Brad
Great interview! Encouraging that a guy from the far right would be so into honest voting. I even sent him an e-mail complimenting him on his stance on electronic voting. As more stories come out, especially about the two recent races in Iowa, people are finally going to realize how bad computer voting is. Thanks for all the endless hours you spend on this.

Absolutely top notch work! Sterling! And, I am SO relieved to hear Hedgecock speak like a real American. Whew. Thank you!

Brad --- I hope things are looking as good as I think they are (in terms of 'snowballing').

Anyone who agrees that ...if we have any bedrock notion in this country it ought to be that the votes ought to be fully and fairly counted and is willing to act upon that notion is an ally indeed and has shown integrity regardless of political viewpoint.

Integrity is key in fixing this nation. Roger Hedgecock, I hope you act on your convictions and join true patriotic Americans in repairing our elections and insuring the integrity of our votes.

sp: insuring the integrity should be ensuring the integrity

I knew Brad before he was big...

well - don't guess Rog'll be subbing for Rush anymore.

Hey Spanky you very liberal leftwing guy.

Good job! I hope he does show up to get that provisional award!

I knew Brad before he was Spanky!

Dusty has the right idea, I'm going to send Hedgecock an email also.

mailto: roger@rogerhedgecock.com

Keep speaking truth to the truth,.. without embellishments and exaggeration like you always do,..
and the truth will come out like it is presently.

Congratulations,.. looks like your going to slay this fire breathing dragon,.. and bring back integrity to the tabulation of our votes. A big thank-you from the multitudes,.. to you Brad,.. for doing what you do so unselfishly but very effectively.

This is the greatest news--
If we can get right-wing-type-conservative alliance on this issue, and on net neutrality, and start to make it work in these areas (which has yet to develop to any degree), it may be that we have other areas of agreement that the big-money people are trying to
prevent --- like on the environment, and even on health care.
I think we should start sneaking behind the backs of the big-money politicos and start talking to people on the other side ... like you did today.
--sandra

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Amazing work, Brad!

It is extremely important that we're not just preaching to the Democratic choir. Indeed, this republican seems to be more responsive to this issue than a lot of the "tone-deaf" in our choir!
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Wheeeeee.......looks like things are starting to roll..!! You should all be so proud of what you have accomplished.

We're rooting for you up here, YOUR mission can be accomplished..!!

Time to put a bottle of champagne on ice and get ready for the party..!!

It's because Mr. Hedgecock loves voting and elections and puts it before his other crap. Which is exactly what we're telling conservatives, liberals, moderates, Republicans, Democrats and Independents... essentially... EVERYONE... to do!

Bluebear... you and Dusty are 100% correct. Here is a copy of my e=mail to Mr. Hedgecock:

Dear Mr. Hedgecock:

Thanks for your interview with my favorite Blogmaster, Brad Friedman.

It was a very fair and honest interview. Thanks for it.

It is my sincerest hope that you hit an audience throughout San Diego County as broad as possible (during their commutes home). The reason for this is because we need you and as many people as possible from San Diego County to show up at the Emergency Town Hall.

This truly is a matter of saving our Democracy. It is not a liberal cause, conservative cause, Republican or Democrat cause… it is an American cause.

And we all have a responsibility to save our elections from people in BOTH parties… or any government official (or anyone else for that matter)… from trying to steal our elections!

If I were still there living on Point Loma, you can bet I’d be in Oceanside at that Town Hall… and I’d have KOGO on in my car!

May the Lord bless you, your family and your station richly.

Thanks again,

[MrBlueSky]

Bellevue, WA

Great job, Spanky!

MrBlueSky said:

"It is not a liberal cause, conservative cause, Republican or Democrat cause… it is an American cause."

Essentially what I said with many "thank you"s

Brad,
This is so cool to have another guy who gets it. Integrity is trump.

Here's a question for you:

Is it possible to count instant runoff in a reliable verifiable way? So it wouldn't all be about two parties?

{Ed note: Deleted. Entirely off-topic, complete cut and paste job, propoganda, etc. Reasons enough?}

Hearya asked:

Is it possible to count instant runoff in a reliable verifiable way? So it wouldn't all be about two parties?

