On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 7:48 PM, rob brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>> I do not believe that such fraud changes the >> >> outcome of a large percentage of elections, and in those it does, it >> >> was pretty close anyway. >> >> And how do you know this since elections are not subjected to >> independent audits except in one state (beginning in 2006 - NM)? > > Your argument could be made to support any crazy conspiracy theory out > there. How do you know aliens aren't controlling our thoughts? You don't. > Or for that matter, how do you know your spouse isn't cheating on you > without proof? You take a reasonable, balanced perspective on things. > Which you seem unable to do on this issue. Rob, You can tell when someone has absolutely no facts to back them up when they attack and disparage the person rather than the issue that is under discussion. So anyone who has done actual research on the issue that clearly mathematically shows that the available data is consistent with vote fraud must be a "crazy conspiracy theorist" or lack a "balanced perspective if they disagree with your imagined beliefs about U.S. elections? > > I'm sure a degree of electoral fraud happens in the US (but much moreso in > other places). Are you saying that if everyone is doing electoral fraud, that makes it OK? >But murderers get away with murder, police are being bought > off by criminals, government employees steal office supplies. No one knows > exactly how much any of things happen. We try to limit them (balancing the > degree of the problem and the cost of addressing it), and we go on with our > lives. OH. So you see it as no big problem to pretend to live in a democracy (where you can pretend to yourself that most election outcomes are accurate) and continuing to let elections be the only major industry where insiders have complete freedom to tamper because 49 US states never subjected their election results to any independent checks, except the wholly unscientific ones in NM. Even when Utah used to use paper punch card ballots, one person did all the programming to count all the punch cards for the entire state of Utah, and no one ever checked after the election to make sure that any of the machine counts were accurate. You sure must believe in the 100% infallibility and honesty of this one person, and all the other persons who have trivially easy access to rig elections. Apparently none of the plethora of evidence that election rigging has been occurring ubiquitously in the US is of any interest or concern to you. > > I do not object to the fact that you consider it an issue of more importance > than various other issues (street crime/violence, cancer, plurality voting, > bacterial resistance to antibiotics, middle east conflict, poverty, > whatever...). Voting is the one right that protect ALL OTHER RIGHTS. Tell me, just how do you think that people can solve all the other problems if they do not have the ability to select the decision-makers who spend all our tax dollars, decide how many taxes we pay and what to spend it on, whether or not to wage war, how many police to hire, what youth programs to implement, and make all the laws, and so on? > I do object to your expectation that others on this list > consider it so, since that is not the core issue of the list. I was *not* the person who began this thread. Are you claiming that my expertise and knowledge about the issues of vote fraud which is extensive since I have studied this issue and read widely on it and written dozens of papers with PhD statisticians and mathematicians on it - using actual election data - are not welcome on this list if a thread that someone else introduces touches on a topic on which I have considerable knowledge? > > What I care about, and my understanding of what this list is about, is the > problems due to plurality voting and how to fix them. So when the facts are not on your side then: 1. make personal attacks and 2. say that the topic should not to be discussed on this list? >> >> So my priorities are different. >> >> Yes. Apparently. > > Due to the nature of the list, isn't that expected? So are you claiming that an interest in seeing that votes are counted accurately as voters intended is incompatible with discussing new voting methods? Really? Well that may not be true for everyone on this list Rob. Perhaps some people on this list *may* want to consider the effects of particular voting methods on the ability to effect transparently verifiably accurate election outcomes. I mean let's climb out of the rabbit hole for a few minutes and consider the REAL world effects of some of these voting methods on the effort to make sure that voters actually have the right to "throw the bums out" rather than just the pretense of democracy while private companies secretly count (and often cast) our votes for us without any independent checks. >> >> Giving up on fixing a huge problem because it makes it more difficult >> >> to >> >> fix a much smaller problem is not something I can support. >> > > Well, first off, I did not say small. I said "smaller". Honestly, you said "MUCH smaller". > Big difference. I > consider the problem with plurality huge, strongly affecting the shape of > our government (i.e. it has become polarized into two main parties that > spend most of their time battling each other rather than solving real > problems). Yes. I agree that polarization is a probem, but perhaps the cause has not been plurality as much as fixed fraudulent election outcomes that were not decided by voters, as well as the corporate/military industrial complex which seems to be funding campaigns and then running our government and our press rather than voters. > > Your issue is with crime.....a fundamentally different thing. More fundamentally, my issue is with accuracy of machine vote counts. ANY system which lacks any routine method to detect and correct errors can be safely assumed to be inaccurate. The payoff to rig elections is control of budgets, land use and contract issues worth millions to trillions of dollars. There is nothing in place that would even detect vote fraud in virtually all states. There is less than nothing in place to tell the difference between fraud or innocent error or to catch any perpetrator if vote fraud were to occur. VotER fraud (voters voting illegally) is easily detected using voter registration records and poll books after an election. Vote fraud is not detectable, given the voting systems, and procedures in place in most states. > > Why do you not consider the issues with plurality a larger problem than you > do? Maybe because that is your pet issue, this is mine. Right. But why is it that you don't want the public verifiably KNOW that if you use a new voting method that you support that this new voting method is accurately applied to the actual intended votes of the voters? I.e. You want a new method, but you don't care if the new method is accurately counted or whether the insiders rig it undetectably or not? Can you explain that to me? What sense does it make to change the voting method when you have no assurance whatsoever that either the existing or the new method will be counted accurately or not by the private companies that secretly count (and often cast) the ballots today? You don't mind having virtually no public oversight over the integrity of election results that would make sure that your "pet" method is being accurately applied? You really believe that voting methods should be considered only divorced from any considerations of whether or not or how easily the public can oversee whether or not the methods are accurately applied? Cheers, Kathy ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
