[EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines

[Kathy Dopp]

On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 7:48 PM, rob brown <rob at karmatics.com> 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