(*sigh*) a bit slower yet...
Read "cares" for acres, and I meant to say "any kind of generalizing"...
LMB McAlister @ 20, I'm not trying to refute a straw-man argument here. Rather, I think that the story may be a good sign -- that same focus you mention causes even relatively small problems to hit the papers, and give a public black eye to those responsible.
And I wonder how many of "the crackers" (I'm charitably assuming you mean long-time native Floridians here) are involved in the mechanics of elections -- a significant percentage of the people I deal with here have retired here from somewhere else. Retirees form a large percentage of election workers, because guys like me have to work (or in my case, attend classes), making it difficult to participate. They all get the election worker training, but do they all get the message? Sure the elections commissioner knows and acres, but an election worker from Ohio may not have been here for 2000.
It seems to me, the challenge is identifying systematic bias within a noise floor of individual mistakes and bad behavior. That's the stuff that can undermine elections, and confidence in the election process. So, the value of anecdotal evidence is in keeping the noise floor low, and indicating areas to look for systematic problems. In my opinion kind of generalizing directly from it is fraught with peril.
(and, apologies for the double post! gotta click slower... MJB)
Just to provide the alternative experience, I had no trouble voting in Volusia county, just northeast of Lake. The election workers were friendly, and knowledgeable. Instructions, sample ballots, and a stack of practice ballots for a fictional race (that you could mark on, and show to the election workers) were available.
I'm not saying this to refute the author's claim -- but to say that it's difficult to identify how widespread a problem is by anecdote.
Just to provide the alternative experience, I had no trouble voting in Volusia county, just northeast of Lake. The election workers were friendly, and knowledgeable. Instructions, sample ballots, and a stack of practice ballots for a fictional race (that you could mark on, and show to the election workers) were available.
I'm not saying this to refute the author's claim -- just to say that it's difficult to identify how widespread a problem is by anecdote.
This one takes a byte longer...
FF buckets of bits on the bus,
FF buckets of bits,
take one down
short it to ground,
FE buckets of bits on the bus!
Elizabeth @ 47:
Ding! You've got it exactly. As an old role-playing hand, I 've dealt with that type on a number of occasions. The difference here is that in the gaming envronment, you can tweak the context to send them minning and maxing in some direction that's interesting for the other players. I don't know how one would accomplish that in the real world. (Space Race II, maybe?)
Well, if nothing else the limit of the judicial function as arrests approach Congress equals 201...
Patrick says, in part:
It would be nice, he said not idly, to have a discussion of the voting-machine problem that didn't immediately devolve into despondency and/or fantasies of violence. Surely this crowd is smarter than that.
Living in DeLand, FL (which is within Volusia county), I've been concerned about this in both the tacical and strategic senses. Tactically, I spoke against the purchase od DRE machines at the county council meeting where the critical vote on purchasing them was taken. Since the purchase was made here anyway (due to a clever convergence of state and federal mandates), I'm now volunteering to be a poll worker.
If I can't eliminate the risks of this technology, I can at least reduce the risk as best I can within the limits of my power.
Strategically, I'm still trying to figure out what kind of system would generate the benefits of fair representation we seek and yet be attractive enough some other way to compete with the foolish technologies we're being sold now. It seems like an "OpenSource vs. Microsoft" type fight to me, where the competition is for credibility, and the challenge is to get the commercial interests' thumb off the scale. Do we seek The Cathedral and the Bazaar for voting technologies?
Or, to save on postage;
Down with this sort of thing!
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 6 |
| 2007 | 3 |
| 2006 | 2 |
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