Re: Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results

From: Richard Ulrich (Rich.Ulrich_at_comcast.net)
Date: 11/14/04 

Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 17:19:55 -0500

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 01:50:36 +0200, George Kahrimanis
<anakreon@hol.gr> wrote:

> I do share the scare but I want to point out that
> adding a dubious argument to a case (like the apparent discrepacy
> between affiliation registration and voting) only weakens the case.

Oh, I don't see much "case" about registration and voting.
I wasn't endorsing that. But I thought that the pooh-poohing
of opportunity and motive was excessively naive.

> Besides, if one finds fault with procedures that he had
> accepted initially, he seems to deserve what he 's got
> (whether ineptitude or duplicity may be suspected).

What? We can't learn from experience?
Five years ago, I knew nothing about the rate of
discarded votes.

>
> Therefore only two kinds of cases are sustainable now, imo:
> (1) if someone (like Jimmy Carter) has insisted since before
> the elections that they did not seem free and fair, and
> (2) if after the election some new fact is learned, like
> the grossly inefficient encryption scheme that has been described
> in another message.

I'm not sure which "case" you are asking to be sustained.
Theft, this time? I've recently noticed how vulnerable our
elections are to being manipulated and being stolen --
if there was anyone organized on a large scale to
want to do so. Carter's comments were to that point,
*not* to the issue of whether it was likely. We *don't*
meet the international standards for having our elections
monitored; that should be changed, as a matter of principle.

(Republicans recently seem to have become organized
and centralized more than other parties in recent history;
and the team with Bush seem to have thrown away the old
standards of honesty and honor. But I've seen no strong
evidence about this one, yet.) 

-- 
Rich Ulrich, wpilib@pitt.edu
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html

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