Appreciate the spirit of the question, Hearya. But the path we're on, we're clearly unable to count a race between two people accurately! How the hell are we gonna bring in Instant-Runoff math into the equation?! As much as I'd love to...

(re: comments # 16 and #18) I'm sorry to disagree with Brad, so publicly and everything, but the math behind instant runoff voting is nothing! It's not complicated, there's not much of it, and it's the sort of thing that computers do best. So there's no technical reason why instant runoff voting couldn't be implemented properly, and no reason at all why it couldn't be implemented quickly and securely. And any representative of a voting machine manufacturer who tells you something different is lying through his teeth!

In my opinion, the reason why we don't have machines that can handle instant runoff elections is the same reason why we don't have machines that can handle regular elections: the people who make the machines --- and the people in whose pockets these people reside --- do not want the voices of all the people to be heard. That's the basic problem. The technical stuff --- the math especially --- is trivial.

But that's a minor disagreement; on the major point I'm here to say:

Great Job, Brad! Keep up the good work!!

Brad,
"Between she and I"? No! In English, we say: between HER and ME!
P.S. - Congratulate me, I finally got the Safari browser so I can read your blog.
Saving the English language one blog at a time...

Brad - Not Bad . . . An understatment . . . #6 That's for sure.

"Spanky" As in Our Gang / The Little Rascals ? ? ?

What's all this "spanking" stuff?
Is that like "Spanking the net-monkey" or "Flogging the blog-dolphin?"

It would be nice if the ethically upstanding in both parties reached across the partisan divide to show the rest of each party what acting in accordance with the will-of-the-people is about.

It's encouraging that a few right-wingers are with us on this. Just like it's encouraging to see Republican Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) roll with the Dem's on the NSA stuff. (could be a ploy... nothing would suprise me... but if not, it's great news also.)

WP #19

Anytime you make modifications to software there is an "opportunity" to cause malfunction due to faulty logic creeping in. That is why full regression testing is practiced.

It is all the more an opportunity when functionality is added or removed.

Adding the votes of two candidates is incredibly simple, in software terms, however as we have seen ad nauseum, all three of the major electronic voting machine makers are not doing it adequately.

One of them, Diebold, makes ATM's which perform far more complicated arithmetic than elections give rise to, yet they can't do the job of vote counting, even tho they can count all the pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, bills, and the like.

No wonder there are suspicions concerning the lack of quality and integrity.

To add additional functionality to that mess is the wrong way to go at this time. It seems to me that unless and until election machines meet the same standards that ATM's do, we should hand count.

Obviously, Roger Hedgecock is a left-wing, Kool-Aid drinking sore loser and conspiracy theorist. "You lost, Roger! Get over it! BWAHAHAHA! "

Oh, no. Wait a minute. Bilbray was Hedgecock's man. Let's change that. "You won, Roger. Get over it!"

Dredd, WP, Spanky, and all you 6 or 7 other wonderful patriots of Bradville! All Hail! Please excuse me for my lack of computer savvy (I'm a wordsmith, not a number cruncher), but is instant runoff voting impossible in a context such as Canada, Germany, et al., where paper ballots, counted by hand with the public as witness, have been the tried and true standard for what seems like forever? How come? It sounds like the best of both worlds to me...

I'm glad he agreed with you Brad, but is there a catch ?
I think it was RLM that declared that it could be possible that Bilbray actually won, and John Dowd before him said that they might use this count to justify once and for all that these hack boxes are legit ?
But he did admit that they have "manifestly been proven that it can be monkeyed with…and the results tampered!"

Kudos to you, but I'm going to stay back in my mindset awhile until its proven otherwise

Another nafarious spin outfit in this older short article at TPM link

#19 Winter Patriot,
Welcome back! Really missed you. I haven't been keeping up lately so if you've BEEN back for ages & I missed it...my bad. Welcome back anyway!

Hooray!

WP, you're still around! And Czaragorn! And all you other wonderful folks!

