Even at a very busy poll, I've never waited more than about 15 or 20 minutes. There's a lot to bitch about here in Canada, but I have to say that Federal elections and the elections in my province (BC) are well run. The volunteers at the polls I usually go to have been doing this since the first election I voted in when I was 18. They are courteous, professional and take their jobs very seriously.
Antiquated is a meaningless metric for an election. What counts is accuracy, and hand counted elections have about a 2% error rate, which is pretty damned good. On the other hand, look at the botched messes that have come of some computerized elections.
I'll take proven 19th century technology that assures me to with about a 98% margin that my vote got counted properly to some private contracter's voting machine that doesn't even puke out a paper record.
Rice University determined that hand-counted ballots tend to have an error rate of 2%, which in most elections would be below the relevance of statistical margins of error. It is precisely this reason that when the leading candidates are very close (I think 100 votes in Canadian Federal elections), there is a judicial recount (a recount in front of a judge who will certify the resuls). Obviously even with this safeguard there are probably a few candidates who have been screwed out of an election they may have won, but I would posit that it would be a relatively small number since Confederation (1867).
Mind you, the key reason that there are such low margins of error in Canadian elections is because ballots, at least at the Federal level, are very very very simple. You simply have a list of candidates and their party affiliation with a box next to them that you mark with an X or check. Simple ballots means simple rules to determine what represents a spoiled ballot. In the US, ballots are often quite complex, with multiple elected positions be selected, as well as voter initiatives. As we saw from the hanging chad controversy in Florida in 2000, complex ballots can cause just about any counting system to produce a high number of errors.
It's also notable that in the US, the agencies responsible for managing elections and counting ballots are often politicized. Elections Canada is pretty fiercely non-partisan, and even with the robocall scandal, it is demonstrated that it is not afraid to take on the government that signs its paycheck. The idea of a Conservative or NDP electoral officer for any riding in Canada would be an anathema.
There is no reason the system could not scale. Since counts happen at polling station, providing you have enough of them in any district it would not matter whether the population was 30 million, 300 million or a billion.
Ron Paul's ideological pals are controlling the the GOP. They're called the Tea Party, and look how seriously they've fucked over the Republicans' chances of gaining the White House.
Several polls showed Dr Paul would do better against Obama than Romney (or any of the other names that were thrown around in the primaries.) He has pretty good appeal with independents and swing voters and Romney, obviously, doesnt..
Several polls? What polls? The same kind that Paul had going where he bussed in his supporters to try screw up straw polls to show he had massive support?
Excellent examples. There are enough examples of authors and other artists rewriting history to suggest that the creator's word alone should not be sufficient to change an article. To do so would be to open Wikipedia up to inaccuracies specifically put there. There are no lack of real life Greedos who would like Wikipedia to alter the order of who shot first, so simply giving them the power to unilaterally alter statements in an article would damage Wikipedia.
I don't think Obama was the reason. He is vulnerable, and I think a reasonably good candidate could take him down. What is killing Romney is the hard right social conservatives and they're useful idiots; the Tea Party. I think the good candidates saw how Palin was received, like Jesus had grown tits, and realized 2012 was beyond reach, and let some sacrificial lamb take it in the balls.
It better be a brain transplant, because Hillary Clinton is likely to be the Dem's pick, and Clinton beating on Palin would be about as amusing as watching Godzilla stomping on Barbie.
Reality dictates how you live. You can live your libertarian fantasy all you like, but at the end of the day some problems require a society's effort. More importantly, some problems don't require your opinion. If AGW Isis happening (and the overwhelming majority of scientists in related fields say it is) then we can either sit around on our asses, watch it all happen and receive solace from our ideologies, or we can admit that there is such a thing as society, indeed civilization, and find a way to prevent the worst.
Even democracies have had conscription. And this problem does not require anywhere near that kind of direct state intervention.
I'd like my grandchildren to have a reasonably decent planet I live on. If that means higher taxes and moving to alternatives, then so be it. Christ, the West beat the Germans and the Soviets, and spent a helluva lot of money to do it. What's you're problem now?
So you filter the science you accept based purely on your ideology. How does that make you one bit different than a Creationist?
Or to put it another way, if puking millions of years of sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere in the space of three centuries is leading to serious, even severe consequences, how exactly does your political ideology matter in the least?
It strikes me that the story of King Canute demonstrating to his subordinates that his status and power could not stop the tide is on you should ponder. The universe doesn't give a flying fuck about your political leanings, or mine or anyone else's. It will crush a libertarian, a communist or a conservative equally.
All you are telling me is that libertarians and other absolutist free market types have formulated an economic system profoundly unsuited to deal with substantial changes in our environment. Instead of saying "the free market can solve the problem of AGW", what you are really saying is "it cannot, so science must be ignored in the pursuit of short term goals."
Did I mention the universe doesn't care about dollar bills either?
Does "The Bell Curve" provide a biological definition of race? If so, could you kindly synopsize it so that we may then evaluate claims of race such as:
"West African sprinters, East African joggers, European power lifters, East Asian gymnasts."
