% chance that the true Kerry mean lies between 42-50% and a 5% chance that it lies outside that range. More importantly, assuming normal distribution we know that there is a 50% cance that Kerry's true mean is greater than 46%, whereas Bush has only a 2.5% chance of being greater than 46% (since that would be outside his 95% confidence interval defined margin of error). That right there should tell you that in this case, Kerry would have a greater than 50% probability that he was leading - certainly not a "statistical tie".
Not only is it irrelevant... it makes sense. Bush and Kerry are actually related. Here is their family tree... they are Ninth cousins twice removed! I wonder where the "Bush Relatives" who support Kerry fall into the mix... are they also Kerry relatives???
I personally do have a problem with rural voters having more voting power than urban voters. It isn't a perfect system... but I have an even bigger problem giving the simple majority tyrannical absolute power. The framers were very smart... they created the Senate and the Electoral Collegeand the ammendment process very deliberately to so that our government would be more stable than it was efficient.
I am glad Discover decided to re-run this story again this year...
I think an even better option is if every state did a split up of its electora votes in the way that Main does and Colorado is considering.
I think that is even worse of an idea... work through this: Colorado has 9 electoral votes. If the current bill passes, they will split them proportionately. In a close race, the electoral votes will split 5-4. What candidate in his right mind would spend one second in a state that only nets him/her one net vote.
Now if every state did it, then we may as well just have a popular vote, candidates will simply pander to the high vote-density population centers.
I happen to really like the electoral college; what I don't like is the way the states have implemented it such that third parties have no chance of ever putting a dent in the process (Ross Perot received 20% of the popular vote in 1992 but still received ZERO electoral votes). I favor something in between winner take all, and a proportional system, perhaps a system that rewards *most* of the votes to the majority winner, but a smaller but proportional amount to the lesser candidates.
Democrats hate the Republicans, the Republicans hate the Democrats, the Sunnis, Shiites, and Al Qaeda members in Iraq hate the American occupiers, America hates France, the whole world hates America... listen
Right... and before Bush was elected, we all loved each other.
Of course it bothers me - but I am realistic and know that even with a perfect process, mistakes will be made. The main thrust of my argument was that 22,000 was way too high a number (IMHO it is probably between 1-2 thousand - most of whom probably would not have voted anyway. The cited reference claims that voter turn out for the wrongly listed would have been 80% - that is ridiculous when the national average is something like 55%). My secondary argument was that nearly all of the analysis of voter fraud has focused on taking votes away from Republicans while much of the same analysis could easily show that Republicans were equally disenfranchised (although I never really backed up this point like I wanted to, there just isn't much data to go on because - well, no one talks about it.)
The list of "felons" to scrub was given to Harris by private contractor ChoicePoint whose ties with the GOP are, shall we say, strong.
I've heard lots of accusations of Harris disenfranchising, etc... but never that ChoicePoint had "close ties to the GOP". You cite Greg Palast. Could you find a less biased source? Noam Chomsky Perhaps?
All sorts of deliberate errors were made in the scrubbing process, costing Gore a minimum 22 000 votes on election day 2000.
You obviously pulled these numbers from some reference (probably Palast's work) and didn't even bother to see if they make sense. Since you didn't cite any web references, I will use this Wikipedia entry as my source. Let go through the various "disenfranchisement" claims.
From the article, 57,700 "felons" were struck from the voter list. These people were all contacted (although I assume it is reasonable that many of these people were not reached), of which 4,874 appealed. Of the 4,874 appeals, 2,430 were re-instated. Now, lacking an additional info, I assume that someone compared these two numbers, and figured that 50% of the listed names were incorrect, where in reality, it is only 50% of those on the list who came forward to dispute the error. Granted, anyone being denied a vote is tragic, but 2,430 (all of whom were reinstated) is a far cry from 22,000. Why didn't the other 53,000 people on the list appeal? More likely, most didn't appeal because outside of the 2,430, nearly all were convicted felons. Which brings us to...List Demographics:
Voter demographics authority David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC, reviewed The Nation's findings and concluded that the purge-and-block program was "a patently obvious technique to discriminate against black voters." He noted that based on nationwide conviction rates, African-Americans would account for 46% of the ex-felon group wrongly disfranchised.
Breakdown of the distribution for 3 major counties:
Miami-Dade, 20% voters are Black, 66% names on list were Black (3,794)
Leon County, 29% voters are Black, 55% names on list were Black
None of the names on the list were Hispanic.
