Jack Lloyd wrote:

Still, I liked this quote: '"I came to vote because wasting one's ballot in a democracy is a sin," he told the BBC.' Not too common a view in the US these days, it seems like.

What do you expect when the previous choice we've had was between Al "I Invented the Innnernet" Gore, and George "Nucular" Dubbya?

On Mon, 2004-04-26 at 11:34, Jack Lloyd wrote:

Hmmm... that's a thought. Tim May as president. Election slogan: "You're *all* going up the chimneys."

I voted for Cthulhu -- why vote for the lesser of two evils? http://www.cthulhu.org/

Damian Gerow wrote:

Actually, Mr. Gore didn't once claim to invent the Internet. Through various mis-wordings and lax fact-checkings, the Mass Media came to represent what he said through that phrase.

What he /actually/ claimed (and what he /actually/ did) was recognize its importance, and then push for funding, in the 1980's. So he didn't 'invent' the Internet, he helped provide the funding for its inventors.

Yeah so what? I still wouldn't want to vote for him (except as a vote against Shrubbya) Al's prise pig of a wife, Tipper, helped found the PMRC against lyrics in songs. See Megadeth's Hook in Mouth for details on this censorious organization: http://www.songlyrics4u.com/megadeth/hook-in-mouth.html and http://www.geocities.com/fireace_00/pmrc.html for details about the PMRC.

Damian Gerow wrote:

Hey, I'm no fan of Tipper either. And I'm not saying that Al Gore was a /good/ choice. But in retrospect, he probably would have been a lesser evil than the current president.

THAT, ultimately is the meta-point. You shouldn't have to vote for the lesser evil, but when your choice is so vastly limited, why even bother voting? After the events involving Vince Foster, Lon "It was self defense, she threatened me with her baby" Hioruchi(sp?), Janet Reno, and Monicagate, Dubbya Jr. seemed the lesser of two evils. Until 9.11.2001. At that point, Gore clearly became the lesser of two evils, but by that time, it was far too late to see it. How much of the public knew about the connections to Haliburton before election day? How much of the public knew about the Project for a New American Century? How much of the public knew about USA PATRIOT ACT and it's sequel? What's missing is some sort of vote out of office mechanism, a big great "Undo" vote as it were. There are no guarantees that if you vote for Scumbag #1 that s/he'll be less of a scumbag that Scumbag #2. When more than half the country doesn't want to do something, it shouldn't be done just because congress and POTUS decides it's in their pocketbook's interest, but where's the mechanism to stop it? Where's the recall vote? Where's the oversight committee that says "When you ran for office you promised X,Y,Z and you're half in your term and haven't delivered." Where's the "I want X% of my dollars to go to this issue, and 0% to go to that one" option? Elections where you only chose between evil #1 and evil #2, are an ironic joke, and the ones laughing their way to the bank aren't those with your interests in mind.

Damian Gerow wrote:

I don't give a flying fuck who you vote for, who the options are, what you think of them, or even if they're convicted drunk drivers hell-bent on converting the world to their belief system (...).

You, sir, are in great need of an enema. *PLONK*

Thus spake Pete Capelli (pcapelli@ieee.org) [26/04/04 13:56]: : > Who you vote for is up to you. I'm not telling you to vote for him, I'm : > just correcting a pretty large non-truth propogated by American media. : : B*llshit. From a transcript of an interview of Al Gore by Wolf Blitzer: : http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.... : : " During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in : creating the Internet." Yes, that's exactly what he said: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/ That's not saying that he invented the internet, it's saying that he took initiative in creating it. Two very different things. I took initiative in building a house. That's not saying that I built it, it's saying that I approved the blueprints, paid the builders, and would check on things every once in a while, to make sure they weren't going too far astray. : > Hey, I'm no fan of Tipper either. And I'm not saying that Al Gore was a : > /good/ choice. But in retrospect, he probably would have been a lesser : evil : > than the current president. : : Mindlessly voting for anyone but bush is just as ignorant as voting : midlessly for him. Yes, that's about what I was saying. Mindless voting is, in some regards, worse than not voting at all. And it appears that's what sunder has done -- not voted, instead of mindlessly voted. But when all the facts, and the necessities to check the facts, are at your fingertips, there's no reason to be doing either. - Damian

