At 1:02 AM -0500 11/17/00, jonathan@screaming.org wrote:

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Even if meant in jest, as a comment on the situation, it undermines the basic issue of law.

Hear hear.

I have to say that I agree that what has been proceeding in FL has the possible impacts of undermining some basic issues of Constitutional Law(tm). Unfortunately, I also have to agree (on this one issue) with Commrade Troll G. Orwell vis-a-vis Mr. May's objectivity on this point(*).

"Objectivity" is subjective. The Dems say they are being "objective" about continuing to count and scrutinize and challenge "third trimester pregnant chads." The Reps say they are being "objective" by following the law. The Dems say they are being objective by saying the law is something different. And so on. Look, I would feel just as offended if the Dems had won the legal count in Florida and the Reps had then trotted out some Good Ole Boys and brought in David Dukes of the KKK (*) to argue along the lines of "Shit, we done got _con-foosed_ by that there ballot, cuz we planned to vote for our man Bush and we done got con-foosed by all the holes on that there ballot." (* David Dukes being the parallel to Jesse Jackson, who has called New York City "Hymietown" and who has called for a race war if Al Gore is not annointed.) I confess to having held my nose and voted for Bush, as the Lesser of Two Evils. My brother put it well, paraphrasing what he told me: "Bush is an idiot. Gore is a robot. I am voting on just the one issue which matters most to me: my gun rights. Gore wants to take away private guns, and Gore will appoint Supreme Court judges, so I am voting against Gore. Against Gore, not _for_ Bush." Having made my confession, does this affect my evaluation of the circus in Florida? Perhaps a bit. But, as my "Close Elections and Causality" piece outlined, fairly objectively I think, the circus was predictable just as soon as all the charges about how Event A "caused" the outcome could be raised. "The butterfly ballot _caused_ Al Gore to lose votes, and hence the official count." "The networks calling Florida a Gore win before the polls closed in the Panhandle _caused_ more than the margin of disputed voters to go home before voting, and so that _caused_ the current problem. Bush easily would have gotten an extra few thousand votes." And now the latest: "It's not right that absentee voters who don't even live here will _decide_ the outcome." All of these putative causes ignore the _causality_ arguments I made earlier. The 300 absentee ballots from Wiesbaden and Ramstein and Tel Aviv are NO MORE IMPORTANT than any other group of 300 ballots. Their _apparent_ importance is an artifact of the order in which the ballot results came in. What does this have to do with Jonathan's points? I'm trying to explain why I am so pissed off with the pissing and moaning about how the Official Count (Bush ahead by 305 as of 11:20 PST) is symptomatic of our pissing and moaning society. And, yes, I would be about as angry if it were Good Ole Boys pulling the same stunts if Al Gore were to be legitimately ahead. By the way, as I have said more than once, I'd almost rather have Gore win. Though I would likely dislike his Supreme Court nominees, it's now unlikely he can ever get anything done. Ditto for Bush, which is good. However, if Gore loses, his nattering nabobs like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Carol Roberts ("I'm willing to go to jail!"), and Alec Baldwin ("I'll leave the country if Bush wins.", and so on, will mobilize and will probably swing to the left and will win the Congress back in 2002 and probably will annoint Hillary as their candidate in 2004. Better to have Bush and his folks sniping from the sidelines for the next four years than this horrible outcome.

a) The state of Florida has a recent history of poorly conducted elections, with allegations of tampering, confusion, etc. like those we now hear being relatively commonplace.

Not really. New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Illinois appear to have more problems. The "allegations of confusion" are recent. Sure, one can always find some idiot who can't follow simple instructions. As some are saying, this election shows that maybe too many Floridian retirees are being kept alive too long by medical science. In any case, demanding selective recounts to bolster one side or the other is not kosher. If machine balloting, which has until now been seen as a _step forward_, is to be replaced by partisan hand-counting, we will have worsened things, not made them better. There are some important CRYPTO-related points here. First, "bit commitment." This is the notion that a piece of information NOT KNOWN TO EITHER SIDE is "committed to." A flipped coin that is covered by a hand. Or a coin still in the air. (The outcome has not been committed to, but the process is assumed to be beyond the influence of either side.) This is equivalent to both sides saying IN ADVANCE that they understand that while machine ballots may not be perfect, because nothing is, that they accept the outcome of a machine count ABSENT COMPELLING EVIDENCE OF FRAUD. That is, in advance of the vote they acknowledge that a machine ballot represents our best technological solution to the problems of counting millions or tens of millions of ballots. Bit commitment = acceptance of the rules (The "Absent compelling evidence of fraud" covers the case where a machine has been altered, where the software is defective, etc. It should NOT include some argument that manual recounts may turn up a slightly different count and thus alter the results given by the machine count. I don't believe either the Dems or the Reps would have, IN ADVANCE of the election, accepted a proposal that close elections should be hand-counted in the hopes that "noise" or "jitter" in the process would alter the outcome.) Second, and closely related, is the issue of "current knowledge." The essence of many crypto protocols is that the rules don't change in midstream. This is whey we speak of "fair arbiters," perhaps related to escrow agents and n-out-of-m votes. So what we are seeing now is both sides, but especially the Democrats, trying to change the rules, picking selective precincts to recount, and arguing for exceptions to the legal rules...all based on INCOMING AND CHANGING INFORMATION. The lawsuits, for example, are being filed based on expectations of outcomes. Hence the blizzard of suits. (I have more to say on this topic, but will pass on it for now.)