First off, David Bositis is expecting a 46% rate of black names on the ex-felon group list. What is his criteria? national averages. African Americans comprise 12.6% of the US population, but make up 46% of the ex-felon group (according to Bositis). Florida has slightly more aftican-americans than the national average at 14.6%. Lets look at Miami-Dade and Leon counties that the Bositis cites: Both counties have significantly higher (about double) the national average of African-Americans. Wouldn't it make some sense that the they would appear on the felon list with greater frequency than the national African-American breakdown of ex-felons? (46%)
Now lets go after that last bullet: None of the names on the list were Hispanic. Greg Palast has this screenshot on his website of a segment of the list. (Ignore for the moment that he apparently uses Windows, AOL, and has 16 non-standard icons in his system tray.) While I don't dispute that ChoicePoint used poor methods to determine matches, what else can we glean from the spreadsheet? For one thing, there are no "Hispanics" in the race column, despite there being two names that appear to be hispanic in origin. One is listed as unknown, and one as white. So, the argument that "hispanics have been removed because they tend to vote Republican" is probably bunk. Much more l
Actually, as far as Field of Regard goes (Field of view is a measure of how much you can see looking through the sensor...) there is very little difference between a telescope in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and one on the Earth's surface. In both cases, the Earth blocks out about 2/3 of the viewable universe. Being 600 km above the surface of an object that is 12600 km in diameter doesn't help too much. However, Hubble of course moves through its orbit many times over one Earth day, so what its FOR changes pretty rapidy - this can be both good and bad... for instance if you are trying to take a very long exposure...
I'm actually in the process of doing the same thing... probably will go with a MythTV rig. However, I doubt that I will wire my bedroom with a MythTV rig as well,... so $69US sounds like a good compromise... if there is something I really want to watch in our bedroom (*wink*) I can just burn it and watch it on the Philips DVD player.
You didn't look very hard. I bought this one at target today for $69. Early verdict... neat but I can hear the disc spinning which is annoying... stay tuned.
Ok, I'll play antagonist... first off, what on earth does this have to do with Bush? The issue here is the police response to protestors. Unless you believe that Bush peronally gave the order via the chief of police to shoot the protestors, you are just trolling.
On the subject of fascism: you sir have lost all sense of perspective. I suggest you jump into a time machine and visit 1930's Germany. While there, go to a Nazi rally and pull out your sign that says "Hitler is a war criminal" and see what happens. That is fascism.
In this case, police used non-lethal means to break up a crowd that was confronting the riot police. They didn't open fire with lethal ammo, beat the crap out people with their nightsticks and they didn't use tear gas. The article is poorly written so I really have no idea what really happened on that street, but it does say that after being told to disperse, the riot-gear police were trying to move the protestors when the protestors started shoving the police. Were the police heavy-handed? Probably - but last I checked there wasn't a constitutional right to pushing police officers.
Why the f*ck do we keep hearing these stories? These are not people being arrested on the street corner protesting in public. These protesters are showing up to a private event with the specific intent to make the Bush look bad and/or draw attention to some cause other than the campaign event. Regardless of whether or not they have tickets, once they pull-on their shirts or raise their sign or whatever, they are understandably unwelcome, and asked to leave. Is it heavy-handed to threaten them with arrest as well? IMHO, yes,... but it is still within the rights of the event planners to set the rules for showing up at "their" event.
It says to make sure that the media reports on the past unethical activities so that people are both watching out for it and aware of their rights as voters.
There is no "winner-take-all" system that has anything to do with the electoral college. The electoral college as specified in the constitution is an excellent tool that preserves states rights and sovereignty. Unfortunately, most states have chosen to award their EC delegates in a winner-take-all fashion, which is their perogative. So your problem is with the state legislatures, not the EC itself.
When will the US stop trying to "declare war" on abstract concepts like "terrorism," "drugs" and "intellectual property theft"? (Recent) history has shown that things like this just do not work.
So would you say you are declaring war on the concept of declaring wars on abstract concepts?
The Mars society has conducted similar research during theseexperiments although the Mars society research focuses less on duration and psycological effects and more on requirements analysis. (i.e. not can we survive, but what will it take to survive and accomplish useful science.
As if we needed more proof that the moderators moderate based on personal views and not content of discussion.
I simply provided a possible answer to the man's question... clearly noting that it was pure speculation as well as the dubiousness of the source. But I guess the moderators didn't want anyone followng my link.
