🚀 go-pugleaf

David Jensen wrote:

> On Fri, 19 Jan 2001 01:11:41 GMT, in wi.general
> Plutarch <"dancer46(nospam)"@earthlink.net> wrote in
> <3A679438.B418D256@earthlink.net>:
>
> >"Jeffrey C. Dege" wrote:
> >
> >> The Democrats would count the ballots, not like the result, change the
> >> rules for judging the ballots, not like that result, change the rules
> >> again, and count once again.
> >
> >And even if that were not the truth, Dege will simply make up a
> >story demonstrating that there is simply no other interpretation.
>
> Well, it looks as if the media is trying to recount the votes. So far
> there is no difference.

Never said there would be. Just said that counting the votes
is the way we decide elections in this country. Funny how
your tune changes when you perceive that things are going
your way. Heh. All the folks that were dead set against a
manual recount are now citing the media maunual recount
as proof of their correctness.

> >> Eventually they would have found some set of criteria, no matter how
> >> absurd, that would have given the results they were trying to manufacture.
> >
> >Yup. It's called counting the votes. Not guaranteed to produce
> >the desired result but well known to produce a true result.
>
> Only if the ballots are set up in such a way that there can be no
> ambiguous ballots. That is not the case in Florida. There were ambiguous
> ballots and the Florida legislature's first act has to be to improve
> their voting procedures.

Excuse me, but I thought you were just point to the media
recount as proving your point. In light of that, don't you
think your statement above might be just a tad problematic?

> >> And you and yours would have trumpetted it as the only legitimate count.
> >
> >Are you sure we wouldn't have French Horned it? The only
> >legitimate count is a count where all the votes that can be
> >counted are counted.
>
> Well, I think that the law says all the votes that can be counted
> according to the criteria in the statute.

Yup. And they were not.

> Good ballot procedures should:
>
> (1) not allow ambiguous votes. (impossible for all cases)
> (2) not allow multiple votes for the same seat. (possible)
> (3) not allow a seat to be forgotten. (what if you don't want to vote for a
> race?)
> (4) leave a highly reliable audit trail. (possible)
>
> We cannot fix the past, but we can certainly avoid repeats.

Agreed. I don't think a vote below the tabulation error
will be a problem in four years. Shrub is his father's son.