Re: [OT] Vote!
Re: [OT] Vote!
- Subject: Re: [OT] Vote!
- From: Jordi Bares <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 18:12:54 +0100
- Organization: The Mill
The sudden need of a computerised system is basically influenced by the
big TV/media corporations and the business opportunities for that week.
Their power is clear, just remember who proclaimed George Bush president
of the US *before* all the votes were counted.
Sad world where we are changing happily our history, values and
education from the real world our parents were living to a more abstract
and utterly non-sense world we will give to our children where film is
our history, tv our education and money our only religion.
jb
On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 17:51, Martin Orpen wrote:
> On 18 Aug 2005, at 13:55, deivy petrescu wrote:
>
> > I have to agree with you guys, an honest penciled vote is much
> > better than a rigged electronic one!
> > There, we all agree!
> > Why is this list in existence in first place? It is not because
> > computers are sexier, but because as someone posted couple of days
> > ago "I can do a week's worth of work in few hours". This is a
> > compelling reason to use computers.
> > If we are talking about a Scandinavian country with 6 million
> > people, may be computers are not so important. But the US has about
> > 300.000.000 people, India has around 600.000.000 voters and in the
> > last election in Brazil there were about 100.000.000 voters. This
> > is more than the whole population of GB (more than 1.6 times).
> > Computers are necessary.
>
> You've been suckered by technology.
>
> The democratic process is one in which you can participate in more
> ways that just voting. It's also a process which costs very little to
> ordinary people - people are willing to count the votes for free if
> you want them too.
>
> The process is open, transparent and *not* prone to fraud (as is
> evident from the effort put into gerrymandering). One only needs to
> look at the amount of column inches devoted to US election screw ups
> to realise that the UK process of using real people to do the work is
> about a million times more efficient and unquestionably more honest.
>
> However, this is not the American way. The simple process of casting
> and counting ballots must be made to generate a profit for somebody
> and therefore be made more susceptible to *business interests*.
>
> There is no correlation between number of people involved and the
> necessity to use machines. Your example of the US is meaningless as
> there is no *single system* in use across the US and all individual
> states could work successfully with the UK manual system if they had
> any inclination to do so.
>
> India and Brazil are third world countries where literacy presents
> serious problems - Indian peasants used to make a thumb impression to
> cast their votes. Although they aren't really comparable with the US
> and UK it is worth looking at India to illustrate the financial
> interests that are at work.
>
> The biggest criticism of the manual Indian system was that it took
> 24-48 hours to count the ballots. That doesn't sound to bad to me
> when you've got 600,000 of them to count - and hardly a good reason
> to spend a huge amount of money on a mechanised solution. But, just
> like the US, this is *good business* - diverting public money to
> businesses to develop high technology solutions to non-existent
> problems in order to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
>
> In the US the money would be given to *private* institutions, but in
> India they're honest enough to appreciate that Boeing and Lockheed
> aren't actually viable without massive public subsidy and therefore
> they've got no problem with the concept of *state owned* industry.
> They simply commissioned two of their high-tech, state-owned defence
> contractors to come up with the machinery and have also made a point
> of marketing the devices across the rest of the third world. I can't
> find the figures, but I'm guessing that the cost to the Indian tax
> payer to instigate this system was massive - and certainly pointless
> given that every time I've visited India myself there are at least
> six people doing a single person's work pretty much everywhere you go :(
>
> The public pay for them, the defence contractors and the government
> make a load of money out of it.
>
> All made possible because ordinary people are *demanding* that they
> get the result of something they have to wait five years to do in
> less than 24 hours...
>
> Computers patently aren't necessary. They are just being sold to you
> as being necessary by people who have an interest in making a buck or
> two or gaining power from it. Or are you seriously suggesting that
> the UK electoral system is *more corrupt* than the US because we
> don't have computers?
>
> [snip]
>
> >
> >> Any candidate can call for a recount - and in most closely fought
> >> elections it is not uncommon for the ballots to be counted three
> >> or four times. If a candidate is still dissatisfied they can
> >> challenge the decision of the returning officer via an election
> >> petition. In 1997 this happened in the UK when the Lib Dems beat
> >> the Tories in Winchester by 2 votes. The Tory candidate insisted
> >> that 55 spoiled ballot papers be counted in his favour and was
> >> declared the winner. The result was challenged and the court ruled
> >> in favour of the Tory but called a by-election so that the voters
> >> could reconsider the issue. They did - the Lib Dem candidate won
> >> by 21,556 votes second time around...
> >
> >
> > This is a good illustration on the reason computers could be
> > better. I do not believe an election could be won by 2 votes, or 53
> > votes for that matter. There should be some statistical
> > significance taken into account. And when you put computers and
> > statistics together, cheating becomes harder and harder.
> > Again, provided the statistics is not done by a "blackbox".
>
> Why shouldn't an election be won by one vote? And where does
> statistical significance enter into it?
>
> The only significant issue is who got most votes. And this can be
> worked out very simply, cheaply and honestly using people, paper and
> indelible pencils. Why put yourself at the mercy of technical screw-
> ups when there are absolutely no benefits to you as a voter?
>
> The only reason to pursue computerised/mechanised solutions is to
> make money or compel people to vote. The risks are too great - as the
> US proves with every screwed up election and "hanging chad" debacle.
>
> One should also keep in mind that many of the proposed e-voting
> solutions cannot guarantee the secrecy which is important to the
> actual act of voting.
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