I'm sorry, but we just clearly disagree. Every voter had enough opportunity to know that the guy was dead, and that the wife was to succeed him. If some voters did not know, I'm sorry to them. It was all over the news. Every person has a right to be hermit or to be generally clueless. But I cannot help those people. In the original message, the central issue was whether it was legal for the governor to appoint the wife. I spoke to that issue assuming that the voters had enough opportunity to know what was going on. To believe your assertions, you would have to assume that the voter walked into the booth never picking up on any news and never spoke to anyone, and just had no clue who he/she was voting for. This behavior is clearly legal. But just as Tim cannot be concerned about inner city welfare mothers ("maggots"? what word did he use?), I simply cannot be concerned about this uninformed segment of the electorate. Ern -----Original Message----- X-Loop: openpgp.net From: Declan McCullagh [mailto:declan@well.com] Sent: Friday, November 10, 2000 7:14 AM To: Ernest Hua Cc: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: A very brief politcal rant On Fri, Nov 10, 2000 at 12:51:05AM -0500, Ernest Hua wrote:

My original point still stands. The voters should get what they want, unless they want something clearly illegal. That's a clear principle in our pseudo-democracy. Every principle has a point

No, your original point was muddled. It's not clear that every voter who chose the dead guy knew that his widow would take the slot. Since the election is so close, that matters. If you want to make sure the voters are getting what they want, put the non-dead-guy's name on the ballot. -Declan