The truth will take some getting used to with all those "truthiness" addicts who are hooked on the GOP mindset. And maybe it'll never really penetrate very deeply. But we can hope...

I finally had time to listen...excellent interview, Brad, thank you!!! And thank you to Roger, who sounds like a reasonable guy.
How much longer is that "window" open, btw, for Busby to contest the results?
And I keep thinking of what I read in the RFK Jr article (I believe that's where I read it)...that come this November, all the ballots from the presidential election in Ohio (& elsewhere??) are due to be shredded.
Is this correct?

Great to have you back, Winter Patriot. Regarding runoff elections, who decides on the criteria for holding them? Do they become automatic if the margin is fewer than 5 points, say? Or only if neither candidate gets 50%?

I'm not clear on how runoff elections would deter fraud; seems to me votes could still be flipped at the last minute (as in Florida, 2000 and Ohio, 2004-2005, and every battleground state in 2004), in sufficient quantity to avoid having a runoff.

Roger will be subbing for Limbaugh either tomorrow (Friday) or Monday. It would be interesting to see if this topic gets discussed.

Well Well.. Our Brada-spanka-lanka is finally making the right wingnuts stand on the edge Patriotism and admit that we "need to accurately count votes". Excellent work!

The alternative is to proclaim that only right-wing votes count and Dems don't have a right to vote.. but, that would go directly against the term "Democracy", wouldn't it? And they spew over and over about how Democracy is "the right way to do it"..

Personally, I think this is just a motivator for them to find NEW ways to steal elections.. Like making it near impossible to get new people registered to vote, like in Ohio under Blackwell. What's funny is, I saw a post from a guy saying that Blackwell was "just following the law that the legislators wrote", but totally discounted the reports from the LEGISLATORS that said they "never intended for things to be like how Blackwell interprited them" and that they were going to revisit the wording of the law. I suspect, now that the SCOTUS is stacked with Shrubby Lackies, that we'll see another poll tax (read: Federal IDs) offered, and the SCOTUS will uphold the law, and millions will be disenfranchised. Then the right-wing can get back to the business of "fully counting the votes" in the horribly jerrimandered (sp) districts we have and keep a strangle hold on our country.

"It would be nice if the ethically upstanding in both parties reached across the partisan divide to show the rest of each party what acting in accordance with the will-of-the-people is about."

Which brings up the above statement.. The right-wing is NOT about "will-of-the-people", they are about "corporations" and "biggest donors". The Dems are slipping that way too, which is sad. There doesn't seem to be an "official" party that is about "the Constitution and America" (which would limit the WTO's influence at home, and would prevent things like NAFTA and all the other "free trade agreements" that are allowing corporations to dump American labor for that in 3rd worlds).

This country is dying for the same reasons most of the empoverished nations stay that way.. Corporate America wants cheap labor, and corrupt governments help them get it. When those who make the laws are the "upper crust" and their buddies are "the most rich", you get a lot of "favors" in an attempt by the "legislators" to be more like "the owners of everything". Until we wake up and realize that that kind of model will destroy humanity, we don't stand much of a chance. But, then, given the proclivity of the "right wing" and "end times", we don't have a lot of room to make a point.

I like Roger Hedgecock when he subsitutes for Rush. No, I don't listen to Rush every day, probably only 2 times a week.

This Diebold issue certainly is very important and does transcend partisian bickering.

I listened to the inverview and was impressed with both Roger and Brad. I like Brad's statement that he doesn't care which candidate won the Bilbray/Busby race. Suprising, but I like that.

But here is where I (slightly) disagree with some here:

Since the problems started when election systems went digital, then most of you want to go back to paper counting only. But as Winter Patriot said, the mathematics of counting votes is simple, therefore, some type of electronic voting machines can be used, if they are secure and un-hackable. Diebold certainly does not qualify.

Do you want grocery stores to go back to putting price stickers on every product sold and having the cashier punch in the numbers into the register? No. Barcoding products and having the computer system report to the register what the price of the product is based on that barcode read is a heckuva lot more efficient, speedy, and less error-prone that manual data entry.

I work with barcode equipment and program applications that use barcode technology. So I know what I am talking about.

