Re: Hand Counting Ballots

[Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>]

What I'm really suggesting is hand-counting TEMPORARILY while all the
experts come to agreement on how an honest verifiable system should
work, and then perfect it.

And, Ralph, it doesn't bother me much to be called a leftist, but I'm
not to first to believe that the real polarity is top to bottom. The
few on top don't really care much about ideology, but keep those lower
down arguing over it -and the crumbs they leave. Indeed the "left" and
"right" meet around the back: for example my fundamentalist Christian
landlords (who are VERY good small-c christians too, who rent to us
for half-price and treat us lovingly) agree totally with us that the
war in Iraq is wrong, and that Chinese sweat and slave shops are the
devil.

So my model of ideology is a cone: those on top converge in beliefs,
those on the bottom APPEAR from 1 viewpoint to be L and R, but
actually are all connected.

Even "rightists" are "left" out when the top dogs tear up and
divide the world!

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Evan Ravitz     303 440 6838     evan@xxxxxxxx
Vote for the National Initiative! www.vote.org
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Kucinich: the ONLY candidate to vote against the
"Patriot" Act and the Iraq war!  www.kucinich.us
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On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, Ralph Shnelvar wrote:

> Dear Kell:
>
> On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 19:23:13 -0800 (PST), you wrote:
>
> >Thanks Ralph and Evan for mentioning hand counting and Paul for his [somewhat petulant] responses.  It would be helpful to get facts, though.
>
> When I first heard Evan talk about hand counting ballots I must admit that I
> thought he was a crank.
>
> But I gave it some thought and I continue to give it thought and Evan is
> absolutely correct.
>
>
>
> Every ten years this country goes through the ritual and constitutional
> necessity of conducting a census.  We could, of course, do things
> statistically but the requirement of actually going out and counting each
> person one-by-one serves to establishes a baseline from which other valid
> statistical abstracts can be obtained.
>
> In an election we have to have a good baseline.  The best baseline is a hand
> count of the entire population of ballots.  As a matter of democracy we
> should have the best reasonable baseline and not merely a good baseline.  A
> hand count - even if it is wrong by 1% - is still a far better baseline than
> the unknowable and easily manipulatable count produced electronically.
>
> I - as a recent amateur poll watcher - can understand and follow a hand
> count.  I can't follow the count produced by a scanner as it processes two
> sides of a ballot (one of which I can't see) at a rate of one-per-second.
>
> As a Libertarian, I hate government waste.  I hate spending public money on
> just about anything.
>
> But of all the things that government should spend money on, verifiable,
> honest, and easily monitored elections is way up at the top of my list.
>
>
> Evan, there are times when even a Leftist can be right.
>
> Sorry, just had to say that.  :-)
>
> Ralph
>
>
> >
> >kell
>