For starters - on a state-by-state basis (because the Presidential election is, after all, a series of 51 state elections), we must standardize both ballots and recount processes.
Ballots: For reasons which should be obvious to all. Whether the Palm Beach County ballot was "simple" or "confusing" appears to be a matter of whose party you support.
By standardizing the ballot, we could ensure that these allegations are no longer an issue, and that if a usability issue becomes a problem, at least the effects are uniform across the state.
(I'd argue that if we go to an electronic system, the order in which the candidates are presented should be randomized on a per-voter basis.)
Process: The more important issue to me would be standardizing the process whereby votes are counted or recounted.
This election is likely to turn on chad - bits of paper from punch cards that either fall out of the card or remain attached by a corner.
That's bad. But at least chad affects both candidates identically. Or does it?
Ballots Again: An election in which voters in heavily-FOO counties vote with #2B pencils, and voters in heavily-BAR counties punch cards (with attendant risk of "chad" not being counted by the counting machines) will skew the results for FOO.
Indeed, even if we use the same technology (say, "fill in the dot with the pencil"), but FOO-county voters use #2B pencils, and BAR-county voters use #2H (hard) pencils, the lighter markings produced by the "hard" pencils will lead to a higher "uncounted" rate, and a skew to candidate FOO.
Process Again:Because the Bush team screwed up and didn't demand a recount in heavily-Republican counties (and the deadline passed on Friday), and Gore was smart enough to demand a recount in four heavily-Democratic counties, votes in those four counties count more than votes in other counties.
(Which is to say that while the "old farts" in Palm Beach may have been "stupid" if they couldn't tell Gore from Buchanan, the Bush team made an even dumber mistake - effectively giving the election away because they didn't understand how the mechanical technologies of the voting machines affected the results. The "old farts" can be excused. The guys who are being paid millions to run a campaign can't;-)
But because our ballots aren't standard, it's possible that votes in heavily-Republican counties may not even have used a punch-card system. If that's the case, then votes in Republican counties count more (by about 0.001%), and Gore's just evening the score.
(Evidence: The fact that almost all counties show an "uptick", not a "downtick" in the number of votes cast, and that the hand recount in the four precincts last week showed a 33:14 advantage for Gore, in line with the ~2:1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans in that county.)
So because the laws call for recounts, but don't specify how the recount must be conducted on a statewide basis - it's up to each county to decide - both teams have the option of calling for recounts until they get the result they want, leading to a crisis of legitimacy (in the minds of the people, even if not in the eyes of the law) if the results differ.
Bottom line: How to make sure this never happens again.
If all voters in Florida used the same ballot and ballot-marking technology, there would be no controversy over whether "a misleading ballot in one county" could swing the result:
If all counties in Florida were required to use the same ballot-counting technology, there would be no controversy (the issue hasn't surfaced in the press, but it's clearly a possibility) over whether the counting technology could skew the results.
Finally, if all counties in Florida were required to use the same recounting technology, and agree to it in advance of the recount, we wouldn't be having the flurry of lawsuits we see today.
The voting technology, default counting process, and recounting process (including number of recounts) must be laid down in law, and must be laid down before the vote is taken.
(The reason for that should be obvious - it appears that old Republicans had no trouble with the Palm Beach County ballot, but old Democrats had trouble with it. It appears that Republicans think hand counts are a great idea in Texas, but fraught with inaccuracy in Florida. It appears that Democrats think that a machine recount is adequate for all counties in Florida except for the four most havily-Democratic ones.)
The only thing that's certain now is that all parties involved have lost sight of what's at issue - what constitutes a fair recount. "Fair" has ceased to be an issue of ensuring uniform error rates across the state and between candidates, and has been redefined by both sides as "that which may give our candidate the lead".
> The algae start
to disappear, and we have to send people to Mars now to find out why the
algae have disappeared.
Well, duh, if NASA sent the algae, it kinda goes without saying they'd disappear!
(I mean, I'm all for sending people to Mars, but really, couldn't we find a more interesting excuse than "oh crap, these are metric algae, not Imperial-measured algae!";-)
Most welcome -- but the props for the real work go to Turbo3, Las_Vegas, Prefect, and others on the BBS for the hacks -- I just implemented 'em and mangled a lot of bits with my digital camera;-)
I don't think the IO's are gonna end up in a landfill - even NPLI isn't talking about nuking the service altogether, and with the flash-updatability of the SanDisk, AT&T could very easily "upgrade" the units to any platform they desired, so even current non-hacker owners are likely to have an upgrade path should AT&T decide to continue the experiment.
Agreed. If NPLI had managed to partner with an ISP (AOL? Earthlink?) and co-brand (as opposed to "hiding" the ISP beneath the embedded system), they might have done really well. Let the ISP fund the costs of the hardware, and sell demographic data back to the ISP.
