[EM] ...not that it matters how you vote or what the voting system is.

[Michael Ossipoff]

I've been making suggestions and comments regarding the choice of
voting system, and about how to vote in our current  Plurality voting
system. But of course none of that really matters.


The real voting power belongs to whoever counts the votes.


I mentioned that the Republican consistently came in last in Occupy's
2012 presidential exit-poll. ...last with a quite small vote-percent.
How does that square with the fact that, we're told that the official
count always shows a near-tie between the Democrat and the Republican,
and no more than 1%, if that, for anyone else? We're always told that
it's a "dead-heat" between the Democrat and the Republican.


I'm not making any accusations. There might be a perfectly innocent
explanation. But I would suggest that it might be a good idea to try
to achieve a verifiable count. Would that be too much to ask?


If you want to see some funny count results, then read about the 2000
and 2004 presidential elections. In particular, there was a _Harper's_
article just after the 2004 election that gave lots of details of
ridiculous anomalies, such as precincts where the number of Bush votes
was 4 times the number of registered Republicans, or maybe more than
the number of voters registered there.


In 2000 &/or 2004, there were extraordinary differences between exit
polls and official count results. Improbably, in every instance, where
the exit poll was "wrong", it was always wrong in such a way that the
official count differed strongly in Bush's favor. Someone calculated
that the probability of the observed results occurring innocently or
coincidentally was a small fraction of a millionth.


I was at a meeting of a progressive community organization, right
after the 2004 election, and the topic was "What should we do now".
The facilitator was writing suggestions on the blackboard, for various
progressive political projects.  One woman spoke up to say that the
only relevant political fact at that moment was the phony election,
and that the only worthwhile activity was to protest it. She was
ignored.


In some countries, people go out  into the streets to protest a phony
election. They deserve democracy, and maybe they'll get it. But that
doesn't happen here. We get what we deserve too.


Incredibly, astoundingly, people often said that we can't be sure that
the count wasn't legitimate. What?? If a count is unverifiable, that,
by itself, is enough to make it illegitimate and not valid. The
suggestion of having to take someone's word for it that the count
isn't fraudulent is ridiculous and astonishing.


As long as the count is illegitimate, it's entirely irrelevant how we
vote, or what the voting system is.


So here's a suggested order of what to do:


1. Insist on and get a legitimate, verified count for subsequent elections.


2. Vote honestly, for what you want. Make good use of Plurality to
elect someone better.I've discussed that in detail.


3. When GPUS is in office, we'll have a new and better voting system,
and there will be opportunity for the public to choose whatever other
voting system they want, via imitative or referendum


Of course there's no reason to believe that #1 or #2 is going to
happen. And without #1, nothing will happen.


Michael Ossipoff





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