Reefer Madness?

[Arjan Hulsebos]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:20:17 +0100, M Holmes wrote

OK, last round, I promise (and I'm not a politician).

> 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?

Have you ever been _out_ of the coffeeshops?  ;-)

> > 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.

One of the rulings was that there were no more recounts. That's pretty much
deciding the outcome of an election by a court rule in my book.

> > > 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.

So it should not be legal to vote with these machines if there's no
provisioning in the law. How hard can it be?

> 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.

No, you just amend the laws to include these things.

How hard can it be? If the law tells you you can vote with systems X, Y, and
Z, then only systems X,Y, and Z should be used in any election. If you start
voting with system B (for broken, of course), you're more than knee-deep in
that brown bad-smelling stuff that has a habit of hitting the fan.

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

Gunlaws can fix that, you know (did I just type that?)

;-)

Gr,

Arjan H