No, that just muddies the water even more. By "further warming" do you mean "warming at an increased rate"? Because even warming at the same rate would actually be "further warming" in English. When you say "warming" it means "getting warmer", which is "further warming" when you put it in a future context.
AGW is expected to stop (approximately) when we get to zero emissions
It is interesting that we are to accept the predictions of non-climate scientists as fact when they agree with AGW scenarios, but insult and castigate the non-climate scientists when they talk about the opposite view.
In any case, the "end of the century" is not a wall which will block incoming thermal radiation and cause warming to stop. As long as there is more heat coming into the system than is leaving, the warming continues.
As for "when carbon emissions cease", well, they never will. Until this climate change accomplishes Gaia's goal of removing all life from Planet Earth, there will be animals emitting CO2. Well, no, that's not quite true. If a sulphur based lifeform takes over, then CO2 emission would cease but SO2 would increase. SO2 is a greenhouse gas, too, isn't it?
Yea, why should those poor third world nations be able to do what us rich first world nations already do.
Am I to take from this sarcasm that they should be able to do what "us rich first world nations do"? I thought climate science was telling us that what we were doing was a mistake. Perhaps not continuing with a life-ending, global-scale mistake is a good reason why current third world nations should not be able to do what "us rich first world nations" are being told we have to stop doing. What do we solve if the "first world" and "third world" just swap places? Then they'll be the source of CO2 causing AGW and we'll be the countries without the economic resources to mitigate the climate change they are causing. That's your solution?
Warming will not stop at the end of the century unless emissions cease, so it is only a matter of time before we reach 3.5C.
Warming will not stop even if emissions cease, because the warming comes not from the emission of CO2 or heat, but because of the trapping of heat from the sun by that CO2.
I guess you could claim you meant to say "emissions from the sun cease", which would be a true fact. Warming would definitely stop if the sun shut off. I assumed you meant "emissions of CO2", so that could be my mistake.
I haven't yet had time to read the article to see what dire result will come from more "ocean heatwaves".
One marketing research firm estimates that Trump benefited from $4.96 billion in free advertising while Clinton benefited from $3.24 billion.
It is fascinating to read that linked material. If you do, you will see that it is very biased against Trump. They refer to him "bask[ing] in the attention and validation" but don't say the same for Clinton.
What I wanted to see was whether they differentiated between positive and negative "free advertising", and they did not. They counted all coverage as positive "dollars", even though they acknowledged that the media coverage was "23%" towards the negative for Trump, but close to even for Clinton.
They excuse this mistake by dragging out the old canard ("PR adage") that "any news is good news". Please tell that to Monsanto who is currently getting "good news" coverage about a court settlement over a lost lawsuit from a gardener who got cancer from their herbicide glyphosphate. This tidbit is attached to a "news story" from a "research study" that found "hefty doses" of glyphosphate in all kinds of stuff made from oats and other grains. If you listen closely, you'll learn that those "hefty doses" are at a level that the authors of the press release think are too high, but are actually a tiny fraction of the EPA standards. Monsanto's name is being dragged into this because of the court loss, over a case that has nothing at all to do with herbicide levels in food or violation of any law or standards. "Any news is good news"?
And when added together Trump received nearly $1.2 billion more pro-Trump advertising than Clinton did.
You, too, are assuming that any "news coverage" is "good" for a candidate, when the truth is much different. Trump got a lot of coverage not because of pro-Trump feelings on the part of the media, he got coverage because he gave the news the sound bites that they could use to drag in viewers. And the opponents to Trump (candidates and commentators) were able to feed in more sound bites. To call the anti-Trump coverage in the news "pro-Trump advertising" is lunacy, and to count it in a dollar amount for "free advertising" is just as looney.
If you consider positive vs. negative "free advertising", then Trump's $4.69 billion drops to $2.67 billion, while Clinton's $3.24 billion drops to $2.5 billion -- almost dead even, and when adding in the actual candidate spending you get $3.3 billion for Trump and $3.7 billion for Clinton.
I disagree. There has to be legal consequences or else nothing will change.
Legal consequences for the exercise of first amendment rights. An interesting concept.
Which part of "congress shall make no laws" is confusing? Or is it the part of "free speech" where someone saying "I support John Doe for Congress" is covered by the first amendment?
we have a delusional Supreme Court which seems to be hallucinating that having more money should entitle one to more free speech and a proportionately bigger voice in elections.
Ahhh, now I get it. You think "free speech" means "free as in beer". It doesn't make sense to you that exercising the right to free speech might cost money, and that telling someone they can't spend their money is essentially telling them they can't participate in "free speech". "Free speech" is apparently supposed to mean whatever can be said without having to pay for it to be disseminated.
and a proportionately bigger voice in elections.
"Voice" in an election is called a "ballot". More money does not mean more ballots. "Voice" in the arena of political speech costs money -- so yes, the more money you have the more you can disseminate your ideas. How terrible! But then, that's why there are things called "donations", so like-minded people (or all union employees) can pool their money and improve the dissemination of their speech. How wonderful! The natural outcome of that is that people with unpopular ideas don't get donations. How terrible!
And mind you that a bad actor can divise a means to make something go off when exposed to certain frequencies.
A "bad actor" who has a trigger go off when exposed to 2.4GHz WiFi signals is also a "bad designer" and then a "bad dead person". Since it will probably trigger in his own residence, he's also a "bad tenant" or a "bad risk for a home loan".