Thus spake Pete Capelli (pcapelli@ieee.org) [26/04/04 16:01]: : > Yes, that's exactly what he said: : > : > http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/ : > : > That's not saying that he invented the internet, it's saying that he took : > initiative in creating it. Two very different things. : : Now take it in context. Do you really believe that he didn't want people to : think he was instrumental from the beginning (since he created it) in the : Internet? Or that he was simply another GC, working off an architects : plans? : : I think people took it the right way the first time. Sure, I agree its : importance is way overblown; I mean, name one politician who *hasn't* taken : credit for someone else's work. But don't be an apologist. If he wants to : run for president, he's got to deal with his record, just like kerry (did I : or didnt I throw away those medals) or bush (i know those national guard : records are here somewhere). Agreed, every politician has their own problems. I /personally/ don't believe that Mr. Gore was trying to take credit for 'inventing' the Internet. His wording is incredibly vague, and I agree that it could be taken as him trying to take credit for building up the Internet to the point it is today. But he'd have to be *incredibly* stupid to actually believe that he could get away with claiming he invented something that existed (albeit in various forms) years previous. My problem lays in the fact that not one person (save Gore himself) can verifiably know what Gores intentions were with that statement. The way he phrased the statement is tricky, and leaves it pretty open to interpretation. But I hold fast that he was /not/ saying he invented the Internet. Anyhow, I wasn't trying to get into a debate over what he said, although I guess that was unavoidable. I'm not trying to apologize for what he's said, nor am I trying to make excuses. If he's going to live in the public eye, he's got to either maintain an impeccable character, or suffer its flaws. My problem was that the statement /is/ vague, and the vagueness was then translated into 'inventing the Internet'. Which, again, isn't really all that true. Had sunder said, "Al 'Creating The Internet' Gore", that would have been spot on, and I'd have chuckled. But he didn't, so it wasn't, so I didn't. : > I took initiative in building a house. That's not saying that I built it, : > it's saying that I approved the blueprints, paid the builders, and would : > check on things every once in a while, to make sure they weren't going too : > far astray. : : Yeah, he was in there on John Postel's CC: list for RFC evaluations. No, nor was I there for the developing of the blueprints, nor the chopping of the trees, nor the mixing of the mortar. But I still took initiative in building the house. Just as Gore took initiative in creating -- or rather, helping to create, or helping to fund the creation of -- the Internet. At this point, I concede that there's no way to tell the truth, and that continued discussion can't really progress anywhere. Al Gore munged his words*, and paid the price. End of story, and at this point, it doesn't much matter what he really meant -- he's still not the president, nor will he ever be. - Damian * = More than this once, I might add.

Thus spake Harmon Seaver (hseaver@cybershamanix.com) [26/04/04 19:25]: : And the local elections are no prime pickings either, it's crooks to the left : of us, crooks to the right of us, ahead and behind, above and below. Extremely : few real choices. The real problem is -- most people don't vote. What needs to : be done is a real grass roots effort to educate people and get them to vote. So, how does one start a grass roots effort? I'm Canuck, and I'm not exactly impressed with this year's pickings up North. My last vote was a vote /against/ the in-office party, not for the party I'd like to see in office. How do you start motivating a lazy and apathetic public to learn about their candidates, and vote? Door-to-door campaigns? Talks at the local library? Grocery store posters?

Thus spake Harmon Seaver (hseaver@cybershamanix.com) [27/04/04 17:18]: : All of the above, but mostly door-to-door voter registration. When you : consider that both klinton and dubbya were elected with only 13%-14% of the : eligible voters, it wouldn't take all that many new voters to really make a : difference. "Hi, Sir, my name is Bob and I'm here to educate you about all the candidates in the upcoming election that your eight second attention span will allow me. Oops, I guess I've used it all up. Bye now!" These things all work in theory, but never in practice. Why bother putting something up in a library? Chances are, if someone's reading it there, they're already somewhat knowledgable about the candidates. Or heck, maybe they're even there to do /research/ on them! Grocery store posters? When was the last time you stopped to read one of those? Radio ads? What group of volunteers would have the dough to cough up enough to get a spot on a semi-popular radio station? One that's unbiased enough to /let/ you play a spot like what you'd want to play? I don't see any way to educate the mass public. The best option I've seen was when a couple of Canadians, frustrated at the options, started eating their ballots. They got arrested a few times, but I think the charges were dropped. At least that caught /some/ attention. The more shocking it is, the more attention it will grab, the more effect it will have, however short-term it may be. And the more I think of swapping crack for cracked votes, the more I like it.

