[EM] Re: A few more poll comments

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

I´d said:

>About the hypothetical polling with verifiable results: For one voter to 
>deceive another voter about things like who will have a majority or who 
>will outpoll whom, it would be necessary to for him to know something that 
>the other voter doesn´t know. I can´t deceive you about something that you 
>know about. And if I myself don´t know about it, then there´s no way for me 
>to know that I´m deceiving you about it. And  it seems a necessary 
>assumption that all voters have access to the same predictive information.

Paul replied:

What do you mean by "verifiable results" ?

I reply:

Result: That which occurs as a consequence of something else. Outcome. 
Commonly used on EM and elsewhere to refer to the outcome of an election.

Verifiable: Which can be verified. Which can be shown to be correct.

So, if a poll has verifiable results, that means that the correctness of its 
purported outcome can be shown to be correct--based on the definitions 
above.

A problem with our voting in the U.S. has been that its outcomes have not 
been verifiable. Not only is it possible for an election to have a 
verifiable outcome, but it´s also possible for a pre-election poll to have a 
verifiable outcome, though, in actual practice, poll results aren´t 
verifiable.Verifiability would, by definition, get rid of the problem of 
lying by those who count &/ or report the poll results.

Paul continued:


None of the rest of the paragraph
seems to have anything to do with the words preceeding the colon.

I reply:

Not a thing--except that the rest of the paragraph refers to polls with 
verifiable results. Where do I say that? Before the colon.

Paul continued:

By
"verifiable results" do you mean that the election confirms the poll data?

I reply:

Well, if I´d meant that, then wouldn´t I have said "polls whose data are 
confirmed by the election"?

No. When we speak of verifiable results, we mean results that can be shown 
to be correct. In the case of a poll, that means that the polling results 
can be shown to be correct. Not by a different balloting later, such as an 
election. But, rather, by physical evidence of how people voted in the poll. 
A "paper trail".

Paul continued;

Most of us non-specialists think that verification of results means that the
poll was counted correctly

I reply:

Exactly. That´s how the term is used, and that´what I meant by it.

Paul continued;

, but I suspect that you meant something else by
"verification", since the rest of this was about voters talking to each
other, not about how polls were conducted.

I reply:

The words "About polling with verifiable results" doesn´t mean that what 
follows will be about how polls are conducted, or how their results are made 
verifiable. It merely means that what follows is about polls whose results 
are verifiable. In the case in question, it´s about the considerations 
relating to lying other than by those who count and report the polls, the 
assumption having been stated that the results are verifiable. The 
assumption--stated before the colon--that the results are verifiable means 
that lying by poll-answerers is assumed to be the only kind of lying.

Mike Ossipoff

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