He would be a "good terrorist", however, since blowing himself up in his livingroom isn't very terrorizing, and we already know that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.
Tough. Welcome to the Internet, buddy. You think you can waggle your virtual finger at me and have any effect at all?
I pointed out your rude form of address; what you do with that information is up to you. And no, I've read enough of your stuff to know that you simply don't care about being civil, so I expected a rude and arrogant response.
I also expected you to use that one side issue to glibly ignore the point I was making about your "virtual finger waggling" at Facebook. You did not disappoint.
Listen yourself. I am not your "buddy", and the arrogant and insulting tone of your use of that term is not acceptable.
if your Very Large Social Media Website was being used to not only promote violence against an ethnic group, but more or less being used as a C&C server for people to organize their attacks, wouldn't you think about pulling their access entirely if you couldn't stem the flow of site-policy-violating content?
Of course I would. And if that content was in a language that I was not able to read myself and had limited resources in my employ that could, I'd put in place a system where the people WHO CAN read it could report problems so I'd know what to look at for removal. JUST LIKE FACEBOOK ALREADY DID.
Read that again: Facebook already has a system in place that people were not using.
But I didn't reply to any statement that Facebook should disable accounts, I replied to one that talked about Facebook being serious about prohibiting "violent or dehumanizing" attacks. Did you read what I quoted AT ALL? Did you consider what you wrote AT ALL?
You can't stop the killing in Myanmar but you can stop them using YOUR WEBSITE to help them do it.
So you read my statement that they can stop people from using their system to spread their speech and didn't realize that it meant they could stop the people making the threats from using their website to spread their speech? Here, see for yourself:
All they can do is remove speech from their forums.
Hint: how can they stop people from using their system to promote hate acts? Clue: removing the material that calls for such acts from the forums.
or at least give you a better idea where I'm coming from?
I've read quite a few of your postings here, and this one in particular. I know where you are "coming from". You called Facebook out for not being serious about prohibiting attacks when there is nothing they can do to prohibit them. I called out the people who are crying about the hate speech but failing to help Facebook remove it by reporting it. Do you get a better idea where I'm "coming from"?
Assuming, that is, that Facebook is actually serious about prohibiting "violent or dehumanizing" attacks on ethnic groups, as they say.
If Facebook turned every server off today and nobody could access, much less post, anything on Facebook, it would not be adding one thing to prohibiting attacks on anyone. Facebook can no more prohibit "violent or dehumanizing" attacks than they can prohibit the sun from rising in the morning.
All they can do is remove speech from their forums. Ethnic cleansing activities will continue without noticing the "disturbance in the force" that Facebook shutting down would cause. (Note that "the disturbance in the force" is a reference to science fiction, which is how real the disturbance to ethnic cleansing a shutdown of Facebook would be.)
If people in Myanmar are not reporting these posts so that Facebook can follow their existing policies, then the fault lays with those who expect others to act for them instead of using the tools they have been given. I.e., with those who read these posts and say "gosh, that's awful, I wish someone would do something about those."
Oh, by the way, in the state of Oregon, where we have a special provision for super-majority on taxation measures that are on an other-than-regular election ballot, it is STANDARD PRACTICE for the election offices to publish preliminary results. Not the vote tally itself, but the percentage of returned ballots. That is of direct assistance to proposal supporters, because if the turnout is lagging it tells them their proposal cannot possibly pass. That's a call to get out more votes for them. In this case, the election results are not just votes yea and nay, but also percentage of registered voters. "We received 30% of the possible ballots" is a preliminary result.
That is echoing exactly what I said. They don't publish "preliminary" results before the polls close; they wait until the polls close and publish their results.
They wait until THEIR polls close, yes. But the polls for almost every other place in their state, and in every other state in the Union, are still open. You said "the polls", not "their polls", and "the polls" are still open for the same election everywhere else.
Other polls in other places may still be open, yes.
Then "the polls" are not closed. It's the same damn election, voting for the same damn people. Trying to differentiate that THEIR polls are closed so it is just fine to publish the results when all the other polls are still open is ignoring the problem.
No, news media could publish exit poll results, but actual voting results--even preliminary results--aren't released until polls close. (And reputable news sources don't even publish exit poll results until the polls close.).
All news media publish results as soon as they are available, and for national elections in the US that usually means three hours before the west coast polls close, and 6 hours before Hawaii's.
I recall hearing exit poll results in the early afternoon here on the west coast, but certainly by 5PM the news is full of them. In case you're going to try handwaving away that as just "exit polls", then remember that exit polls are considered significant enough that some people will cry "fraud" if the exit polls show their candidate winning but the actual result doesn't match.
As for your claim, I'll point you to Dixville Notch (a somewhat less unhappily named town compared to Dismal Nitch, WA), where:
Dixville Notch is best known in connection with its longstanding middle-of-the-night vote in the U.S. presidential election, including during the New Hampshire primary (the first primary election in the U.S. presidential nomination process). In a tradition that started in the 1960 election, all the eligible voters in Dixville Notch gather at midnight in the ballroom of The Balsams. The voters cast their ballots and the polls are officially closed when all of the registered voters have voted - sometimes merely one minute later. The results of the Dixville Notch vote in both the New Hampshire primary and the general election are traditionally broadcast around the country immediately afterwards.
So, 12:01AM Eastern time on election day, the first election results are published. Yet no "reputable" news source would do such a thing.