Do we suspect the grocery store of cheating us on prices? Do we watch the price screen as the clerk scans the items? Most of us don't. We TRUST the grocery store's barcode and computer systems. When mistakes are made, they are in the computer's database for the price of that item.

But it's been proven that we CAN'T TRUST Diebold system because of the Hursti Hack and the test vote where the results were flipped.

However, I still think that somebody (some company) who is truly interested in fair and honest elections with no party allegiance, can make a computer-based voting system that is not able to be hacked.

I just hope they do it soon......

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Brad - Technicaly, I heard the term "analog Machine" is that correct because there is No analog values tallied. The only analog Parameter or value, that I can see is the Lightness/darkness of the dot in a scanner (sensitivity). Perhaps terms older systems are "Digital" (but noncomputer based / or not networked) new unstrustworthy computerbased networkable

The legendary WP said:

In my opinion, the reason why we don't have machines that can handle instant runoff elections is the same reason why we don't have machines that can handle regular elections: the people who make the machines — and the people in whose pockets these people reside — do not want the voices of all the people to be heard. That's the basic problem. The technical stuff — the math especially — is trivial.

I'll associate myself with Dredd's reply here, WP. If they can't add 1+1 as they can't now, then I don't feel particularly comfortable in asking them to add 1+1 (plus something else, etc.) Check me after we've solved the first issue, and then we can talk.

Can't recall who it was who asked, but the opportunity to Contest the election comes after certification. Which could happen as soon as tomorrow, though more likely early/mid next week.

Mike J. --- Glad to see a moment of intellectual honesty from me. If you're "suprised" at my comment that I don't care who won (Busby or Bilbray) then you've obviously not spent much time reading this blog. And like most wingnuts who don't give a damn about honest debate, have been spending the bulk of your time here doing nothing but divisive partisan bullshit.

I'd have no problem with using computers to count paper ballots in elections, presuming the entire process, from start to finish was transparent and publicly run in every way, and audited with appropriate sized samples to receive scientific certainty that the results are accurate. Short of that, our democracy is lost.

And yes, anybody whose paid attention to the issue, also knows how frequently supermarket scanners are simply wrong.

Plenty of grocery stores mark items on sale, and if you haven't looked at the checkout counter, you get home to find the computer charged you full price for all your sale items. Sometimes it's merely a marked-down item that somebody missed changing in the computer system, but lots of times it's done on purpose. And, I HATE not being able to find the price of an item until it's gone through the scanner at the check-out counter. So that's no remedy for the problem. It has to be a system that ALL interested parties can verify, 100% impervious to undetectable hanky panky.

"Do we suspect the grocery store of cheating us on prices? Do we watch the price screen as the clerk scans the items? Most of us don't. We TRUST the grocery store's barcode and computer systems. When mistakes are made, they are in the computer's database for the price of that item."

Actually, my mother watches EVERY item that comes up, and I tend to watch MOST items.. and catch (typically) at least 1 error PER TIME AT THE STORE.. That is, those machines are OFTEN wrong, and as you point out, it's because the database isn't up to date (for whatever reason). The REAL issue is, people are becoming LAZY and IGNORANT and they DO trust these machines, despite the FACT that we shouldn't be trusting "all these machines" out of hand. It's becoming the "norm" for people to be more and more lazy, which is how Diebold is able to screw us with crap machines..

At the end of the day, I would only trust the most SIMPLE of "scanners", and ones that NEVER connect to the net, and don't have "upgradable software" running in them.. hardware scanners (only having firmware) MIGHT be trustable so long as the convolusions of technical obfuscation are removed. Some kind of simple scanner that lets you put in the names with the locations on the ballot, then shows final counts on the results screen.. Then have those CALLED IN BY PHONE, under public scrutiny, to a place where they are WRITTEN on a board and tallied there.

But, still, there is no reason to be "lazy" with our electoral system. Advances in technology are being abused by a lazy society and it's detrimenting us all. There should be times/places where we don't use (advanced) technology at all, and our election system is one of those. CCTV, phones, paper ballots, hand counting.. about as much tech as we need.