I don't know why I bother replying to this, since your anti-Kerry post will be moderated into oblivion but here is speculation as to why he won't sign the form 180. Granted, it is from a conservative publication, but there seem to be lots of good names and dates that someone more motivated than myself can follow up on. The implication is that Kerry originally received an "other than honerable" discharge from the Navy, which was later changed to "Honorable" during the Carter administration in conjunction with his pardon of draft dodgers and war protestors. Is this going to be the GOP's "October Surprise?"
Right... as oppposed to Kerry who didn't answer the question and instead just said that leaders need to own up when they make a mistake, and Nader, who changed his mind about eating Hot Dogs.
Slashdot Mirror
Lets try an example: lets assume that Kerry has 46% and Bush has 42% and there is a 4% margin of error. Lets further assume that margin of error was based on a 95% confidence interval. This means that there is a 95% chance that the true Kerry mean lies between 42-50% and a 5% chance that it lies outside that range. More importantly, assuming normal distribution we know that there is a 50% cance that Kerry's true mean is greater than 46%, whereas Bush has only a 2.5% chance of being greater than 46% (since that would be outside his 95% confidence interval defined margin of error). That right there should tell you that in this case, Kerry would have a greater than 50% probability that he was leading - certainly not a "statistical tie".
Not only is it irrelevant... it makes sense. Bush and Kerry are actually related. Here is their family tree... they are Ninth cousins twice removed! I wonder where the "Bush Relatives" who support Kerry fall into the mix... are they also Kerry relatives???
I think this innovative website already broke the story two days ago.
I am glad Discover decided to re-run this story again this year...
I think that is even worse of an idea... work through this: Colorado has 9 electoral votes. If the current bill passes, they will split them proportionately. In a close race, the electoral votes will split 5-4. What candidate in his right mind would spend one second in a state that only nets him/her one net vote.
Now if every state did it, then we may as well just have a popular vote, candidates will simply pander to the high vote-density population centers.
I happen to really like the electoral college; what I don't like is the way the states have implemented it such that third parties have no chance of ever putting a dent in the process (Ross Perot received 20% of the popular vote in 1992 but still received ZERO electoral votes). I favor something in between winner take all, and a proportional system, perhaps a system that rewards *most* of the votes to the majority winner, but a smaller but proportional amount to the lesser candidates.
Right... and before Bush was elected, we all loved each other.
Of course it bothers me - but I am realistic and know that even with a perfect process, mistakes will be made. The main thrust of my argument was that 22,000 was way too high a number (IMHO it is probably between 1-2 thousand - most of whom probably would not have voted anyway. The cited reference claims that voter turn out for the wrongly listed would have been 80% - that is ridiculous when the national average is something like 55%). My secondary argument was that nearly all of the analysis of voter fraud has focused on taking votes away from Republicans while much of the same analysis could easily show that Republicans were equally disenfranchised (although I never really backed up this point like I wanted to, there just isn't much data to go on because - well, no one talks about it.)
I've heard lots of accusations of Harris disenfranchising, etc... but never that ChoicePoint had "close ties to the GOP". You cite Greg Palast. Could you find a less biased source? Noam Chomsky Perhaps?
All sorts of deliberate errors were made in the scrubbing process, costing Gore a minimum 22 000 votes on election day 2000.
You obviously pulled these numbers from some reference (probably Palast's work) and didn't even bother to see if they make sense. Since you didn't cite any web references, I will use this Wikipedia entry as my source. Let go through the various "disenfranchisement" claims.
From the article, 57,700 "felons" were struck from the voter list. These people were all contacted (although I assume it is reasonable that many of these people were not reached), of which 4,874 appealed. Of the 4,874 appeals, 2,430 were re-instated. Now, lacking an additional info, I assume that someone compared these two numbers, and figured that 50% of the listed names were incorrect, where in reality, it is only 50% of those on the list who came forward to dispute the error. Granted, anyone being denied a vote is tragic, but 2,430 (all of whom were reinstated) is a far cry from 22,000. Why didn't the other 53,000 people on the list appeal? More likely, most didn't appeal because outside of the 2,430, nearly all were convicted felons. Which brings us to ...List Demographics:
First off, David Bositis is expecting a 46% rate of black names on the ex-felon group list. What is his criteria? national averages. African Americans comprise 12.6% of the US population, but make up 46% of the ex-felon group (according to Bositis). Florida has slightly more aftican-americans than the national average at 14.6%. Lets look at Miami-Dade and Leon counties that the Bositis cites: Both counties have significantly higher (about double) the national average of African-Americans. Wouldn't it make some sense that the they would appear on the felon list with greater frequency than the national African-American breakdown of ex-felons? (46%)
Now lets go after that last bullet: None of the names on the list were Hispanic. Greg Palast has this screenshot on his website of a segment of the list. (Ignore for the moment that he apparently uses Windows, AOL, and has 16 non-standard icons in his system tray.) While I don't dispute that ChoicePoint used poor methods to determine matches, what else can we glean from the spreadsheet? For one thing, there are no "Hispanics" in the race column, despite there being two names that appear to be hispanic in origin. One is listed as unknown, and one as white. So, the argument that "hispanics have been removed because they tend to vote Republican" is probably bunk. Much more l
Actually, I hear Duke Nukem Forever will be powered by one of these...