First, election websites only show what polling locations report AFTER the polling locations are closed. All polling locations in a locality close at the same time (unless they stay open later for long lines, etc.) and then begin tallying and reporting to the election authorities.
Unless, of course, the "locality" is "the entire US". I have seen no issues claimed or reported with local elections producing early results, simply because local election boards understand the issue and have all their polling places close at the same time.
The issue only comes up during US Presidential elections, where the local polling places span 7 time zones. And each media outlet is anxious to get street cred by announcing the right projected winner.
Second, all (legitimate) news outlets refrain from projecting/declaring a winner until after all polls related to that election are closed to prevent this very thing.
I'm so glad that you thought enough about the issue to try to use the adjective "legitimate", but when ALL news outlets are rushing to declare results and guess at who won before the last polls close, it's a waste of characters.
I guess you've never actually watched the election results for a national election, have you? All the east coast states start posting their vote totals as soon as the polls there close, which is three hours before they close on the west coast, and six hours before Hawaii. The news media starts reporting those totals as soon as they appear. First amendment, you know. And there's even one town in NH, I think it is, where the polls close at noon because there's only seven registered voters and they want to be the first to report the results.
That means that at 5PM, before a lot of people even get off work on the west coast, they can start hearing the results from New York and other Eastern time zone states.
"CNN editorial policy strictly prohibits reporting winners or characterizing the outcome of a statewide contest in any state before all the polls are scheduled to close in every precinct in that state."
Goody for them. Now apply that to national elections.
The projections you see/hear immediately after the polls close is based on exit polls, pre-election polls, past elections, etc.
It's quite a quandary, isn't it? On the one hand, "exit polls" aren't really results and have no effect on the outcome, apparently. It doesn't matter if exit polls are published before all the polling places are closed because they don't mean anything. But then, when the outcome doesn't match the exit polls, the exit polls mean something and are significant. There must have been fraud if the exit polls and the outcome don't match.
You can't have it both ways.
So, no, hacking an election website is not a big deal.
It COULD be a big deal, if it is an east coast state and it does impact the turnout in other states where the polls haven't closed yet.
BUT, hacking an "imitation" website that looks like a page reporting the result is no big deal, and the headline for this article is a patent lie. No, a child did NOT change the Florida election website. Period.
People need to work so they can eat. People don't need to invest their savings to eat, usually. The government has a long history of tax incentives to promote "beneficial" activity.
Years ago, sites were Slashdotted, nowadays they get Olivered and Colberted.
This. A site that was not intended to have strong authentication for comments became the target of a late night talk show host, and everyone is aghast that it was effectively slashdotted. Now everyone is aghast that an attack that took place in cyberspace ("on the Internet") was called a cyberattack.
Has this happened before? Of course. I remember several years ago Paul Begala took to the media blaming Rush Limbaugh for crashing the White House telephone system, because Rush told people to call the White House. He complained that "by 10AM the switchboard was useless", which would have been serious, except that Rush's program doesn't start until noon where the White House is -- two hours after his "attack" allegedly succeeded.
"Hey, let's just say we got DDOSed. No one will ever know afterward! We're the government!"
Explain the difference between a DDOS coming from, say, an IoT botnet, and one coming from 1000 people all actively posting crap to a comment submission system. Yes, one is "cyber", one is "human". That's a difference. Both take place in a "cyber" environment, just one is humans programmed, I mean "incited", by a call to action, the other is IoT stuff programmed to action.
They are counted, and they count in the total. They are, to the point, an example of how we do not force people to go to a local polling place.
Then your election procedures suck and you need to take 1,000 of your friends to your State Board of Elections to complain. Loudly.
Because nobody shouts my name when I walk into a polling place? Reminds me of "Cheers." "Norm!"
Sorry, makes no sense. My "polling place" is my house and nobody needs to shout anything when I walk in. Getting 1000 friends to parade to an election office won't change anything.
and party for whom you voted.
They can tell you what party you are registered for, but not who you voted for. If they can tell other people who you voted for, you need to take 1000 of your friends down to the Election Office and scream bloody murder about violation of the secret ballot process.
which means they have to actually check what you actually voted on your ballot to know that you did vote in two races but did not vote in one.
Of course your local election office needs to check what you voted on your ballot. They have to count up the votes. But reporting who voted for who to ANYONE is a violation of the entire concept of secret ballot. I guess you live in a state where "secret ballot" is obsolete.
127 x 100 = 12,700.
127 is not "21 states". 127 is how many were caught, for Kansas. You assume that the rate is correct for Kansas, and then assume the same rate applies to states with a lot more electoral votes. These are assumptions that are on their face unreasonable. Why would anyone waste a lot of time rigging Kansas elections for a measly 6 electoral votes? The same problem exists for your double-vote guess.
It claims to have examine 75 million voters in 21 states and found 8,400 cases of double voting. Comparisons identify duplicates by name, birthday, and part of their social security number, which is a decent attempt but has flaws.
Some pretty obvious ones. How does this study catch the most common way someone can double vote (a favorite of the Daley machine), which is to show up at a polling place claiming to be a dead guy? Or someone they know won't be voting for some other reason? How does it catch the Oregon "double votes" that are as simple as pulling someone's discarded ballot out of the trash and sending it in? It doesn't. It cannot. The names won't match, but the person "double-voted". Or triple, or quadruple... how many polling places did the bus stop at on election day? How many ballots were pulled from waste baskets at the Post Office?