And as Brad pointed out, if you were "supprised" by his not caring who won, so long as we can "trust the results", then you don't pay attention to what's said here. MOST of us here don't care "who wins", so long as it's REALLY the "will of the people", which is CLEARLY being thwarted at this point.

Hey, Mike J (#34)... My wife watches the scanner constantly while things are going through at the supermarket and catches something wrong almost every time we go shopping. She won't even go alone, because she has to load stuff onto the conveyer and can't be watching. You'd be amazed how much stuff she gets for free (they try to re-scan it or key it in, but she explains that the law says that they have to give it to her for free if it scans wrong).

Technology is not really the issue. CONTROL is the issue. Why is the counting software secret from the supposed owner (the state)? I don't need to know how it works, but why doesn't my Secretary of State? And in some cases, the state doesn't even OWN the equipment they pay for? These are corrupt BUSINESS PRACTICES layered on top of questionable technology.

BOTH issues need to be addressed.

And instant run-off elections COULD work with paper ballots counted by hand at the local level. It would just be another hand-count of the paper ballots with those that weren't for one of the two top candidates removed from the count AS COUNTING WAS DONE.

The non-partisanship (if that is even possible any more in our highly divided society) of those involved in maintaining the integrity of our elections is also a key requirement. While I guess it's too much to expect true non-partisanship, we could at least avoid the APPEARANCE of a conflict-of-interest such as having the SoS being the chair/co-chair of one candidate's re-election committee. We could also limit the ability of the candidates to appoint SoS's to positions of power after an election or the National Committees of a given party to give money to their re-election committees or x number of years.

Charlie L
Portland, OR
(Where 100% of our paper, mailed-in ballots are counted on ES&S or Sequoia machines (using secret code they won't share) and the only thing between us and 51%-49% Republican wins in every major race is the most stand-up and honest SoS in the USA --- Bill Bradbury)

Also, with grocery stores, we have many choices as to where to get our food, and if we find that one store's systems have been "cheating" us, we can go to another. As long as they aren't colluding to all have the same system of cheating, then its a problem that the marketplace can solve. With elections, we don't have any place else to go vote. We have to vote through our government's mechanisms to select who we want governing us and representing our wishes. We are also the "boss" of our government, and arguably should have more say when things are being done wrong.

If important actions are being delegated to others outside of governmental control such as voting machines, and they corrupt what we want being done through doing so, then it is very much our obligation to have that problem fixed!

I really hope that a lot of sensible Republicans show up on Wednesday too, to show that this is a REAL important issue for them to deal with, and not just a "partisan" one.

Do we suspect the grocery store of cheating us on prices? Do we watch the price screen as the clerk scans the items? Most of us don't. We TRUST the grocery store's barcode and computer systems.

Funny, just the other day I was asked by a self-checkout machine to pay $4.99 for a pack of four washers at home depot. The wrong barcode was on the bag, and the price was really 39 cents

I doubt that some evil home improvement hacker changed the barcodes, but computers are just as susceptible to human error as they are malice.

There has always been election fraud in this country, but until HAVA and the scam of provisional ballots and electronic vote gathering/counting, it was impossible to steal 3-5 MILLION votes in one national election.

As the saying goes, "To err is human, but to really screw things up takes a computer."

To STEAL (votes) may be human, but to STEAL (VOTES) ON A MASSIVE SCALE (and thus national elections) takes a concerted effort and some technology.

Charlie L
Portland, OR

Good points are made here by those of you responding to my post about grocery store barcoding. No I don't work at a grocery store... But I thought of the grocery stores as computer systems that we trust (or so I thought).

I didn't realize that so many people actually do watch the screen at the checkout and have caught errors. Perhaps I should watch more closely. BVAC, are you sure that those washers weren't made of silver?

Calipendence makes a very good point about locations. Grocery stores have competition, voting places and equipment are determined for us. If a grocery store keeps making mistakes, we go somewhere else. But we have to DEMAND change for better at our local elections office and then hope it happens.

I agree with Charlie L. that the SoS should not be involved in that election's political campaign. Also the state's Attorney General (top law enforcement officer). This applies to Ken Blackwell in Ohio 2004 and Bob Butterworth in Florida 2000.