Is West African a biological race? Is East African? Is European? Is East Asian?
I disagree. I don't think Microsoft has a good marketing division any more, or at least it's too overloaded to do any good. I would say Apple's marketing easily exceeds Microsoft's in competency and charisma.
There is no room for error that I can see. Microsoft is years late to this party, and to be pissing off developers is insane. This isn't 1995 any more, where Microsoft's market share basically gave it carte blanche to do whatever it likes to developers and customers.
If the 8 isn't ready soon, then so far as I can tell there will be no reason to complete it at all. Developers have no lack of options these days.
Everything about this OS is insane. No AD integration, when that is the one thing that would have made corporate customers stand up and take notice, and now developers being given the cold shoulder. Just bizarre.
I don't recall Google stifling Android like this. Nothing to worry about. Microsoft can do what it likes. Android and iOS have such commanding leads that Microsoft is likely irrelevant.
Been a long time, but I recall that you could even write custom authentication plugins in VBScript/JScript back in the day and most certainly you can do it with.NET. Why anyone would build a system this way is beyond me.
Which is why you don't have your webservers do the encryption, you use some sort of https load balancer acting as an https proxy. Throw in some caching and there you go.
There are no lack of situations in which you don't get a second chance with a bad practitioner. And I think the evidence from other countries suggests highly that they can deliver results comparable to what the United States delivers, and in some areas, far exceed.the United States (ie. most Western European nations easily exceed the United States in infant mortality rate).
Let me repeat my oft stated axiom; the Universe does not give a flying fuck about your particular political or ideological leanings. Choice doesn't mean very goddamned much when the risks of the choice are so variant that one wrong mistake in choosing your doctor in a completely free market place could mean death or maiming.
Increased medical knowledge does little good if there is no way to transmit it. Forcing medical colleges to adhere to at least minimum standards by both certification boards and legislation is the only way I know of to assure it. It isn't perfect, but without it, the average health consumer might get lucky, or might not. Knowledge alone did not lead to the advances at the GP level.
And yes, certification boards suck, but at least there is a mechanism, even a dysfunctional one. What would you prefer, absolutely no means at all to stop incompetent doctors from practicing?
All I can do is point you to what SCOTUS has said on the rights embodied in the Bill of Rights, and in many different situations it has been stated that Congress and the States can place reasonable restrictions on liberties. It isn't my tortured thinking at all.
Even at a very busy poll, I've never waited more than about 15 or 20 minutes. There's a lot to bitch about here in Canada, but I have to say that Federal elections and the elections in my province (BC) are well run. The volunteers at the polls I usually go to have been doing this since the first election I voted in when I was 18. They are courteous, professional and take their jobs very seriously.
Antiquated is a meaningless metric for an election. What counts is accuracy, and hand counted elections have about a 2% error rate, which is pretty damned good. On the other hand, look at the botched messes that have come of some computerized elections.
I'll take proven 19th century technology that assures me to with about a 98% margin that my vote got counted properly to some private contracter's voting machine that doesn't even puke out a paper record.
Rice University determined that hand-counted ballots tend to have an error rate of 2%, which in most elections would be below the relevance of statistical margins of error. It is precisely this reason that when the leading candidates are very close (I think 100 votes in Canadian Federal elections), there is a judicial recount (a recount in front of a judge who will certify the resuls). Obviously even with this safeguard there are probably a few candidates who have been screwed out of an election they may have won, but I would posit that it would be a relatively small number since Confederation (1867).
Mind you, the key reason that there are such low margins of error in Canadian elections is because ballots, at least at the Federal level, are very very very simple. You simply have a list of candidates and their party affiliation with a box next to them that you mark with an X or check. Simple ballots means simple rules to determine what represents a spoiled ballot. In the US, ballots are often quite complex, with multiple elected positions be selected, as well as voter initiatives. As we saw from the hanging chad controversy in Florida in 2000, complex ballots can cause just about any counting system to produce a high number of errors.
It's also notable that in the US, the agencies responsible for managing elections and counting ballots are often politicized. Elections Canada is pretty fiercely non-partisan, and even with the robocall scandal, it is demonstrated that it is not afraid to take on the government that signs its paycheck. The idea of a Conservative or NDP electoral officer for any riding in Canada would be an anathema.
There is no reason the system could not scale. Since counts happen at polling station, providing you have enough of them in any district it would not matter whether the population was 30 million, 300 million or a billion.
I don't need to imply. Her Alaska record speaks for itself. McCain made a grave error and paid for it.Q
Ron Paul's ideological pals are controlling the the GOP. They're called the Tea Party, and look how seriously they've fucked over the Republicans' chances of gaining the White House.
Several polls? What polls? The same kind that Paul had going where he bussed in his supporters to try screw up straw polls to show he had massive support?
Excellent examples. There are enough examples of authors and other artists rewriting history to suggest that the creator's word alone should not be sufficient to change an article. To do so would be to open Wikipedia up to inaccuracies specifically put there. There are no lack of real life Greedos who would like Wikipedia to alter the order of who shot first, so simply giving them the power to unilaterally alter statements in an article would damage Wikipedia.