It's more like going over 950 million acres of clover with a bunch of Mars-rover-like devices designed to seek out four-leaf clovers,
No, that implies someone is doing a serious study and might find a correct number, and "the gubernatorial candidate" isn't that kind of study. It's not even as good as I analogized. The analogy is more like someone standing on a ladder over a corn field counting the number of four-leaf clovers. You know, looking in a place where it is unlikely to find any clovers and extrapolating that to the entire country.
Nobody is going to waste time rigging Kansas, at least not for a national election. Six electoral votes isn't a remarkable prize. It's pretty small, and not worth the effort. Finding 127 in Kansas is interesting, but can't be extrapolated to the entire country. The people in Chicago, for example, have a lot of experience in doing this kind of thing, so I'd say that you'd find 127 in just a one block area, probably. Maybe not. Certainly you'll find many times that 127 in a city with a population smaller than Kansas.
I'm not sure what you are responding to here. I would like to have a citable source.
I quoted what I was responding to. You would like a citeable source.
Repeat after me: an anecdote posted anonymously on slashdot is not a citable source.
Pix or it didn't happen, pix or it didn't happen...
Then they're clearly not restricting absentee ballots to only people who actually are absent, or physically can't vote in person.
Again, you missed the point entirely. I said that every ballot is an absentee ballot. That's clearly absurd, since all ballots cannot be absentee. What would be the reasonable interpretation, then? It is that there is no such thing as an "absentee ballot". If you walk into a county election office a week before the election and say "I'd like an absentee ballot" they're going to look at you like you're a moron. "Your ballot is already in your mailbox", they'll say. If you think they're going to say "ok, please prove you're going to be out of town on election day..." you're wrong.
You want more restrictions on absentees. That won't help.
They are a flaw in the system regardless of which parties the senators proposing them belong to.
Nobody is proposing nationwide absentee ballots. A well-known Democrat is pushing for vote-by-mail, for obvious reasons. Once you completely detach the identification process from the voting process, anything can happen.
Polling centers approach voter identity by restricting a voter to a particular polling center near their neighborhood.
No, not anymore. It's discriminatory to force someone to go to a polling place near where they live. They may work miles away and can't get to their own polling place. The solution is a provisional ballot. The voter swears he is registered in location X, and the poll workers at location Y write that data down along with his ballot and it goes to the central election office to be verified.
When you show up, they call your name loudly;
That has never happened in any polling place where I've voted.
To put numbers to this: you have to be a registered voter before you can vote--we track your voter ID with votes, so we know who you are and for whom you voted
Of course election offices keep track of who voted. They do NOT keep track of how anyone votes. You don't know "for whom you voted", unless you are a participant in vote fraud.
That's around 15,000 non-citizens potentially trying to register in the entire United States,
Your "Kansas gubernatorial candidate" does not have voting data for 21 states. Your extrapolation is flawed and likely biased, ignoring population differences. You claim you know it is "nonpartisan", except you don't.
All of these concerns, while valid, do not change the fact that we've got an impressively-low fraud rate
Your one-state gubernatorial candidate got his hands on some questionable numbers, and that proves an "impressively-low fraud rate". If HE could find THAT MANY attempts at fraud, then the real number is probably much, much higher. It's like someone standing on a ladder over an acre of clover and seeing one four-leaf clover, then multiplying the number of acres by ONE to guess at how many four-leaf clovers there are in the entire country. Mind boggling.
All of these are better done during the voting registration process, not during the actual voting.
There are lots of validation steps that need to be done during the registration process, not during the actual voting. 1. Are you a citizen? 2. Do you live in this voting district? 3. Are you registered to vote in any other district? 4. Are you over the age of X? 5. Are you a felon who is prohibited from voting? All things that need to be done during registration -- but even then can be faked.
But then, none of that matters at all if you don't bother to tie the person trying to vote back to the specific registration, like with ID. Why bother even checking to see if someone is a citizen when you register them if you never bother to check that the "citizen" trying to vote is the same person you registered?
It's like a bank opening a new account for someone after getting the SSN and address and all the other identifying details, and then handing over a username to the online banking system with no password. Why should that person need a password? You've already verified who they are.
The belief that people vote under fake names has never been shown to have any basis in actual facts.
The fact that people voted under fake names -- someone else's -- was standard operating procedure in Chicago under the Daley machine. It's probably still going on, but I don't live close enough to care or read the local news anymore.
With vote-by-mail you don't even need to bus people around to the polling places to cast fraudulent votes. You have party faithfuls collect signed ballots for $10 each, or from people who want favors from the current political machine ("you want that building permit okayed quick, you know what you need to do..."), and just a couple of people fill them out the rest of the way in the comfort of their own homes.
I'd be very interested in seeing somebody put this into print in a citeable source.
Just repeat after me: "there is no vote fraud, there is no vote fraud...". If you click your heels together while saying that, you'll awake to find yourself in bed and Auntie Em applying a cold compress to your forehead.
It's a good reason to restrict absentee ballots to only people who actually are absent, or physically can't vote in person.
You missed the point, I think. In Oregon, and apparently in Washington, EVERY ballot is an absentee ballot. They mail the things out to every registered voter. And by registering everyone who gets a driver's license, they're mailing them to a lot of people who don't care enough to even register to vote. What happens to a ballot that you throw away? Does some nice person "recycle" it for you -- you know, "reuse"?
And our nice progressive Senator Wyden wants EVERY state to do it that way. Did I mention, he's a Democrat?