Graham Lally (2004-04-28 14:47Z) wrote:

Damian Gerow wrote:

...

I don't see any way to educate the mass public.

Indeed, why bother? How about a system that removes your right to vote if you haven't exercised it in the last 3 elections?

Requiring that adults vote is a terrible idea. While being deathly ill or otherwise unable to vote for three consecutive federal elections is extremely unlikely, the fact remains that failure to vote is not indicative of lack of desire to vote. The above proposal only requires 33% turnout among current non-voters. While that's certainly an "improvement" (by your metric), it doesn't resolve the core issues. If not voting is the sin you seek to prevent, why settle for 33 percent? If it is dumb voters you're trying to eliminate, requiring them to drive their dumb asses to the polls isn't going to make then any smarter or more informed. It might even increase stupid voting patterns by encouraging dumb people to form cliques. They won't want to appear dumb to their friends as a result of voting for the "wrong person," and groupthink is bad for elections.

Make sure there's a handy "abstain" option for those who want to get the point across about lack of choice, and maybe a space to say why, too. Then stick the (anonymous) reasons up in a publicly-viewable space and eh, instant feedback.

There is an abstention option. The poll administrator checks off your name when you show up, so someone knows that you "voted." You don't have to choose anyone on your ballot. You can either toss it in the garbage on your way out, or draw pictographs derogatory to politicians on non-critical areas of the ballot before feeding it to the fiber-starved voting machine. -- "Not your decision to make." "Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter." - Bill and Beatrix

This is what Justin said about "Re: Fact checking" on 28 Apr 2004 at 19:37

...

Make sure there's a handy "abstain" option for those who want to get the point across about lack of choice, and maybe a space to say why, too. Then stick the (anonymous) reasons up in a publicly-viewable space and eh, instant feedback.

There is an abstention option. The poll administrator checks off your name when you show up, so someone knows that you "voted." You don't have to choose anyone on your ballot. You can either toss it in the garbage on your way out, or draw pictographs derogatory to politicians on non-critical areas of the ballot before feeding it to the fiber-starved voting machine.

But then the ballot is spoiled, and not counted. In Canada we have the option to "decline to vote". Go to the polling station, register your name, take the ballot, then tell the clerk that you "decline to vote". This indicates that you believe that no-one on the ballot is a suitable candidate for office. The ballot is counted, but none of the candidates gets a vote. This ensures that you don't accidentally elect an unsuitable candidate with a protest vote, ie. selecting the lesser of two evils. By declining to vote you elect neither of the two evils. I'm not sure what happens when there are more declined ballots than votes for a candidate. Certainly it should draw some media attention to the option of declining to vote -- I find that very few people know about it. It sure caused a stir at our polling booth! -- -- -- -- Bob Jonkman

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 09:05:32PM -0400, Damian Gerow wrote:

Thus spake Harmon Seaver (hseaver@cybershamanix.com) [27/04/04 17:18]: : All of the above, but mostly door-to-door voter registration. When you : consider that both klinton and dubbya were elected with only 13%-14% of the : eligible voters, it wouldn't take all that many new voters to really make a : difference.

"Hi, Sir, my name is Bob and I'm here to educate you about all the candidates in the upcoming election that your eight second attention span will allow me. Oops, I guess I've used it all up. Bye now!"

These things all work in theory, but never in practice.

You obviously have never done any door-to-door. People are quite often very interested. We've had fairly good success organizing people on local issues which affect them, like opposition to street widening. Voter registration is the same thing.

Why bother putting something up in a library? Chances are, if someone's reading it there, they're already somewhat knowledgable about the candidates. Or heck, maybe they're even there to do /research/ on them!

The mention was "giving talks in libraries", which works fairly well. The local library is the logical meeting place for local groups to hold meetings and talks. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com Hoka hey!

On Mon, 2004-04-26 at 12:58, sunder wrote:

Al's prise pig of a wife, Tipper, helped found the PMRC against lyrics in songs.

And, like all statists, they went widely astray of their goals. Frank Zappa's _Jazz from Hell_ got a "Tipper Sticker", indicating obscene lyrics. They didn't notice that _JfH_ was an instrumental album.