Except that whatever Clinton's flaws, she has a brain, and by all accounts a very keen and learned one.
I don't think Obama was the reason. He is vulnerable, and I think a reasonably good candidate could take him down. What is killing Romney is the hard right social conservatives and they're useful idiots; the Tea Party. I think the good candidates saw how Palin was received, like Jesus had grown tits, and realized 2012 was beyond reach, and let some sacrificial lamb take it in the balls.
It better be a brain transplant, because Hillary Clinton is likely to be the Dem's pick, and Clinton beating on Palin would be about as amusing as watching Godzilla stomping on Barbie.
I've seen about four of these sites
All claiming they haven't got an election wrong since 1776.
It is sad to see someone who views his fellow men in terms of interference.
Reality dictates how you live. You can live your libertarian fantasy all you like, but at the end of the day some problems require a society's effort. More importantly, some problems don't require your opinion. If AGW Isis happening (and the overwhelming majority of scientists in related fields say it is) then we can either sit around on our asses, watch it all happen and receive solace from our ideologies, or we can admit that there is such a thing as society, indeed civilization, and find a way to prevent the worst.
Even democracies have had conscription. And this problem does not require anywhere near that kind of direct state intervention.
I'd like my grandchildren to have a reasonably decent planet I live on. If that means higher taxes and moving to alternatives, then so be it. Christ, the West beat the Germans and the Soviets, and spent a helluva lot of money to do it. What's you're problem now?
So you filter the science you accept based purely on your ideology. How does that make you one bit different than a Creationist?
Or to put it another way, if puking millions of years of sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere in the space of three centuries is leading to serious, even severe consequences, how exactly does your political ideology matter in the least?
It strikes me that the story of King Canute demonstrating to his subordinates that his status and power could not stop the tide is on you should ponder. The universe doesn't give a flying fuck about your political leanings, or mine or anyone else's. It will crush a libertarian, a communist or a conservative equally.
All you are telling me is that libertarians and other absolutist free market types have formulated an economic system profoundly unsuited to deal with substantial changes in our environment. Instead of saying "the free market can solve the problem of AGW", what you are really saying is "it cannot, so science must be ignored in the pursuit of short term goals."
Did I mention the universe doesn't care about dollar bills either?
Does "The Bell Curve" provide a biological definition of race? If so, could you kindly synopsize it so that we may then evaluate claims of race such as:
"West African sprinters, East African joggers, European power lifters, East Asian gymnasts."
Is West African a biological race? Is East African? Is European? Is East Asian?
Please provide a scientific definition of race before you process down that couse.
Bullshit. You doubt AGW because it means having to actually do something that costs money.
I disagree. I don't think Microsoft has a good marketing division any more, or at least it's too overloaded to do any good. I would say Apple's marketing easily exceeds Microsoft's in competency and charisma.
There is no room for error that I can see. Microsoft is years late to this party, and to be pissing off developers is insane. This isn't 1995 any more, where Microsoft's market share basically gave it carte blanche to do whatever it likes to developers and customers.
If the 8 isn't ready soon, then so far as I can tell there will be no reason to complete it at all. Developers have no lack of options these days.
Everything about this OS is insane. No AD integration, when that is the one thing that would have made corporate customers stand up and take notice, and now developers being given the cold shoulder. Just bizarre.
I don't recall Google stifling Android like this. Nothing to worry about. Microsoft can do what it likes. Android and iOS have such commanding leads that Microsoft is likely irrelevant.
Been a long time, but I recall that you could even write custom authentication plugins in VBScript/JScript back in the day and most certainly you can do it with .NET. Why anyone would build a system this way is beyond me.
Which is why you don't have your webservers do the encryption, you use some sort of https load balancer acting as an https proxy. Throw in some caching and there you go.
There are no lack of situations in which you don't get a second chance with a bad practitioner. And I think the evidence from other countries suggests highly that they can deliver results comparable to what the United States delivers, and in some areas, far exceed.the United States (ie. most Western European nations easily exceed the United States in infant mortality rate).
Let me repeat my oft stated axiom; the Universe does not give a flying fuck about your particular political or ideological leanings. Choice doesn't mean very goddamned much when the risks of the choice are so variant that one wrong mistake in choosing your doctor in a completely free market place could mean death or maiming.
Increased medical knowledge does little good if there is no way to transmit it. Forcing medical colleges to adhere to at least minimum standards by both certification boards and legislation is the only way I know of to assure it. It isn't perfect, but without it, the average health consumer might get lucky, or might not. Knowledge alone did not lead to the advances at the GP level.
And yes, certification boards suck, but at least there is a mechanism, even a dysfunctional one. What would you prefer, absolutely no means at all to stop incompetent doctors from practicing?
All I can do is point you to what SCOTUS has said on the rights embodied in the Bill of Rights, and in many different situations it has been stated that Congress and the States can place reasonable restrictions on liberties. It isn't my tortured thinking at all.