Slashdot Mirror
To clarify, I meant further warming.
No, that just muddies the water even more. By "further warming" do you mean "warming at an increased rate"? Because even warming at the same rate would actually be "further warming" in English. When you say "warming" it means "getting warmer", which is "further warming" when you put it in a future context.
AGW is expected to stop (approximately) when we get to zero emissions
It is interesting that we are to accept the predictions of non-climate scientists as fact when they agree with AGW scenarios, but insult and castigate the non-climate scientists when they talk about the opposite view.
In any case, the "end of the century" is not a wall which will block incoming thermal radiation and cause warming to stop. As long as there is more heat coming into the system than is leaving, the warming continues.
As for "when carbon emissions cease", well, they never will. Until this climate change accomplishes Gaia's goal of removing all life from Planet Earth, there will be animals emitting CO2. Well, no, that's not quite true. If a sulphur based lifeform takes over, then CO2 emission would cease but SO2 would increase. SO2 is a greenhouse gas, too, isn't it?
Yea, why should those poor third world nations be able to do what us rich first world nations already do.
Am I to take from this sarcasm that they should be able to do what "us rich first world nations do"? I thought climate science was telling us that what we were doing was a mistake. Perhaps not continuing with a life-ending, global-scale mistake is a good reason why current third world nations should not be able to do what "us rich first world nations" are being told we have to stop doing. What do we solve if the "first world" and "third world" just swap places? Then they'll be the source of CO2 causing AGW and we'll be the countries without the economic resources to mitigate the climate change they are causing. That's your solution?
Whom is the official keeper of the truth?
It's "who", and you're talking to him. What did you want to know?
Warming will not stop at the end of the century unless emissions cease, so it is only a matter of time before we reach 3.5C.
Warming will not stop even if emissions cease, because the warming comes not from the emission of CO2 or heat, but because of the trapping of heat from the sun by that CO2.
I guess you could claim you meant to say "emissions from the sun cease", which would be a true fact. Warming would definitely stop if the sun shut off. I assumed you meant "emissions of CO2", so that could be my mistake.
I haven't yet had time to read the article to see what dire result will come from more "ocean heatwaves".
One marketing research firm estimates that Trump benefited from $4.96 billion in free advertising while Clinton benefited from $3.24 billion.
It is fascinating to read that linked material. If you do, you will see that it is very biased against Trump. They refer to him "bask[ing] in the attention and validation" but don't say the same for Clinton.
What I wanted to see was whether they differentiated between positive and negative "free advertising", and they did not. They counted all coverage as positive "dollars", even though they acknowledged that the media coverage was "23%" towards the negative for Trump, but close to even for Clinton.
They excuse this mistake by dragging out the old canard ("PR adage") that "any news is good news". Please tell that to Monsanto who is currently getting "good news" coverage about a court settlement over a lost lawsuit from a gardener who got cancer from their herbicide glyphosphate. This tidbit is attached to a "news story" from a "research study" that found "hefty doses" of glyphosphate in all kinds of stuff made from oats and other grains. If you listen closely, you'll learn that those "hefty doses" are at a level that the authors of the press release think are too high, but are actually a tiny fraction of the EPA standards. Monsanto's name is being dragged into this because of the court loss, over a case that has nothing at all to do with herbicide levels in food or violation of any law or standards. "Any news is good news"?
And when added together Trump received nearly $1.2 billion more pro-Trump advertising than Clinton did.
You, too, are assuming that any "news coverage" is "good" for a candidate, when the truth is much different. Trump got a lot of coverage not because of pro-Trump feelings on the part of the media, he got coverage because he gave the news the sound bites that they could use to drag in viewers. And the opponents to Trump (candidates and commentators) were able to feed in more sound bites. To call the anti-Trump coverage in the news "pro-Trump advertising" is lunacy, and to count it in a dollar amount for "free advertising" is just as looney.
If you consider positive vs. negative "free advertising", then Trump's $4.69 billion drops to $2.67 billion, while Clinton's $3.24 billion drops to $2.5 billion -- almost dead even, and when adding in the actual candidate spending you get $3.3 billion for Trump and $3.7 billion for Clinton.
If mere money had the political power that we attribute to it, we'd be discussing the legacy of President Soros.
FTFY.
I disagree. There has to be legal consequences or else nothing will change.
Legal consequences for the exercise of first amendment rights. An interesting concept. Which part of "congress shall make no laws" is confusing? Or is it the part of "free speech" where someone saying "I support John Doe for Congress" is covered by the first amendment?
we have a delusional Supreme Court which seems to be hallucinating that having more money should entitle one to more free speech and a proportionately bigger voice in elections.
Ahhh, now I get it. You think "free speech" means "free as in beer". It doesn't make sense to you that exercising the right to free speech might cost money, and that telling someone they can't spend their money is essentially telling them they can't participate in "free speech". "Free speech" is apparently supposed to mean whatever can be said without having to pay for it to be disseminated.
and a proportionately bigger voice in elections.
"Voice" in an election is called a "ballot". More money does not mean more ballots. "Voice" in the arena of political speech costs money -- so yes, the more money you have the more you can disseminate your ideas. How terrible! But then, that's why there are things called "donations", so like-minded people (or all union employees) can pool their money and improve the dissemination of their speech. How wonderful! The natural outcome of that is that people with unpopular ideas don't get donations. How terrible!
And mind you that a bad actor can divise a means to make something go off when exposed to certain frequencies.