Actually, as far as Field of Regard goes (Field of view is a measure of how much you can see looking through the sensor...) there is very little difference between a telescope in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and one on the Earth's surface. In both cases, the Earth blocks out about 2/3 of the viewable universe. Being 600 km above the surface of an object that is 12600 km in diameter doesn't help too much. However, Hubble of course moves through its orbit many times over one Earth day, so what its FOR changes pretty rapidy - this can be both good and bad... for instance if you are trying to take a very long exposure...
I'm actually in the process of doing the same thing... probably will go with a MythTV rig. However, I doubt that I will wire my bedroom with a MythTV rig as well,... so $69US sounds like a good compromise... if there is something I really want to watch in our bedroom (*wink*) I can just burn it and watch it on the Philips DVD player.
In other news, computers are cheaper and more powerful today than they were 20 years ago!
You didn't look very hard. I bought this one at target today for $69. Early verdict... neat but I can hear the disc spinning which is annoying... stay tuned.
Ok, I'll play antagonist... first off, what on earth does this have to do with Bush? The issue here is the police response to protestors. Unless you believe that Bush peronally gave the order via the chief of police to shoot the protestors, you are just trolling.
On the subject of fascism: you sir have lost all sense of perspective. I suggest you jump into a time machine and visit 1930's Germany. While there, go to a Nazi rally and pull out your sign that says "Hitler is a war criminal" and see what happens. That is fascism.
In this case, police used non-lethal means to break up a crowd that was confronting the riot police. They didn't open fire with lethal ammo, beat the crap out people with their nightsticks and they didn't use tear gas. The article is poorly written so I really have no idea what really happened on that street, but it does say that after being told to disperse, the riot-gear police were trying to move the protestors when the protestors started shoving the police. Were the police heavy-handed? Probably - but last I checked there wasn't a constitutional right to pushing police officers.
I call bullshit. When have you ever heard a cop use that language?
Why the f*ck do we keep hearing these stories? These are not people being arrested on the street corner protesting in public. These protesters are showing up to a private event with the specific intent to make the Bush look bad and/or draw attention to some cause other than the campaign event. Regardless of whether or not they have tickets, once they pull-on their shirts or raise their sign or whatever, they are understandably unwelcome, and asked to leave. Is it heavy-handed to threaten them with arrest as well? IMHO, yes,... but it is still within the rights of the event planners to set the rules for showing up at "their" event.
We have a name for that: Fearmongering.
There is no "winner-take-all" system that has anything to do with the electoral college. The electoral college as specified in the constitution is an excellent tool that preserves states rights and sovereignty. Unfortunately, most states have chosen to award their EC delegates in a winner-take-all fashion, which is their perogative. So your problem is with the state legislatures, not the EC itself.
Step Four: Profit!
All the more weird given speculation that the actress who played Alice is gay.
So would you say you are declaring war on the concept of declaring wars on abstract concepts?
The Mars society has conducted similar research during these experiments although the Mars society research focuses less on duration and psycological effects and more on requirements analysis. (i.e. not can we survive, but what will it take to survive and accomplish useful science.
I simply provided a possible answer to the man's question... clearly noting that it was pure speculation as well as the dubiousness of the source. But I guess the moderators didn't want anyone followng my link.
I don't know why I bother replying to this, since your anti-Kerry post will be moderated into oblivion but here is speculation as to why he won't sign the form 180. Granted, it is from a conservative publication, but there seem to be lots of good names and dates that someone more motivated than myself can follow up on. The implication is that Kerry originally received an "other than honerable" discharge from the Navy, which was later changed to "Honorable" during the Carter administration in conjunction with his pardon of draft dodgers and war protestors. Is this going to be the GOP's "October Surprise?"
Right... as oppposed to Kerry who didn't answer the question and instead just said that leaders need to own up when they make a mistake, and Nader, who changed his mind about eating Hot Dogs.