The built-in USB port also meant their unit was well-positioned for the cablemodem or DSL age.
I agree with you that they were ahead of their time. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
> WTF?! They're venture capitalists, part of the planet's ruling class. How can feel pity for some rich motherfuckers losing out on a gamble?
Umm, because those "rich motherfuckers" were the ones whose capital made it possible for me to get some really cool hardware, to say nothing of the jobs they created for those who worked at Netpliance while it was operating?
The IO (and the other network appliances) were neat ideas. Wrong ideas for 1999 and 2000, it turned out. Maybe a good idea some time in the future. Maybe not. But without rich motherfuckers to fund these ideas, we'll never know.
> its limited cpu and non-TFT screen made for a boring user experience.
The passive-matrix screen and 800x600 resolution are something that can't be fixed, but any IO can be hacked with a bit of solder to run a K6-III-333 at speeds up to 450 MHz.
There are serious heat and power supply limits at 450, but even a very conservative clocking of a K6-III-333 underclocked to 200 MHz is about a 2:1 performance boost over the original WinChip 200. Cost of the chip is $30 at Fry's (for those lucky enough to live near a Fry's.)
Hey, it plays MP3s and runs my GPS mapware. I'm happy, even if the GPSware is a Windoze app.
It's never gonna replace your desktop, and for the amount of time/money you'll put into it, you're better off buying a used laptop on EBay. But I had a hell of a lot more fun building my own line-out, headphone jack, second serial port, VGA-out connector, IDE connectors, hard drive mounts, cooling fans, and doing core voltage / CPU-upgrade mods with a soldering iron and a prayer than I ever woulda had with a used laptop.
Like I said in my other post - my thanks to NPLI for the cool hardware. I learned a lot and had a ball doing it.
Re:Thurmond for Prez!
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
> In 1948, Thurmond ran for president on the Dixiecrat ticket, on the platform of making sure Jim Crow laws remained in effect.
I'd like to think Thurmond and most folks his age have grown up since then. But thanks for pointing it out and reminding me that our history is not always a proud one.
Hey, it'll make Netpliance more than $99 per unit in revenue, right?;-)
More seriously - my condolences to the employees and investors - and gratitude for the cool hardware.
Before folks start screaming that 3v17 h@x0rZ killed NPLI, judging from their revenue figures and number of units sold, I'd bet that the "hackers" snagged about 5000 units, costing about $1.5M over the history of the company - a drop in the bucket against the $10M+ marketing and G&A expenses for the most recent quarter.
The way to make money off the 'net is not to sell hardware as a loss-leader, nor is it to get into the $20/month ISP business.
That's not to say anyone really knows what the way to make money is, just to say that NPLI and others (e.g. Virgin's "internet appliance" operation folded a few days ago) found out the hard way what it wasn't, and that no amount of marketing expense can change it.
ABC's Cokie Roberts: If Electoral College deadlocks and House and Senate cannot decide on a president and vice president, Speaker Dennis Hastert is
likely to refuse the acting presidency, making Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) acting president
Given the number of years he's served in the Senate without being Prez, I say give it to him.
It beats the hell out of a gold watch for retirement!;-)
> My dearest hope is that the recount will favor Gore, so we can see the two parties (and hundreds of Slashdotters!) swap sides [ and backpedal like hell! ]
*ROFLMAO*
Y'know, despite my preference for Bush during the election, I'd be happy with a Gore win (in the recount, that is!) for precisely that same reason.
The political reality is that neither candidate has a mandate to carry out his campaign agenda, so it doesn't matter who wins in terms of future legislation... and the entertainment value of the backpedalling would be enormous!
The interesting thing - with one county and ~200 votes spread, and many counties having spreads over 200 votes - we may not just see your "dearest hope" happen once (tomorrow, for Gore, I'd say with a probability of 20%), but twice (after Gore, the rest of the absentee ballots swing it back to Bush by November 17th.)
(That said, once - in either direction - would be enough "fun" for me.)
Tackhead, signing off 'till the next/. post on the subject.
> Basically I think the Gore challenge wouldn't have a leg to stand on, if it weren't for the fact that these
ballots are against Florida law, which requires that candidates' names be to the left of where the mark is
made.
Yeah, if it goes to court, I pity the judge.
If he rules the ballots illegal on the "name to the left" section of the law, does he (a) throw out the Palm Beach county results (giving the election to Bush by ~110,000 votes) or (b) call for a revote in PBC, which would likely give the election to Gore by an unknown number, say ~1000 votes)?
Or does he rule the ballots as valid on the grounds that (c) both sides had ample opportunity to contest the ballot design before the election, and that (d) butterfly ballots are used all over the States in other elections and do not seem to cause this problem elsewhere.
