Reefer Madness?

[M Holmes]

Arjan Hulsebos writes:

> Well, up until a few years ago, all elections in the Netherlands were
> counted by hand.  All results were in (barring recounts) within a few
> hours.  recounts were usually in during the night. 

While there are more bicycles in the Netherlands than in the US there are
fewer people. Besides, 99% of everyone is too stoned to vote, so how
much counting can there be?

> You've shown that the courts did decide the outcome of the elections
> after the votes were in. 

Maybe I'm not up to beng unambiguous enough, but what I've been saying
is that the courts decided which were legal votes and the legal votes
decided the result.

> > In a perfect world yes.  In our imperfect one, there was some
> > ambiguity in some of the rules, and some of the state rules turned
> > out to contradict federal ones in minor, but in this elction,
> >  crucial ways. That mean court rulings were needed.

> The ambiguities should've been ironed out before the elections were
> held, including the timetable issues.  If you have to go to court
> afterwards, it makes you look silly, especially if you have to ask the
> judge "Is this a legitimate vote?". 

I don't disagree on the principle. I simply recognise the reality that
English can be ambiguous. In pretty much every law of any account, there
are gonna be ambiguities if someone in just the right odd set of
circumstances tries to look fr them. In this case some guys wrote a law
when folks only put X's on paper and didn't have the foresight to take into
account machine votes with hanging chads and crumblies being kept alive
so long into their dotage that they could vote for Pat Buchanan by mistake.

Here's a prediction though: some of those hunnerd years old laws aren't
going to be up for email voting and digital signatures. Sooner or later
y'all will be shoulder-deep in lawyers again. That's just how life
works.

Goven that the alternative is to be shoulder-deep in mud hiding from
bullets, it's not really such a bad thing.

FoFP