A "bad actor" who has a trigger go off when exposed to 2.4GHz WiFi signals is also a "bad designer" and then a "bad dead person". Since it will probably trigger in his own residence, he's also a "bad tenant" or a "bad risk for a home loan".
He would be a "good terrorist", however, since blowing himself up in his livingroom isn't very terrorizing, and we already know that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.
Tough. Welcome to the Internet, buddy. You think you can waggle your virtual finger at me and have any effect at all?
I pointed out your rude form of address; what you do with that information is up to you. And no, I've read enough of your stuff to know that you simply don't care about being civil, so I expected a rude and arrogant response.
I also expected you to use that one side issue to glibly ignore the point I was making about your "virtual finger waggling" at Facebook. You did not disappoint.
Listen, buddy:
Listen yourself. I am not your "buddy", and the arrogant and insulting tone of your use of that term is not acceptable.
if your Very Large Social Media Website was being used to not only promote violence against an ethnic group, but more or less being used as a C&C server for people to organize their attacks, wouldn't you think about pulling their access entirely if you couldn't stem the flow of site-policy-violating content?
Of course I would. And if that content was in a language that I was not able to read myself and had limited resources in my employ that could, I'd put in place a system where the people WHO CAN read it could report problems so I'd know what to look at for removal. JUST LIKE FACEBOOK ALREADY DID.
Read that again: Facebook already has a system in place that people were not using.
But I didn't reply to any statement that Facebook should disable accounts, I replied to one that talked about Facebook being serious about prohibiting "violent or dehumanizing" attacks. Did you read what I quoted AT ALL? Did you consider what you wrote AT ALL?
You can't stop the killing in Myanmar but you can stop them using YOUR WEBSITE to help them do it.
So you read my statement that they can stop people from using their system to spread their speech and didn't realize that it meant they could stop the people making the threats from using their website to spread their speech? Here, see for yourself:
Hint: how can they stop people from using their system to promote hate acts? Clue: removing the material that calls for such acts from the forums.
or at least give you a better idea where I'm coming from?
I've read quite a few of your postings here, and this one in particular. I know where you are "coming from". You called Facebook out for not being serious about prohibiting attacks when there is nothing they can do to prohibit them. I called out the people who are crying about the hate speech but failing to help Facebook remove it by reporting it. Do you get a better idea where I'm "coming from"?
Assuming, that is, that Facebook is actually serious about prohibiting "violent or dehumanizing" attacks on ethnic groups, as they say.
If Facebook turned every server off today and nobody could access, much less post, anything on Facebook, it would not be adding one thing to prohibiting attacks on anyone. Facebook can no more prohibit "violent or dehumanizing" attacks than they can prohibit the sun from rising in the morning.
All they can do is remove speech from their forums. Ethnic cleansing activities will continue without noticing the "disturbance in the force" that Facebook shutting down would cause. (Note that "the disturbance in the force" is a reference to science fiction, which is how real the disturbance to ethnic cleansing a shutdown of Facebook would be.)
If people in Myanmar are not reporting these posts so that Facebook can follow their existing policies, then the fault lays with those who expect others to act for them instead of using the tools they have been given. I.e., with those who read these posts and say "gosh, that's awful, I wish someone would do something about those."
As long as it's a white apple.
My stuff has illuminated pears.
Cat was hot.
Spent a few days in Coober Pedy during January, 1992
If you are an expert on Coober Pedy, does that make you a Coober Pedy-phile?
Oh, by the way, in the state of Oregon, where we have a special provision for super-majority on taxation measures that are on an other-than-regular election ballot, it is STANDARD PRACTICE for the election offices to publish preliminary results. Not the vote tally itself, but the percentage of returned ballots. That is of direct assistance to proposal supporters, because if the turnout is lagging it tells them their proposal cannot possibly pass. That's a call to get out more votes for them. In this case, the election results are not just votes yea and nay, but also percentage of registered voters. "We received 30% of the possible ballots" is a preliminary result.
That is echoing exactly what I said. They don't publish "preliminary" results before the polls close; they wait until the polls close and publish their results.
They wait until THEIR polls close, yes. But the polls for almost every other place in their state, and in every other state in the Union, are still open. You said "the polls", not "their polls", and "the polls" are still open for the same election everywhere else.
Other polls in other places may still be open, yes.
Then "the polls" are not closed. It's the same damn election, voting for the same damn people. Trying to differentiate that THEIR polls are closed so it is just fine to publish the results when all the other polls are still open is ignoring the problem.
No, news media could publish exit poll results, but actual voting results--even preliminary results--aren't released until polls close. (And reputable news sources don't even publish exit poll results until the polls close.).
All news media publish results as soon as they are available, and for national elections in the US that usually means three hours before the west coast polls close, and 6 hours before Hawaii's.
I recall hearing exit poll results in the early afternoon here on the west coast, but certainly by 5PM the news is full of them. In case you're going to try handwaving away that as just "exit polls", then remember that exit polls are considered significant enough that some people will cry "fraud" if the exit polls show their candidate winning but the actual result doesn't match.
As for your claim, I'll point you to Dixville Notch (a somewhat less unhappily named town compared to Dismal Nitch, WA), where:
So, 12:01AM Eastern time on election day, the first election results are published. Yet no "reputable" news source would do such a thing.
First, election websites only show what polling locations report AFTER the polling locations are closed. All polling locations in a locality close at the same time (unless they stay open later for long lines, etc.) and then begin tallying and reporting to the election authorities.
