I think the problem is giving millions of dollars to people who will vote to use your dubious software to completely change the way our nation elects its leaders.
I dunno, just sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Every interview I have seen involving someone who has actually _met_ Bush says that he is very smart man.
Ok:
By Dick Hermann, a Washington lawyer/publisher
I haven't said much during the presidential campaign season, but the time is getting short and I think I might regret not expressing myself on the matter of George W. Bush possibly being elected president.
I went to school with George. In fact, I knew him quite well, both through athletics, socializing, joint classes, and particularly as my immediate lab partner in a Freshman science class. The fact that he is tantalizingly close to becoming the most powerful and important person in the world is both astonishing and terrifying. I had quite a number of classmates whom I thought might one day be worthy of, and competent to serve as, president, but George was most definitely not one of them.
I did not come away from my four years of interaction with him with a very positive feeling about him. He was intellectually lazy, not particularly interested in anything serious, rather arrogant, contemptuous of studying, and purposeless. To think that someone so "average" could be leading this nation is a scary proposition. Sure, people change, but not that much. He would have to do a great deal more morphing in order to be up to the job to which he aspires.
One of our fellow classmates advances the theory that George is so limited and narrow that he would have to surround himself with great advisors; hence, there is nothing to fear. I disagree. Ultimately, presidents have to make big decisions, and I worry about that. The prospect that our children might have to survive in a world heavily influenced by George should give anyone pause.
One other point, one that has been made by others, but that I was witness to, "up close and personal:" George has NEVER been tested. He has lived a life of rare privilege, secure in his name and the largesse of the powerful and influential people who circle his family. No one ever had a safety net like George--whether it meant getting into Andover, Yale, Harvard Business School, the Air National Guard when (take it from me and the other 50-plus percent of my class that wound up on active duty after graduation) there were absolutely no Guard or Reserve slots available anywhere, the oil business, extricating himself from his oil company, the Texas Rangers, the gubernatorial nomination, and the presidential nomination--and few have taken more advantage of it. Like Ann Richards once said: "He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple."
Isn't that more like newspapers putting refined GHB in your basement, and then getting blamed for poisoning?
I figure absentee ballots are an acceptable risk, but there's a reason (most) states don't mail out their ballots - coerced voting. Yes, it's possible under one system, but much easier under the other.
Absentee ballots currently account for a tiny fraction of votes cast... if we had internet polling in general, don't you think it would open the door to more fraud, just because there's more opportunity and fewer barriers?
...is that your thuggish boss can say "look buddy, your job is history unless you give me your login and/or let me watch over your shoulder while you vote."
Etc.
Or voting at gunpoint after being hauled off to an internet cafe... you get the point. I don't know any way around that.
I would like to see electronic tallying at the polling place, though. Just dial up and submit your totals at the end of the day.
BUT... I would really still like a hard copy of each vote, right after each vote. God forbid that we wind up with an election such as the one in Florida, with nothing but bits vanished from the ether as a record of people's votes.
Is there any way to do this securely w/o a physical record of the vote?
Just imagine if the voting system were nothing but bits flying through the ether... I absolutely want a hard-copy record of my vote. Can you imagine the untraceable corruption that'd be possible otherwise?
Tabulating & reporting electronically sounds ok, but I want something that can be looked at later, and know that it hasn't been tampered with. Any solution should still allow some sort of physical, manual count, IMHO.
It'd be rough, but you could say something like "Bush+Buchanan votes must stay the same, and Gore+Nader votes must stay the same." This assumes that if anyone is switching, it's BushBuchanan, and NaderGore - if a bunch of Nader votes switch to Gore, (i.e. Nader votes decline) then you say "nope, sorry, too many switches from Nader, we're reallocating the (new) Gore votes back to Nader).
I just hacked up a perl script that will backup/restore phone book data from Samsung 6100/8500 phones... anybody else been able to do this for other phones? It'd be cool to have a Linux version of FoneSync - anybody interested?:)
Hrm... so while I'm saying that a re-vote would prove (or disprove) the confusing ballot, you're saying that the re-vote can't happen until _after_ that's been proven. Fair enough.
So how can you prove or disprove that the ballot layout affected the outcome, with a secret ballot, without re-voting?
I would like to know, however, what the problem might be with doing a re-vote, especially from the Bush camp?
There seem to be 4 likely reasons for the high Buchanan count:
1) Lots of people like Buchanan in Palm Beach
2) Bush supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan
3) Gore supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan
4) Bush AND Gore supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan.
Looking at these 4:
1) The Buchanan numbers are legit. A re-vote would likely NOT hurt Bush, could even help him, if Buchanan voters changed to Bush to get the "next best thing. No reason for the Bush camp to complain.
2) Bush supporters accidentally voted Buchanan - a re-vote would allow them to cast the correct vote, helping Bush. Again, no reason for the Bush camp to complain.
3) Gore supporters accidentally voted Buchanan - a revote would allow them to cast the correct vote, helping Gore. If the Bush camp complains, they don't look like they're interested in a fair vote (fair == peoples votes count as they wish)
4) Both camps accidentally voted Buchanan - a re-vote would, again, allow people to properly express their desires.
How could the Bush camp legitimately complain about any of these?
A switch from Nader might possibly help Gore unfairly - surely something could be devised to rule this out, as well as a similar case for Buchanan.