Savantster #38,
Wow, I'll agree with most of what you said. I agree that we, in our society, have become more lazy in things. I agree that it's becoming normal for people to be more and more lazy in school, work, and civic responsibility. I agree that voting machines should not be networked or automatically upgradeable. I think that the firmware in them should be under secure password for each machine according to it's serial number and the master password list be only held by the Supervisor of Elections. ALSO those machines SHOULD NOT be allowed to be stored at poll worker's homes before an election. That is simply bonehead!

However, I disagree with technology being used in elections is all bad. Each technology we have used had a beginning that was not always perfect. Election machines should be completely tested to be perfect before used in an election. Unfortunately, that was not done. Our officials were so quick to put them out for the demands of Congress that the technology was not made secure, from hackers and/or mistakes. So perhaps we should view this use of e-vote machines as a "beginning" and just a start. A rough start that will be, in time, improved and cleared of hackers and mistakes.

I also disagree with your notion, and that of Brad, that I should not have been suprised. From my perspective as a Republican, all of you severely hate my party and always lean to the Democrat as those who think like most of you. That is exactly why I am Republican because I agree with most (not all) of their issues and disagree with most (not all) of Democrat issues.

Brad, since most (if not all) of what I see posted here is blaming Republicans for everything under the sun, then why should I not be suprised that you don't care about who won? Have I doubted you yet about that statement? No. I was simply suprised. (I was glad to hear that too.) Yet, you are still offended. Scheez, I was impressed by the interview with Roger Hedgecock, I have said before how your work on election reform is great, yet you still choose to attack me simply because I disagree with you on other issues. But you can't see fit to acknowledge when I agree with you. You only pound me or delete my posts yet don't delete others with the same or worse comments.

You meet with politicians like Sen.Feingold and activists. Have you had a meeting with Republican politicians? I'm not assuming, I'm asking. Please let me know.

Lastly, I agree that if e-vote machines used can be made secure, that they should still be transparently public in their accounting operations, yet also be physically secure from tampering.

Thank you all for the discussion.
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are you sure that those washers weren't made of silver?

Zinc actually, which has been coming down in price lately.

Potential OT Alert: I do not want to derail the thread but I can answer some of the questions that have been asked (or merely hinted at) above...

Instant Runoff is an electoral technique (or a "style" of election) that is more suited to a multi-candidate race than the system we use now.

If there are two candidates in a race then the voters have only two choices (if they choose to vote at all) and the question "Who got the most votes?" is a reasonable way to decide the winner, because the candidate who gets the most votes will necessarily receive more than half of the votes cast (i.e. a majority)...

But if there are three or more candidates in a race then things can get a lot more complicated, because it's possible for the vote to be split in such a way that no candidate gets the majority of the votes.

What happens if we have three candidates and the vote is split 35% / 33% / 32% ??? Should the candidate who received 35% of the vote win the election? Maybe, maybe not ... but it doesn't seem quite right, does it? And in a race with a much larger number of candidates, the top vote-getter might attract a much smaller percentage of the total votes cast, in which case the unfairness of handing him or her the seat would become even more apparent. What to do about this?

In some foreign countries they have a system in which the election happens in more than one phase: all candidates are eligible for the first phase, but only those who attract a sufficient proportion of the vote are eligible to run in the next phase (the "runoff").

Then the people vote again with a reduced number of candidates and (in theory anyway) the process continues until the field gets so small that one of the candidates garners more than half the votes cast, in which case he or she is declared the winner and the seemingly endless electoral process comes to a halt.

Does this seem like a big mess to you? Well it should, because it is, and there have been several attempts to devise practical ways ro work around the limitations, most significantly to provide something similar that happens faster. Probably the best of these attempts has turned into a system called "Instant Runoff" and here's how it works:

Instead of simply picking a candidate when you vote for a given office, you rank all the candidates for that office, in the order of your preference. When the votes are counted, they note the number of times each candidate is selected first. If no candidate has the majority, then the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and the votes that were originally counted for him are given to whoever was next-preferred by those who voted for him.

