On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:32:23 -0800, d.brin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I was outraged to learn that Diebold won't allow any outsiders to > look at the code programmed into their machines, claiming that it's > "proprietary." I think that at the very least this should be > challenged: the Diebold code should have independent oversight, just > as a hand count has independent oversight. They can't claim that they > have exclusive access to the vote-counting source code.
Of course, even if it was open code, it'd be hard to verify that the code installed on *all* machines actually was the open code. > These machines are deliberately made in order to have no audit trail, > no possibility of checking for error or fraud, and they were > deliberately placed in heavily democratic counties. The deliberate intentional lack of an audit trail puzzles and disturbs me greatly. > And the "shades of purple" maps remind us that > democrats remain a disenfranchised 40% in much of rural America, > while republicans were a large minority in all but the largest urban > areas. This is the exact topic that we just recently had a discussion here about. I favor allocating the electoral votes proportionally to candidate's voting percentage. I did some analysis on the 2000 election and discovered two things: - the "disenfranchised" percentage of dems and republicans seems to work out fairly closely, which is probably why not much issue is made of this. - If a proportional system was used in 2000, most likely Gore would be president: By my calculations (see my spreadsheet here:http://users.rcn.com/daly5/EVprop.xls ): Bush would have gotten 267 electoral votes, Gore would have gotten 266 electoral votes, and Nader would have gotten 5 electoral votes. Presumably Nader's votes would go to Gore, giving Gore 272 votes and the win. -Bryon _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
