CDR: Re: Aces high (long reply)

[Tim May]

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