Re: [tlug] Re: Somewhat OT- open source software for US voting machines

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Edward Middleton writes:

 > "a statistically significant percentage" or "the statistically
 > significant percentage"?  I imagine mick mouse and dead presidents get
 > their fair share of votes but is that the majority of votes that failed
 > to reflect the voters preference?

Definitely not, since those are definitely votes that reflect the
voters' preferences!  They may not get to vote for the candidates
they'd like to see, but they have definitely made their feelings known
about the ones they do see(~= "reflect")!

Syntax-based sarcasm aside, of course I don't know, and neither do
you.  That's precisely the point.

 > >  > i.e. a significant number of voters preferences were not recorded
 > >  > by the current process and that may have effected the outcome of
 > >  > the election.
 > >
 > > As several people have pointed out, this is probably true of all
 > > voting systems in existence.
 > 
 > That may be the case, it is impossible to know.  The issues is the
 > degree to which voters preferences are not reflected in the election
 > result.  Mugabe might have won the presidential election in Zimbabwe,
 > but a significant number of voters preferences were not reflected in the
 > outcome which calls into question the outcome of the election.

Sure.  However, in the case of the U.S., if the result really does
turn on a half-dozen votes, I'd be willing to bet that which voters
still are nursing hangovers from last Saturday are more important in
determining the outcome than busted voting machines.  I would say
we're into the level of accuracy where voter psychological noise is
way more important than voter failure to register their preference of
the moment.

 > > The important thing about the U.S. process to note is that in the end
 > > there's usually very little difference between the platforms of the
 > > candidates.
 > 
 > I am not disagreeing with you here but it is still important that the
 > voting public has confidence in the process even if they don't like the
 > candidates.

Sure.  That would be nice.  In fact, the low voter turnouts in the
U.S. and Japan are, IMO, generally signs that voters don't really want
any big changes, and don't expect the elections to affect their share
of the graft by very much.  The right to complain about it anyway is
of course the most important Article of the Bill of Rights :-).

 > > So the American people are generally getting what they want AFAICS;
 > > it's only a few fringes who really have any dissatisfaction to
 > > express.
 > 
 > The fringe that got the HAVA[1] passed, or those complaining about the
 > changes it mandated?

Neither; I'm talking about the articles in Rolling Stone explaining
how Bush workers disenfranchised about 200,000 "people of color" in
the Great State of Woody Hayes^W^WOhio, and stole its electoral votes.

Helping Americans (or anybody who is politamentally disabled, for that
matter) vote is a good thing.  Bitching about the results when the
total number of votes that need to be stolen to swing the thing is a
couple hundred in one or two crucial states is another thing
entirely.  Sure, it hurts to lose all that graft, but "stolen" is not
really a good word when what really happened is you left it up to the
Fates (by incompetent campaigning) and came up with a short thread.