If this results in any candidate having the majority, that candidate is declared the winner and the process stops. Otherwise, the candidate with the next lowest number of votes is eliminated and we go around again and again until we get a winner.

If the process seems complicated then I'm not doing a good job describing it; in reality it's quite simple and an example will make that clear.

Suppose the question is "Chocolate, Vanilla or Strawberry?" and we have five voters who I will call "A" "B" "C" "D" and "E" and who voted as follows:

A : 1-Chocolate / 2-Vanilla / 3-Strawberry

B : 1-Chocolate / 2-Strawberry / 3-Vanilla

C : 1-Strawberry / 2-Vanilla / 3-Chocolate

D : 1-Vanilla / 2-Strawberry / 3-Chocolate

E : 1-Strawberry / 2-Vanilla / 3-Chocolate

Here we have 2 first-place votes for Chocolate, 2 first-place votes for Strawberry and 1 first-place vote for Vanilla. That's five votes total and it would take three to get a majority. So we don't have a winner but we do have a loser: we would remove Vanilla from contention and shift the vote previously credited to Vanilla --- we would give that vote to Strawberry instead (because "D", who voted for Vanilla, clearly indicated a preference for Strawberry rather than Chocolate) and now Strawberry would have three of the five votes and would be declared the winner.

It's a runoff because there was more than one "pass" at the vote-counting, but it was instant because it only required each voter to vote once.

As an electoral tool, it appeals to those who favor multi-party systems (rather than two-party systems) since it doesn't "throw away" the ballots of those who vote for the least popular candidates, in the way that a straight "most votes wins" system does.

I hope this answers the remaining questions about instant runoff voting. If not, ask more questions and I will try my best to answer them ... but now I need to shift gears for a moment.

I think my disagreement with Dredd and Brad on this topic is largely semantic rather than substantial. If you read our posts carefully you will notice that nowhere have either of them contradicted anything I wrote in my previous post.

Essentially they are both saying "We can't trust these guys to add 1+1, so why should we trust them to do something that's even more complicated?" and I am saying "The problem is not that instant runoff math is all that complicated, because it really isn't. The big problem is that that we can't trust these guys..."

I understand why people don't want to spend time and energy pushing for instant runoff support; it's not anywhere near the top of our list of problems at the moment, and it may never be. But I don't want people to forget about instant runoff either, nor to be mystified about it, because it's not all that complicated and in many ways it's a lot better than what we have now...

No, it cannot prevent fraud, and yes, its main feature only comes into play when no candidate takes the majority of the votes. But it does support a system of political pluralism and that's one of the most important things we are lacking today (and in my view one of the main areas in which Europe is way ahead of us)...

Enough of that and now for some more OT stuff: Thanks to some old friends for the kind words and greetings above. I have been away for quite a while, battling health and other problems, and I am only partially "back" even now; there's no telling whether I will be able to contribute to the blog regularly in the future (if at all). But I will stop by as often as I can, and if I ever again have anything interesting to say, I will try to do so.

On an even more OT personal note, I had some "minor" "emergency" surgery on Sunday and I am recovering as well as can be expected ... so to those who may be tempted to wish me well: Relax! I am being very well cared-for.

And now back to the squabble ...

Did I just hear a reasonable conversation between two adults of opposing ideologies in America about election integrity?

They're coming to take me away,
Ho Ho, He He, Ha Ha.
To the funny farm,
where life is beautiful all the time,
and I'll be HAPPY to see those nice young men
in their clean white coats.
And they're coming to take me awwwaaayyy!!

For Mike J.: My own experience with barcoding is that items are often mismarked, resulting in added profits to the store. It's what might be called "passive fraud," or "convenient mistakes caused by technology."

Here's an example. I recently complained at Big Y Market after being charged $17.95 for olive oil that was markeed on sale for $11.95. The store refunded my $6.00, with no apology for the error. So I got the right price. But what about the majority of people who don't catch these mistakes? In those cases, the store makes money from its own carelessness.

That's a pretty good racket, isn't it? Refund the difference to customers who notice mismarked items, pocket the difference whenever people don't. The store can't lose, and over time it makes a bundle.