I know how I think it oughta be called. But I don't know Florida law well enough to know if it can be called that way.
You're absolutely right, and I['ve] apologize[d elsewhere].
Re: Bush's planned challenge to a popular vote win and an electoral vote loss:
You'll have to take my word for it that I'd be just as opposed to that. Until there's a constitutional amendment, the winner of the College deserves to win the Presidency. Popular vote doesn't enter into it.
> given the split in the popular vote, house and senate totals, a dual-party executive might be just what the VOTERS had in mind.
The more I look at the results, the more I think you're right. Bush for Prez. Lieberman for Veep, and (depending on how the Maria Cantwell race turned out?) the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
With a 50/50 split in so many races, and by most ways of measuring it, I'd even go so far as to say the public would accept it.
And all it would take is a few electors from any state to abstain from the December vote.
We've all seen so many things that can "never happen" this week - I don't know about you, but I've lost the ability to be surprised by anything.
I haven't eaten my recommended daily allowance of crow yet, so here goes. I predict that:
We will see Electoral College that gives up and hands it off to the House and Senate.
We will see this because the Florida vote will be a dead tie between Bush and Gore. That's right, you heard it here first. A tie.
And I called the tie vote at 5:58 PM EST on Thursday, for anyone crazy enough to claim they called it first;-)
> Morality has absolutely no place in this. Rule of the law does.
Dude - thanks for saying it better than I did in any of my posts.
The fundamental question is - to what extent is a judge's decision to throw out votes, or to order a re-vote - also part of the rule of law, and that's one for which I have no good answer.
By "ordinary schmoes", I meant I believed the electors to still be more likely to vote their consciences (even across party lines) than those who are running the campaigns.
Put it this way - if it were unclear as to what the "right thing to do" was, who would you trust more to "do the right thing"? Your next-door neighbor who happens to be involved with your local branch of the [Republican|Democratic] party and was granted his/her nomination to the EC as a perk, or someone like [Newt Gingrich|Hillary Clinton]?
(Note: I know Newt and Hillary aren't involved; I chose the names because they're consistently portrayed as fanatics by their opponents. I trust the judgement of 25 Democratic electors just as much as I trust the judgement of 25 Republican electors. What I don't want to see is the contest decided by the fanatics.)
>> the time to ask is before you punch the hole, not after.
>
> That is factually incorrect. In florida, according to the sample ballot, if you make a mistake you can ask for
a new ballot. At least on individual requested a new ballot and was refused. That is illegal.
Yes. I meant to say "before you put the ballot in the box, not after".
If voters who made mistakes and asked for new ballots were refused - I have an even bigger problem with that as I do with any vote-reassigning, because it's not just (a) illegal, but that it (b) lends itself far more easily to vote-stuffing than the "confusing ballot" issue. ("This one looks like a Democrat, he doesn't get a new ballot" isn't like fraud, it is fraud.)
> The State of Florida Electoral College Representatives are free under Florida law to vote for *anyone they wish*
Absolutely. Which is, IMNSHO, the best thing about the EC. This isn't gonna be decided by a team of lawyers or politicians or campaign strategists, it's gonna be decided by 25 ordinary schmoes.
> [marking on the right of the ballot] Fla.Rev.Stat. 101.191(1).
Yeah, it's a technicality, but if a judge declares the ballots illegal and either throws out (or demands a revote) where those ballots were cast, I'll stand by that judgement.
> I find it incredibly diffcult to believe that if the shoe were on the other foot...
Absofraggin'lutely. I make no claims that Bush's team would be doing anything different were the roles reversed.
As a practical matter - as you've pointed out - whoever wins this is going to preside over a divided America, and is going to have to work across party lines to get anything done. I don't believe the more extreme elements either Gore's or Bush's policies will see the light of day in the next 4 years. That's probably a Good Thing.
> I suggest you all remember that this is about
*the will of the people*, and whether that will was thwarted. [... ] This situation, while fascinating, is not good for the country. I suggest all of you who make partisan
arguments would do well to remember *that* is what we're supposed to be deciding.
Seconded. Whatever I've said about Gore's policies over the past few days, I have tremendous respect for his statement regarding the rule of law yesterday.
This gets decided (possibly with the guidance of the courts) in the Electoral College on December 18th. Nowhere else.
> What a one-sided view! Thank you! Let me see if I can counter some of your points...
Hey, it's/., one-sidedness is what it's all about, and the good thing about it is that when I screw up here, people call me on it.
> perhaps some people thought it so obvious [reading left/right, top/bottom] that they
didn't read into it further, as you have done into their mistakes.
That's their problem. I'm not gonna give an inch on the voter's responsibility to read and understand the ballot before voting.