Shows a scatter graph of Buchanan votes vs. Bush votes, by county. Assuming that Buchanan should get a fairly consistent percentage of the Bush votes by county (and this graph does seem to bear out that assumption), the Palm Beach results stick out like a sore thumb.
It has also been reported that 19,000 ballots from palm beach were invalidated because 2 holes had been punched for the presidential candidate. I wonder which two they were...?
It's important to emphasize that this does NOT mean that there was any sort of fraud going on. It was most likely an honest mistake, the official who designed the ballot said she was trying to find a way to use large fonts to help the elderly voters.
If it's clear that they were confused, though, it seems that the only fair thing to do is have a re-vote in Palm Beach, open only to those who voted the first time. (They all signed their names, right?)
Infrared LEDs & gutted quickcams can be great for night shots of critters (like the robot/cat thing).
I had raccoons coming in through my cat door, and wreaking havoc with the cat food and water. SO... I took the IR filter off the webcam, hooked it up to some motion detection software, and got some cool pics.
Of course, that didn't solve the problem... but first, you have to know your enemy!:)
Slashdot Mirror
http://promo.net/pg/volunteer.html
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As a result, I was able to see that there is a mirror of the plain text here and of the palm doc version here
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I'd comment on the book but I haven't read it yet.
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Linuxone has hopefully trained their phone staff since then...
(there used to be an MP3 of the phone call somewhere...)
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I dunno, just sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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Unisys Corp
SOFT MONEY DONATIONS: 1999-2000
To Democrats: $0 (0%)
To Republicans: $141,300 (100%)
Total: $141,300
Dell Computer
SOFT MONEY DONATIONS: 1999-2000
To Democrats: $125,549 (26%)
To Republicans: $353,300 (74%)
Total: $480,599
Microsoft Corp
SOFT MONEY DONATIONS: 1999-2000
To Democrats: $916,792 (43%)
To Republicans: $1,236,964 (57%)
Total: $2,153,756
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An error? Oh, so de-selecting spam was an error on my part I guess...
Oh good, just what I wanted. Join the hive!
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The Healthy Palm
and others...
Thing is, though, I'm not sure I'd trust, for example, a pregnancy-safe drug list I just got off some guy's home page...
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it is a very strange site, but I really like Tim Robbins, so perhaps it'll be interesting...
2001-01-04 16:16:01 Gnome goes Hollywood! (articles,gnome) (rejected)
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Oh... you mean now it's official?
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Ok:
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I figure absentee ballots are an acceptable risk, but there's a reason (most) states don't mail out their ballots - coerced voting. Yes, it's possible under one system, but much easier under the other.
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Etc.
Or voting at gunpoint after being hauled off to an internet cafe... you get the point. I don't know any way around that.
I would like to see electronic tallying at the polling place, though. Just dial up and submit your totals at the end of the day.
BUT... I would really still like a hard copy of each vote, right after each vote. God forbid that we wind up with an election such as the one in Florida, with nothing but bits vanished from the ether as a record of people's votes.
Is there any way to do this securely w/o a physical record of the vote?
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Tabulating & reporting electronically sounds ok, but I want something that can be looked at later, and know that it hasn't been tampered with. Any solution should still allow some sort of physical, manual count, IMHO.
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Better than nothing?
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-Eric
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So how can you prove or disprove that the ballot layout affected the outcome, with a secret ballot, without re-voting?
Sigh. My brain hurts.
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I would like to know, however, what the problem might be with doing a re-vote, especially from the Bush camp?
There seem to be 4 likely reasons for the high Buchanan count:
1) Lots of people like Buchanan in Palm Beach
2) Bush supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan
3) Gore supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan
4) Bush AND Gore supporters accidentally voted for Buchanan.
Looking at these 4:
1) The Buchanan numbers are legit. A re-vote would likely NOT hurt Bush, could even help him, if Buchanan voters changed to Bush to get the "next best thing. No reason for the Bush camp to complain.
2) Bush supporters accidentally voted Buchanan - a re-vote would allow them to cast the correct vote, helping Bush. Again, no reason for the Bush camp to complain.
3) Gore supporters accidentally voted Buchanan - a revote would allow them to cast the correct vote, helping Gore. If the Bush camp complains, they don't look like they're interested in a fair vote (fair == peoples votes count as they wish)
4) Both camps accidentally voted Buchanan - a re-vote would, again, allow people to properly express their desires.
How could the Bush camp legitimately complain about any of these?
A switch from Nader might possibly help Gore unfairly - surely something could be devised to rule this out, as well as a similar case for Buchanan.
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Shows a scatter graph of Buchanan votes vs. Bush votes, by county. Assuming that Buchanan should get a fairly consistent percentage of the Bush votes by county (and this graph does seem to bear out that assumption), the Palm Beach results stick out like a sore thumb.
It has also been reported that 19,000 ballots from palm beach were invalidated because 2 holes had been punched for the presidential candidate. I wonder which two they were...?
It's important to emphasize that this does NOT mean that there was any sort of fraud going on. It was most likely an honest mistake, the official who designed the ballot said she was trying to find a way to use large fonts to help the elderly voters.
If it's clear that they were confused, though, it seems that the only fair thing to do is have a re-vote in Palm Beach, open only to those who voted the first time. (They all signed their names, right?)
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(score: -1, offtopic)
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I had raccoons coming in through my cat door, and wreaking havoc with the cat food and water. SO... I took the IR filter off the webcam, hooked it up to some motion detection software, and got some cool pics.
Of course, that didn't solve the problem... but first, you have to know your enemy!
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