b) The above notwithstanding, Florida state LAW dictates that Candidates may LAWFULLY request manual recounts of ANY or ALL counties of their choosing, providing such requests are filed within 72 hours of the election, and providing they meet other LAWFUL criteria (emphasis mine, obviously, to make the point that the relevant statutes don't state that any particular party must be given a clear advantage in such proceedings, eg. because he's Jewish, or because Crack Whores like him, etc.--see (f) below).

By the way, I'd favor a system where those calling for recounts pay the full costs. And I doubt strongly that some peon can call for such a recount...it's all controlled by the main parties. And every state has language saying that votes may be challenged. Fair enough. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But if machine balloting is the technology agreed-upon by all major sides--Dems and Reps--and, indeed, if both major sides had _lobbied-for_ the new technology of machine ballots, then IT IS NOT KOSHER for a challenge to be of this form: "Yes, we as Democrats lobbied for machine voting. Yes, we controlled the Florida legislature during the many decades during which this was debated. Yes, the machines were installed during the reign of Lawton Chiles. Yes, yes, yes. But, now that we appear to be behind in the machine count, we are hopeful that reverting to the older, more error-prone system of manual counts will possibly give us the margin of votes we are praying for." This is the essence of changing the rules based on incoming information. This is why "bit commitment" means the ground rules are established beforehand, before any such incoming information is available. The Dems would be outraged if a machine count favored the Dems but some Good Ole Boys were dragging out the process in the kind of circus we are seeing now. And they would be justifiably outraged. And, I think I can assure you, I would not be arguing for the Good Ole Boys' position on the basis of rabble-rousing rhetoric like "But the true will of the people must be heard!" Rules are rules. The voting procedure was established and agreed-to by both major parties, perhaps even all N national parties. (I don't know about this, but I assume it to be so.) Legal challenges to the outcome should only be allowed if evidence is presented of significant fraud. The fact that the hand count shows different results than the machine count is not such evidence. (And, indeed, advocates of various kinds of balloting have had many years, many decades, to publish learned articles on chads, pregnant chads, undercounts, mutilated ballots, dimples, etc.)

c) The results of the Florida election remain within a win/lose margin much smaller than the statistical margin of error of *any* counting system (by at least one order of magnitude), regardless of counting mechanism. (Many invokations of the statistics of scale have been brought to bear on this point in this forum, but the reality remains that by any rational statistical analysis, the state of Florida must be considered a draw. No amount of recounting--or lack thereof--appears to negate this fact. To argue FOR recount after recount is as statistically invalid as is to argue for NO recounts, as is to argue for a die toss, a card game, a duel (my favorite, as someone must die), etc. When a binary decision margin is smaller than the statistical margin of error, the answer is UNDEFINED. Duh.)

I generally agree. However, "must be considered a draw" is not part of the rules and laws established beforehand. A winner is always assured, except in the vanishingly-small chance of literally a draw. (And, even then, the case should not then be thrown in the courts to debate whether a particular piece of chad was dimpled, or a swinging door, or whatever. This just throws the election to a panel of partisan judges.)

f) Getting back to Florida's current problems, and (b) above, if GWB's camp had been on the ball, they'd have requested all of their recounts, manual or otherwise, within or without of Florida, by the damn deadlines. Instead, they were too busy Spinning for the Crowd about how He'd Won (by a statistically invalid margin), and only too late realized that AG's campaign had taken LAWFUL means to dispute the Arrogant Son's ascension to his Invalid Throne.

You're more cynical than even I am. You are right that the Reps failed to bring in enough high-powered NewYork Jewish lawyers. Al Gore hired better shysters than George Bush did. As I have said, this election may well be won by the same lawyers who got O.J. Simpson off. (And a big part of me would be thrilled. Already the chad rooms (pun intended) are buzzing with calls to start killing lawyers, to cut off all welfare systems, to "take back our country.")

g) Based on all of the above, the act of a Candidate exercising his right to call for per-state sanctioned recounts, of whatever prescribed manner, should not be abbrogated, in case of the event that a statistically valid margin can be demonstrated, in however partisan a manner (they've both got the same rules to play by). This is what we call the Rule Of Law (cf. May above). Any Secretary of State, Candidate, or Lawscum seeking to abbrogate that process has earned killing.

The conversion from hand-counting to machine-counting was a good one. Despite what the Democrats are saying about "Bush trusts machines, not people," both parties and a majority of legislators clearly understood that there may be differences between machine counts and hand counts. Arguing in favor of hand counts, AFTER THE MACHINE COUNTS ARE KNOWN, is not, as I keep saying, kosher. The real argument is not that hand counts are fairer, but that Al Gore may get some additional votes. I hope Al Gore uses his New York shysters to steal this election. Then the real fun will begin. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)