> Some asked for help and got the reply that the volunteers "just didn't know". Others
realized their mistakes in the booths and asked for new ballots and were DENIED.
Agreed - those are major problems. It's the responsibility of the volunteer to know (and I have a harder time believing the volunteers didn't know than I do believing the voters didn't know!), and if Florida law says (as I believe it does) that "I screwed up, shred this ballot and gimme a new one" is a legitimate request, then the denial of those requests is unacceptable.
> [My arguments that both sides may perjure themselves]
I think we actually agree more than we disagree here. Looking at that ballot, it's clear to me, but I can see how either a Gore or Bush voter might screw it up.
Ultimately, this point wasn't meant to stand on its own so much as it was intended to supplant my argument "you can't take ballots out of a ballot box and change them afterwards."
> Would you feel differently if you were on the other side? What if the ballots were from dead people? Are you suggesting that under no circumstances the ballots should be questioned?
On the other side: No. As I said in another post - IMHO this is no longer about who wins, it's about how.
If from dead people: Yes. That's unequivocal evidence of fraud. I'd stand by the court's judgement on that.
> [Are the wronged citizens' suits] the best thing for the country? Probably not. Is it the right thing? Well, that's subjective.
Agreed. I don't think we'll ever really know who "won" this election at the vote level, or the court level. It really is up to the Electoral College to decide.
Which is why I said "close to a coup", but not "a coup". Even if Gore's (or Bush's) lawyers manage to invalidate ballots, counties, or even the entire friggin' state, the electors still get to vote on December 18th, and their result is the only one that's binding.
Even in the worst case (widespread voter fraud, which does not appear to be the case here), the rules as set down by the Constitution are not in jeopardy - indeed, it was written to handle precisely this sort of situation. The electors stand between a suspect vote count (on either side) and the Presidency. That's what they're there for.
> Or, perhaps, we should let the electors vote as they see fit?
Good call. I spoke far too hastily - I posted a clarification pointing out that urging them "to consider voting" was NOT urging them "to vote". My original phrasing was far too strong.
(Unlike the ballot box, when I make a mistake, I can at least try to undo it;-)
I'm damn glad I'm not a FL elector right now.
> One more point. How come in the recount, the counts are both going higher? Where were those votes the first time? How come no one is losing any votes?
I dunno. My hunch would be chad - the little bits of confetti from punch-cards - may have mistakenly made sensors in the vote-counting machines register punched ballots as unpunched, but if the recount is being done manually, the chad will have either been removed as a result of its passage through the voting machine, or by hand.
That explains why the "vote count" is going up for both candidates.
As for why Gore's going up faster than Bush, I'd have to look at each county that's been recounted, but it could be as simple a matter as "the votes thus far recounted are in heavily-Democratic counties"
Interesting speculation -- suppose "chad" nukes 0.01% of the votes. Because the highly-populated counties in Florida tend to vote Democratic, this election could be decided, not by voter error, but by mechanical error.
Probably the best argument I've seen for all-electronic voting (or all-manual vote-counting!) yet.
(To Black Parrot of post #515: Hopefully most of these answers will apply to your post too - you raised similar points, and raised them just as well, as Trinition did.)
> What Buchanan says is absolutely irrelevant, and may not be used to sway the judgement of a court.
Buchanan doesn't 'own' those votes, and has no say in the matter!
Absolutely true. But at least from a "moral" perspective, it allows Gore's lawyers a better chance to claim the moral high ground.
I'm sure that Gore would press this into the courts even if Buchanan did claim the votes were his. (That said, I'm almost as sure Bush would too, were the roles reversed. This is the Presidency they're playing for, after all!)
As for the other poster who questioned "properly" vs. "probably" - the phrasing on Orvetti was that Buchanan "said they were rightfully Gore's".
> And then there's the Constitution Party's extremely high showing in Palm Beach, when their dot is...yup, one up
from Ralph Nader's.
Now that's getting interesting.
I stand by my original position that a validly-marked ballot ought never to be second-guessed, and that it's the voter's responsibility to make sure the ballot was properly marked before putting it in the box.
That said, this is the first non-partisan evidence that the ergonomics of the Palm Beach ballot may have skewed the election, and I thank you very much for pointing it out.
> having said that, I'm not sure if there's any obvious legal remedy for this at all.
Same here. Even though Buchanan has conceded those votes to Gore (source: www.orvetti.com), the question becomes "who really meant to vote for him, and who really meant to vote for Gore?"
With a secret ballot, there's no way to tell. That's the point of a secret ballot, and the best argument, IMHO, why the votes still shouldn't be transferred.