Unless, of course, the "locality" is "the entire US". I have seen no issues claimed or reported with local elections producing early results, simply because local election boards understand the issue and have all their polling places close at the same time.
The issue only comes up during US Presidential elections, where the local polling places span 7 time zones. And each media outlet is anxious to get street cred by announcing the right projected winner.
Second, all (legitimate) news outlets refrain from projecting/declaring a winner until after all polls related to that election are closed to prevent this very thing.
I'm so glad that you thought enough about the issue to try to use the adjective "legitimate", but when ALL news outlets are rushing to declare results and guess at who won before the last polls close, it's a waste of characters.
I guess you've never actually watched the election results for a national election, have you? All the east coast states start posting their vote totals as soon as the polls there close, which is three hours before they close on the west coast, and six hours before Hawaii. The news media starts reporting those totals as soon as they appear. First amendment, you know. And there's even one town in NH, I think it is, where the polls close at noon because there's only seven registered voters and they want to be the first to report the results.
That means that at 5PM, before a lot of people even get off work on the west coast, they can start hearing the results from New York and other Eastern time zone states.
"CNN editorial policy strictly prohibits reporting winners or characterizing the outcome of a statewide contest in any state before all the polls are scheduled to close in every precinct in that state."
Goody for them. Now apply that to national elections.
The projections you see/hear immediately after the polls close is based on exit polls, pre-election polls, past elections, etc.
It's quite a quandary, isn't it? On the one hand, "exit polls" aren't really results and have no effect on the outcome, apparently. It doesn't matter if exit polls are published before all the polling places are closed because they don't mean anything. But then, when the outcome doesn't match the exit polls, the exit polls mean something and are significant. There must have been fraud if the exit polls and the outcome don't match.
You can't have it both ways.
So, no, hacking an election website is not a big deal.
It COULD be a big deal, if it is an east coast state and it does impact the turnout in other states where the polls haven't closed yet.
BUT, hacking an "imitation" website that looks like a page reporting the result is no big deal, and the headline for this article is a patent lie. No, a child did NOT change the Florida election website. Period.
So why should capital get preferential treatment?
People need to work so they can eat. People don't need to invest their savings to eat, usually. The government has a long history of tax incentives to promote "beneficial" activity.
Years ago, sites were Slashdotted, nowadays they get Olivered and Colberted.
This. A site that was not intended to have strong authentication for comments became the target of a late night talk show host, and everyone is aghast that it was effectively slashdotted. Now everyone is aghast that an attack that took place in cyberspace ("on the Internet") was called a cyberattack.
Has this happened before? Of course. I remember several years ago Paul Begala took to the media blaming Rush Limbaugh for crashing the White House telephone system, because Rush told people to call the White House. He complained that "by 10AM the switchboard was useless", which would have been serious, except that Rush's program doesn't start until noon where the White House is -- two hours after his "attack" allegedly succeeded.
"Hey, let's just say we got DDOSed. No one will ever know afterward! We're the government!"
Explain the difference between a DDOS coming from, say, an IoT botnet, and one coming from 1000 people all actively posting crap to a comment submission system. Yes, one is "cyber", one is "human". That's a difference. Both take place in a "cyber" environment, just one is humans programmed, I mean "incited", by a call to action, the other is IoT stuff programmed to action.
We count those separately.
They are counted, and they count in the total. They are, to the point, an example of how we do not force people to go to a local polling place.
Then your election procedures suck and you need to take 1,000 of your friends to your State Board of Elections to complain. Loudly.
Because nobody shouts my name when I walk into a polling place? Reminds me of "Cheers." "Norm!"
Sorry, makes no sense. My "polling place" is my house and nobody needs to shout anything when I walk in. Getting 1000 friends to parade to an election office won't change anything.
and party for whom you voted.
They can tell you what party you are registered for, but not who you voted for. If they can tell other people who you voted for, you need to take 1000 of your friends down to the Election Office and scream bloody murder about violation of the secret ballot process.
which means they have to actually check what you actually voted on your ballot to know that you did vote in two races but did not vote in one.
Of course your local election office needs to check what you voted on your ballot. They have to count up the votes. But reporting who voted for who to ANYONE is a violation of the entire concept of secret ballot. I guess you live in a state where "secret ballot" is obsolete.
127 x 100 = 12,700.
127 is not "21 states". 127 is how many were caught, for Kansas. You assume that the rate is correct for Kansas, and then assume the same rate applies to states with a lot more electoral votes. These are assumptions that are on their face unreasonable. Why would anyone waste a lot of time rigging Kansas elections for a measly 6 electoral votes? The same problem exists for your double-vote guess.
It claims to have examine 75 million voters in 21 states and found 8,400 cases of double voting. Comparisons identify duplicates by name, birthday, and part of their social security number, which is a decent attempt but has flaws.
Some pretty obvious ones. How does this study catch the most common way someone can double vote (a favorite of the Daley machine), which is to show up at a polling place claiming to be a dead guy? Or someone they know won't be voting for some other reason? How does it catch the Oregon "double votes" that are as simple as pulling someone's discarded ballot out of the trash and sending it in? It doesn't. It cannot. The names won't match, but the person "double-voted". Or triple, or quadruple... how many polling places did the bus stop at on election day? How many ballots were pulled from waste baskets at the Post Office?
