At 11:55 AM -0800 11/11/00, Tim May wrote:
* Stage Four of the FUD Campaign, current: "We demand a manual recount. Two counts, the first one and then the state-mandated machine recount, are not enough. We are certain that if certain counties are counted again, and again, that the extra votes we need will be found."
[As Jesse Jackson and Johnnie Cockroach might singsong: "If our lead does not mount, you must re-count!']
* Stage 4.5 of the FUD Campaign, Saturday afternoon: "It's the chads, the little pieces of paper punched out but hanging by a thread." (How appropriate: "hanging by a thread") The Democrats are demanding that ballots marked as spoiled be checked to see if they have "indentations" or "chads." Of course, how these indentations or chads have anything to do with Democrats vs. Republicans is unclear... Except that the Democrat Party is requesting the recounts in heavily Democrat precincts! They understand that by recounting, and recounting, and then switching to manual analysis of ballots IN DEMOCRAT-LEANING PRECINCTS they can probably pick up some additional votes for Gore. Simple statistics. The obvious point is that such additional vacuum-cleaning should not be allowed. And if it is allowed in a single precinct, absent some strong evidence that that precinct had precinct-specific "chad problems" with its machines, then ALL precincts should be counted in an identical fashion. A daunting, and expensive, and time-consuming process. A manual inspection of six million ballots will take several weeks. Which may be the Gore strategy, ironically. Get the process in Florida so bogged-down that Florida is left out of the Electoral College process on December 18th. According to many legal scholars, the election would then hinge on a majority of those who were at the EC meeting, even if Florida were to be absent. Advantage: Gore. Fucked up, yes. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.