(Thankfully, the argument "Well, Buchanan deserves so few votes that his voters don't matter" falls flat. The election of 2000 has taught us all that every vote counts. Though I admit it would be a supreme irony if all the Republicans crowing about how "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" lost the Presidency because "a vote for Buchanan was a vote for Gore")
Crap, I hate it when I write up a post only to have to backpedal within 15 minutes. I guess that's what politics is all about!;-)
According to Orvetti, Buchanan(-hole) has just conceded that the 3400 votes are "properly Gore's".
OK. I still have a problem with it (in the Constitutional sense), but if Buchanan's willing to relinquish his claim on those votes, now I can see at least some argument that might persuade a judge to grant a revote.
In any case, the recount results are skewing heavily to Gore, so my whole point may be moot. Let's hope so.
> I urge the electors of Florida to consider casting their votes [...]
That's "to consider casting", not "to cast".
An elector should vote according to the law of your state (if one exists), or to your interpretation of the will of those who elected you.
My "to consider" request was merely to "question whose will was being expressed" in any legal wranglings over the next few days.
And all that aside, I hope to God the results of the Florida recount are unambiguous - either way - so none of the legal wrangling and vote-reassigning concerns matter.
What matters most in this election is no longer who wins the Presidency, but how.
Slashdot Mirror
And the damn coin landed on its edge :-)
Ballots: For reasons which should be obvious to all. Whether the Palm Beach County ballot was "simple" or "confusing" appears to be a matter of whose party you support.
By standardizing the ballot, we could ensure that these allegations are no longer an issue, and that if a usability issue becomes a problem, at least the effects are uniform across the state.
(I'd argue that if we go to an electronic system, the order in which the candidates are presented should be randomized on a per-voter basis.)
Process: The more important issue to me would be standardizing the process whereby votes are counted or recounted.
This election is likely to turn on chad - bits of paper from punch cards that either fall out of the card or remain attached by a corner.
That's bad. But at least chad affects both candidates identically. Or does it?
Ballots Again: An election in which voters in heavily-FOO counties vote with #2B pencils, and voters in heavily-BAR counties punch cards (with attendant risk of "chad" not being counted by the counting machines) will skew the results for FOO.
Indeed, even if we use the same technology (say, "fill in the dot with the pencil"), but FOO-county voters use #2B pencils, and BAR-county voters use #2H (hard) pencils, the lighter markings produced by the "hard" pencils will lead to a higher "uncounted" rate, and a skew to candidate FOO.
Process Again:Because the Bush team screwed up and didn't demand a recount in heavily-Republican counties (and the deadline passed on Friday), and Gore was smart enough to demand a recount in four heavily-Democratic counties, votes in those four counties count more than votes in other counties.
(Which is to say that while the "old farts" in Palm Beach may have been "stupid" if they couldn't tell Gore from Buchanan, the Bush team made an even dumber mistake - effectively giving the election away because they didn't understand how the mechanical technologies of the voting machines affected the results. The "old farts" can be excused. The guys who are being paid millions to run a campaign can't ;-)
But because our ballots aren't standard, it's possible that votes in heavily-Republican counties may not even have used a punch-card system. If that's the case, then votes in Republican counties count more (by about 0.001%), and Gore's just evening the score.
(Evidence: The fact that almost all counties show an "uptick", not a "downtick" in the number of votes cast, and that the hand recount in the four precincts last week showed a 33:14 advantage for Gore, in line with the ~2:1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans in that county.)
So because the laws call for recounts, but don't specify how the recount must be conducted on a statewide basis - it's up to each county to decide - both teams have the option of calling for recounts until they get the result they want, leading to a crisis of legitimacy (in the minds of the people, even if not in the eyes of the law) if the results differ.
Bottom line: How to make sure this never happens again.
If all voters in Florida used the same ballot and ballot-marking technology, there would be no controversy over whether "a misleading ballot in one county" could swing the result:
If all counties in Florida were required to use the same ballot-counting technology, there would be no controversy (the issue hasn't surfaced in the press, but it's clearly a possibility) over whether the counting technology could skew the results.
Finally, if all counties in Florida were required to use the same recounting technology, and agree to it in advance of the recount, we wouldn't be having the flurry of lawsuits we see today.
The voting technology, default counting process, and recounting process (including number of recounts) must be laid down in law, and must be laid down before the vote is taken.
(The reason for that should be obvious - it appears that old Republicans had no trouble with the Palm Beach County ballot, but old Democrats had trouble with it. It appears that Republicans think hand counts are a great idea in Texas, but fraught with inaccuracy in Florida. It appears that Democrats think that a machine recount is adequate for all counties in Florida except for the four most havily-Democratic ones.)
The only thing that's certain now is that all parties involved have lost sight of what's at issue - what constitutes a fair recount. "Fair" has ceased to be an issue of ensuring uniform error rates across the state and between candidates, and has been redefined by both sides as "that which may give our candidate the lead".
Well, duh, if NASA sent the algae, it kinda goes without saying they'd disappear!