It's more like going over 950 million acres of clover with a bunch of Mars-rover-like devices designed to seek out four-leaf clovers,
No, that implies someone is doing a serious study and might find a correct number, and "the gubernatorial candidate" isn't that kind of study. It's not even as good as I analogized. The analogy is more like someone standing on a ladder over a corn field counting the number of four-leaf clovers. You know, looking in a place where it is unlikely to find any clovers and extrapolating that to the entire country.
Nobody is going to waste time rigging Kansas, at least not for a national election. Six electoral votes isn't a remarkable prize. It's pretty small, and not worth the effort. Finding 127 in Kansas is interesting, but can't be extrapolated to the entire country. The people in Chicago, for example, have a lot of experience in doing this kind of thing, so I'd say that you'd find 127 in just a one block area, probably. Maybe not. Certainly you'll find many times that 127 in a city with a population smaller than Kansas.
I'm not sure what you are responding to here. I would like to have a citable source.
I quoted what I was responding to. You would like a citeable source.
Repeat after me: an anecdote posted anonymously on slashdot is not a citable source.
Pix or it didn't happen, pix or it didn't happen ...
Then they're clearly not restricting absentee ballots to only people who actually are absent, or physically can't vote in person.
Again, you missed the point entirely. I said that every ballot is an absentee ballot. That's clearly absurd, since all ballots cannot be absentee. What would be the reasonable interpretation, then? It is that there is no such thing as an "absentee ballot". If you walk into a county election office a week before the election and say "I'd like an absentee ballot" they're going to look at you like you're a moron. "Your ballot is already in your mailbox", they'll say. If you think they're going to say "ok, please prove you're going to be out of town on election day ..." you're wrong.
You want more restrictions on absentees. That won't help.
They are a flaw in the system regardless of which parties the senators proposing them belong to.
Nobody is proposing nationwide absentee ballots. A well-known Democrat is pushing for vote-by-mail, for obvious reasons. Once you completely detach the identification process from the voting process, anything can happen.
Polling centers approach voter identity by restricting a voter to a particular polling center near their neighborhood.
No, not anymore. It's discriminatory to force someone to go to a polling place near where they live. They may work miles away and can't get to their own polling place. The solution is a provisional ballot. The voter swears he is registered in location X, and the poll workers at location Y write that data down along with his ballot and it goes to the central election office to be verified.
When you show up, they call your name loudly;
That has never happened in any polling place where I've voted.
To put numbers to this: you have to be a registered voter before you can vote--we track your voter ID with votes, so we know who you are and for whom you voted
Of course election offices keep track of who voted. They do NOT keep track of how anyone votes. You don't know "for whom you voted", unless you are a participant in vote fraud.
That's around 15,000 non-citizens potentially trying to register in the entire United States,
Your "Kansas gubernatorial candidate" does not have voting data for 21 states. Your extrapolation is flawed and likely biased, ignoring population differences. You claim you know it is "nonpartisan", except you don't.
All of these concerns, while valid, do not change the fact that we've got an impressively-low fraud rate
Your one-state gubernatorial candidate got his hands on some questionable numbers, and that proves an "impressively-low fraud rate". If HE could find THAT MANY attempts at fraud, then the real number is probably much, much higher. It's like someone standing on a ladder over an acre of clover and seeing one four-leaf clover, then multiplying the number of acres by ONE to guess at how many four-leaf clovers there are in the entire country. Mind boggling.
All of these are better done during the voting registration process, not during the actual voting.
There are lots of validation steps that need to be done during the registration process, not during the actual voting. 1. Are you a citizen? 2. Do you live in this voting district? 3. Are you registered to vote in any other district? 4. Are you over the age of X? 5. Are you a felon who is prohibited from voting? All things that need to be done during registration -- but even then can be faked.
But then, none of that matters at all if you don't bother to tie the person trying to vote back to the specific registration, like with ID. Why bother even checking to see if someone is a citizen when you register them if you never bother to check that the "citizen" trying to vote is the same person you registered?
It's like a bank opening a new account for someone after getting the SSN and address and all the other identifying details, and then handing over a username to the online banking system with no password. Why should that person need a password? You've already verified who they are.
The belief that people vote under fake names has never been shown to have any basis in actual facts.
The fact that people voted under fake names -- someone else's -- was standard operating procedure in Chicago under the Daley machine. It's probably still going on, but I don't live close enough to care or read the local news anymore.
With vote-by-mail you don't even need to bus people around to the polling places to cast fraudulent votes. You have party faithfuls collect signed ballots for $10 each, or from people who want favors from the current political machine ("you want that building permit okayed quick, you know what you need to do..."), and just a couple of people fill them out the rest of the way in the comfort of their own homes.
I'd be very interested in seeing somebody put this into print in a citeable source.
Just repeat after me: "there is no vote fraud, there is no vote fraud...". If you click your heels together while saying that, you'll awake to find yourself in bed and Auntie Em applying a cold compress to your forehead.
It's a good reason to restrict absentee ballots to only people who actually are absent, or physically can't vote in person.
You missed the point, I think. In Oregon, and apparently in Washington, EVERY ballot is an absentee ballot. They mail the things out to every registered voter. And by registering everyone who gets a driver's license, they're mailing them to a lot of people who don't care enough to even register to vote. What happens to a ballot that you throw away? Does some nice person "recycle" it for you -- you know, "reuse"?
And our nice progressive Senator Wyden wants EVERY state to do it that way. Did I mention, he's a Democrat?