RE: How can Neal say Boulder's election was accurate

["Some Guy" <someguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is no *free*. The volunteers get paid $10 an hour. The polling judges
were getting $150 per day.
The clerk has to pay them to make them employees otherwise they can't
legally make them dance to the tune.

But it sure as hell isn't going to cost $1.3M.


-----Original Message-----
From: Evan Daniel Ravitz [mailto:evan@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 7:01 PM
To: kellen carey
Cc: cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: How can Neal say Boulder's election was accurate


You're forgetting, Kell, that people here in Boulder care enough
about elections that we got 130+ people in less than 3 days to
volunteer over 1000 hours to count.

IF the county asked for vounteers in our utility bills, we'd have
thousands to count for free.

We employ election officials to do the research and the math.

I suggest we don't exhaust ourselves on the details but decide what
we want, learn how to say it simply so everyone will agree with us,
and then get citizens to join us in asking for it.

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well
enough." -Einstein

Evan



On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, kellen carey wrote:

> Evan,
>
> Do you know how many different races people typically
> vote on in one election in other countries?  Most
> (nearly all, if my comparative politics isn't too
> dated) European countries don't vote on amendments,
> initiatives, referendums, recalls, judges, etc. in
> elections.
>
> Just a reminder: it took three election judges about
> 5+ hours to count only 597 ballots with only three
> races in the Spring 2004 Nederland election.  There
> were about 25-30 different contests in this Boulder
> County 2004 election, with some 150,000+ voters.  I'll
> let others do the math.
>
> I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't handcount, given
> the obvious transparency, verifiability, and accuracy
> advantages.
>
> But it would be nice to hear a definitive answer on
> this question from other countries.
>
> kell
>
> --- Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >
> > On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, Some Guy wrote:
> >
> > > For the length of time that it took to count the
> > vote, it could have been
> > > done by hand in each precinct.
> >
> > I believe countries that do it by hand do it in
> > precincts -in hours,
> > not days.
> >
> > What we have is the kluge of kluges: Illegally
> > tested (thanks for
> > trying, Al) proprietary software running on Windows,
> > intersecting
> > with the vaguaries of printing, and the greatest
> > motive in history:
> > the Presidency.
> >
> > If humans see imperfect boxes we have no problem
> > compensating.
> >
> > But instead of hand-counting which is cheaper
> > ($1.82/vote in Canada
> > compared to $3-6 here) more accurate (according to
> > MIT/Caltech),
> > done in public (poll watchers watching) with the $
> > going to humans
> > not software corps, we will get a very sophistocated
> > expensive
> > way of making the boxes better, kluged on top of the
> > pile of shit
> > we're now buying.
> >
> > Poll watchers THINK they're watching now, but
> > they're staring at
> > "black boxes."
> >
> > Evan
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
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