(I mean, I'm all for sending people to Mars, but really, couldn't we find a more interesting excuse than "oh crap, these are metric algae, not Imperial-measured algae!" ;-)
Perhaps, but I was talking about the physical screen. No way to get around that ;-)
I don't think the IO's are gonna end up in a landfill - even NPLI isn't talking about nuking the service altogether, and with the flash-updatability of the SanDisk, AT&T could very easily "upgrade" the units to any platform they desired, so even current non-hacker owners are likely to have an upgrade path should AT&T decide to continue the experiment.
Agreed. If NPLI had managed to partner with an ISP (AOL? Earthlink?) and co-brand (as opposed to "hiding" the ISP beneath the embedded system), they might have done really well. Let the ISP fund the costs of the hardware, and sell demographic data back to the ISP.
The built-in USB port also meant their unit was well-positioned for the cablemodem or DSL age.
I agree with you that they were ahead of their time. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Umm, because those "rich motherfuckers" were the ones whose capital made it possible for me to get some really cool hardware, to say nothing of the jobs they created for those who worked at Netpliance while it was operating?
The IO (and the other network appliances) were neat ideas. Wrong ideas for 1999 and 2000, it turned out. Maybe a good idea some time in the future. Maybe not. But without rich motherfuckers to fund these ideas, we'll never know.
The passive-matrix screen and 800x600 resolution are something that can't be fixed, but any IO can be hacked with a bit of solder to run a K6-III-333 at speeds up to 450 MHz.
There are serious heat and power supply limits at 450, but even a very conservative clocking of a K6-III-333 underclocked to 200 MHz is about a 2:1 performance boost over the original WinChip 200. Cost of the chip is $30 at Fry's (for those lucky enough to live near a Fry's.)
Hey, it plays MP3s and runs my GPS mapware. I'm happy, even if the GPSware is a Windoze app.
It's never gonna replace your desktop, and for the amount of time/money you'll put into it, you're better off buying a used laptop on EBay. But I had a hell of a lot more fun building my own line-out, headphone jack, second serial port, VGA-out connector, IDE connectors, hard drive mounts, cooling fans, and doing core voltage / CPU-upgrade mods with a soldering iron and a prayer than I ever woulda had with a used laptop.
Like I said in my other post - my thanks to NPLI for the cool hardware. I learned a lot and had a ball doing it.
I'd like to think Thurmond and most folks his age have grown up since then. But thanks for pointing it out and reminding me that our history is not always a proud one.
More seriously - my condolences to the employees and investors - and gratitude for the cool hardware.
Before folks start screaming that 3v17 h@x0rZ killed NPLI, judging from their revenue figures and number of units sold, I'd bet that the "hackers" snagged about 5000 units, costing about $1.5M over the history of the company - a drop in the bucket against the $10M+ marketing and G&A expenses for the most recent quarter.
The way to make money off the 'net is not to sell hardware as a loss-leader, nor is it to get into the $20/month ISP business.
That's not to say anyone really knows what the way to make money is, just to say that NPLI and others (e.g. Virgin's "internet appliance" operation folded a few days ago) found out the hard way what it wasn't, and that no amount of marketing expense can change it.
Given the number of years he's served in the Senate without being Prez, I say give it to him.
It beats the hell out of a gold watch for retirement! ;-)
*ROFLMAO*
Y'know, despite my preference for Bush during the election, I'd be happy with a Gore win (in the recount, that is!) for precisely that same reason.
The political reality is that neither candidate has a mandate to carry out his campaign agenda, so it doesn't matter who wins in terms of future legislation... and the entertainment value of the backpedalling would be enormous!
The interesting thing - with one county and ~200 votes spread, and many counties having spreads over 200 votes - we may not just see your "dearest hope" happen once (tomorrow, for Gore, I'd say with a probability of 20%), but twice (after Gore, the rest of the absentee ballots swing it back to Bush by November 17th.)
(That said, once - in either direction - would be enough "fun" for me.)
Tackhead, signing off 'till the next /. post on the subject.
Yeah, if it goes to court, I pity the judge.
If he rules the ballots illegal on the "name to the left" section of the law, does he (a) throw out the Palm Beach county results (giving the election to Bush by ~110,000 votes) or (b) call for a revote in PBC, which would likely give the election to Gore by an unknown number, say ~1000 votes)?
Or does he rule the ballots as valid on the grounds that (c) both sides had ample opportunity to contest the ballot design before the election, and that (d) butterfly ballots are used all over the States in other elections and do not seem to cause this problem elsewhere.
I know how I think it oughta be called. But I don't know Florida law well enough to know if it can be called that way.
If that's the case, then I retract my "ordinary schmoe" comment. I agree that high-level party flacks are just as likely to be fanatics as anyone.
You're absolutely right, and I['ve] apologize[d elsewhere].
Re: Bush's planned challenge to a popular vote win and an electoral vote loss:
You'll have to take my word for it that I'd be just as opposed to that. Until there's a constitutional amendment, the winner of the College deserves to win the Presidency. Popular vote doesn't enter into it.
The more I look at the results, the more I think you're right. Bush for Prez. Lieberman for Veep, and (depending on how the Maria Cantwell race turned out?) the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
With a 50/50 split in so many races, and by most ways of measuring it, I'd even go so far as to say the public would accept it.
And all it would take is a few electors from any state to abstain from the December vote.
We've all seen so many things that can "never happen" this week - I don't know about you, but I've lost the ability to be surprised by anything.
I haven't eaten my recommended daily allowance of crow yet, so here goes. I predict that:
- We will see Electoral College that gives up and hands it off to the House and Senate.
- We will see this because the Florida vote will be a dead tie between Bush and Gore. That's right, you heard it here first. A tie.
And I called the tie vote at 5:58 PM EST on Thursday, for anyone crazy enough to claim they called it firstDude - thanks for saying it better than I did in any of my posts.
The fundamental question is - to what extent is a judge's decision to throw out votes, or to order a re-vote - also part of the rule of law, and that's one for which I have no good answer.
Put it this way - if it were unclear as to what the "right thing to do" was, who would you trust more to "do the right thing"? Your next-door neighbor who happens to be involved with your local branch of the [Republican|Democratic] party and was granted his/her nomination to the EC as a perk, or someone like [Newt Gingrich|Hillary Clinton]?
(Note: I know Newt and Hillary aren't involved; I chose the names because they're consistently portrayed as fanatics by their opponents. I trust the judgement of 25 Democratic electors just as much as I trust the judgement of 25 Republican electors. What I don't want to see is the contest decided by the fanatics.)
>
> That is factually incorrect. In florida, according to the sample ballot, if you make a mistake you can ask for a new ballot. At least on individual requested a new ballot and was refused. That is illegal.
Yes. I meant to say "before you put the ballot in the box, not after".
If voters who made mistakes and asked for new ballots were refused - I have an even bigger problem with that as I do with any vote-reassigning, because it's not just (a) illegal, but that it (b) lends itself far more easily to vote-stuffing than the "confusing ballot" issue. ("This one looks like a Democrat, he doesn't get a new ballot" isn't like fraud, it is fraud.)
Absolutely. Which is, IMNSHO, the best thing about the EC. This isn't gonna be decided by a team of lawyers or politicians or campaign strategists, it's gonna be decided by 25 ordinary schmoes.
> [marking on the right of the ballot] Fla.Rev.Stat. 101.191(1).
Yeah, it's a technicality, but if a judge declares the ballots illegal and either throws out (or demands a revote) where those ballots were cast, I'll stand by that judgement.
> I find it incredibly diffcult to believe that if the shoe were on the other foot ...
Absofraggin'lutely. I make no claims that Bush's team would be doing anything different were the roles reversed.
As a practical matter - as you've pointed out - whoever wins this is going to preside over a divided America, and is going to have to work across party lines to get anything done. I don't believe the more extreme elements either Gore's or Bush's policies will see the light of day in the next 4 years. That's probably a Good Thing.
> I suggest you all remember that this is about *the will of the people*, and whether that will was thwarted. [ ... ] This situation, while fascinating, is not good for the country. I suggest all of you who make partisan
arguments would do well to remember *that* is what we're supposed to be deciding.
Seconded. Whatever I've said about Gore's policies over the past few days, I have tremendous respect for his statement regarding the rule of law yesterday.
This gets decided (possibly with the guidance of the courts) in the Electoral College on December 18th. Nowhere else.
Hey, it's /., one-sidedness is what it's all about, and the good thing about it is that when I screw up here, people call me on it.
> perhaps some people thought it so obvious [reading left/right, top/bottom] that they didn't read into it further, as you have done into their mistakes.
That's their problem. I'm not gonna give an inch on the voter's responsibility to read and understand the ballot before voting.
> Some asked for help and got the reply that the volunteers "just didn't know". Others realized their mistakes in the booths and asked for new ballots and were DENIED.
Agreed - those are major problems. It's the responsibility of the volunteer to know (and I have a harder time believing the volunteers didn't know than I do believing the voters didn't know!), and if Florida law says (as I believe it does) that "I screwed up, shred this ballot and gimme a new one" is a legitimate request, then the denial of those requests is unacceptable.
> [My arguments that both sides may perjure themselves]
I think we actually agree more than we disagree here. Looking at that ballot, it's clear to me, but I can see how either a Gore or Bush voter might screw it up.
Ultimately, this point wasn't meant to stand on its own so much as it was intended to supplant my argument "you can't take ballots out of a ballot box and change them afterwards."
> Would you feel differently if you were on the other side? What if the ballots were from dead people? Are you suggesting that under no circumstances the ballots should be questioned?
On the other side: No. As I said in another post - IMHO this is no longer about who wins, it's about how.
If from dead people: Yes. That's unequivocal evidence of fraud. I'd stand by the court's judgement on that.
> [Are the wronged citizens' suits] the best thing for the country? Probably not. Is it the right thing? Well, that's subjective.
Agreed. I don't think we'll ever really know who "won" this election at the vote level, or the court level. It really is up to the Electoral College to decide.
Which is why I said "close to a coup", but not "a coup". Even if Gore's (or Bush's) lawyers manage to invalidate ballots, counties, or even the entire friggin' state, the electors still get to vote on December 18th, and their result is the only one that's binding.
Even in the worst case (widespread voter fraud, which does not appear to be the case here), the rules as set down by the Constitution are not in jeopardy - indeed, it was written to handle precisely this sort of situation. The electors stand between a suspect vote count (on either side) and the Presidency. That's what they're there for.
> Or, perhaps, we should let the electors vote as they see fit?
Good call. I spoke far too hastily - I posted a clarification pointing out that urging them "to consider voting" was NOT urging them "to vote". My original phrasing was far too strong.
(Unlike the ballot box, when I make a mistake, I can at least try to undo it ;-)
I'm damn glad I'm not a FL elector right now.
> One more point. How come in the recount, the counts are both going higher? Where were those votes the first time? How come no one is losing any votes?
I dunno. My hunch would be chad - the little bits of confetti from punch-cards - may have mistakenly made sensors in the vote-counting machines register punched ballots as unpunched, but if the recount is being done manually, the chad will have either been removed as a result of its passage through the voting machine, or by hand.
That explains why the "vote count" is going up for both candidates.
As for why Gore's going up faster than Bush, I'd have to look at each county that's been recounted, but it could be as simple a matter as "the votes thus far recounted are in heavily-Democratic counties"
Interesting speculation -- suppose "chad" nukes 0.01% of the votes. Because the highly-populated counties in Florida tend to vote Democratic, this election could be decided, not by voter error, but by mechanical error.
Probably the best argument I've seen for all-electronic voting (or all-manual vote-counting!) yet.
(To Black Parrot of post #515: Hopefully most of these answers will apply to your post too - you raised similar points, and raised them just as well, as Trinition did.)
Absolutely true. But at least from a "moral" perspective, it allows Gore's lawyers a better chance to claim the moral high ground.
I'm sure that Gore would press this into the courts even if Buchanan did claim the votes were his. (That said, I'm almost as sure Bush would too, were the roles reversed. This is the Presidency they're playing for, after all!)
As for the other poster who questioned "properly" vs. "probably" - the phrasing on Orvetti was that Buchanan "said they were rightfully Gore's".
Now that's getting interesting.
I stand by my original position that a validly-marked ballot ought never to be second-guessed, and that it's the voter's responsibility to make sure the ballot was properly marked before putting it in the box.
That said, this is the first non-partisan evidence that the ergonomics of the Palm Beach ballot may have skewed the election, and I thank you very much for pointing it out.
> having said that, I'm not sure if there's any obvious legal remedy for this at all.
Same here. Even though Buchanan has conceded those votes to Gore (source: www.orvetti.com), the question becomes "who really meant to vote for him, and who really meant to vote for Gore?"
With a secret ballot, there's no way to tell. That's the point of a secret ballot, and the best argument, IMHO, why the votes still shouldn't be transferred.
(Thankfully, the argument "Well, Buchanan deserves so few votes that his voters don't matter" falls flat. The election of 2000 has taught us all that every vote counts. Though I admit it would be a supreme irony if all the Republicans crowing about how "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" lost the Presidency because "a vote for Buchanan was a vote for Gore")
According to Orvetti, Buchanan(-hole) has just conceded that the 3400 votes are "properly Gore's".
OK. I still have a problem with it (in the Constitutional sense), but if Buchanan's willing to relinquish his claim on those votes, now I can see at least some argument that might persuade a judge to grant a revote.
In any case, the recount results are skewing heavily to Gore, so my whole point may be moot. Let's hope so.
That's "to consider casting", not "to cast".
An elector should vote according to the law of your state (if one exists), or to your interpretation of the will of those who elected you.
My "to consider" request was merely to "question whose will was being expressed" in any legal wranglings over the next few days.
And all that aside, I hope to God the results of the Florida recount are unambiguous - either way - so none of the legal wrangling and vote-reassigning concerns matter.
What matters most in this election is no longer who wins the Presidency, but how.