This is of a piece with election fraud, I think. When I served as a pollwatcher in Florida, a woman's Kerry vote was flipped to Bush. She noticed it, complained immediately, and was assured by pollworkers that the mistake was corrected (she wasn't so sure). Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But what about all the Kerry votes that got flipped to Bush without anyone noticing?
We know for damn sure they weren't flipped back.

Point being, mismarked items in a supermarket almost always favor the store. Flipped votes in 2004 almost always favored Bush. Same basic idea.

Czaragorn #26

Don't leave yourself out ... there are many long timers here.

Instant runoff or just about anything else is quite possible and not really difficult for electronic voting machines to handle ... IF they are developed by non-partisan quality minded software engineers.

But the current climate in US elections is quite bad and anything beyond neanderthal paper ballots and hand counts should not be done.

We just do not have the character and intellectual honesty in election officialdom nor election machine manufacturing to take on such a noble cause at this time.

Winter Patriot: You cite a few culinarily-challenged voters in your example up there. Chocolate Roolz!

Agent 99: thanks for the funny comment. I agree with you, in fact, but educating the electorate wasn't part of my job. My only interest lies in seeing that the votes are counted correctly!

#45
WP,
Thanks for a very clear explanation of IRV. My attempts to explain it to people have been far less lucid, so I'll pinch that from you, by your leave!
I would be all for it--it's so sensible & simple--if we can ever eliminate major fraud from the equation. A big 'IF', unfortunately.

Look at what #43 Troll Mike J did.

6th paragraph of entry #43
After Mikey makes nice & pretends to be a swell guy--he slips the 'disinformation meat' he came to feed us into the middle of his I'm-a-nice-troll sandwich.
To wit:
"So perhaps we should view this use of e-vote machines as a "beginning" & just a start. A rough start that will be, in time, improved & cleared of hackers & mistakes".

Mikey plants the idea that the MASSIVE, INTENTIONAL, & PRE-MEDITATED FEDERAL CRIME of vote fraud uncovered here on BradBlog is really just a matter of having patience while they 'work out the bugs' in the new system.

NOT.
As much as I dislike it when trolls act 10 years old, it's worse when they present as nice & reasonable guys. It's just another tactic they use--they're not here for honest reasons no matter what trick they pull.

Joan, re #51: Leave Granted! Pinch away!! anytime ...

Charlene,

Why do you hate me so much? I suspect that if you and I were in the same physical room, you would not be able to refrain yourself from yelling and screaming. In fact, you are probably yelling and screaming in front of your computer as you type every response to me.

You and Brad keep saying that I come here to "disinform" you people. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I try to present a reasonable alternative to some of your wacko theories (in my opinion). But if you want to believe that the "MASSIVE, INTENTIONAL, & PRE-MEDITATED FEDERAL CRIME of vote fraud " is what is happening, then go ahead.

I know that the Diebold machines can't be trusted. That has been proven in an un-partisian test. But "itentional" is not yet a word that I will use. Maybe in the future...

But your problem, Charlene, is that you are so full of hate and discontent, that I don't think you even know how to be happy.

You can't be reasonable? You can't have a reasoned conversation with anybody who disagrees with you? You even attack fellow liberals who don't post here often when they ever so slightly state something you don't like (on an emotional level).

See, I hear from liberals all over and pundits on TV that their free speech should not be impugned. We are told to allow the free speech of Ward Churchill and high school teach Jay Bennish. We are told to allow the free speech of those like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Hollywood limousine liberals like Alec Baldwin and Barbara Streisand.

Yet liberals like you pound on the free speech of conservatives like Rev. Jerry Faldwell, radio's Rush Limbaugh and Mike Reagan, writers like Bill Bennett and Ann Coulter, and former Congressmen like Newt Gingrich and Zell Miller.

You certainly enjoy pounding on my free speech... But, unlike you, I don't have to attack someone else in order to make myself feel good. That is where examples of 10-year-old maturity appear. I feel good by helping family and friends. Even strangers like you.

Answer to the above: No, you can't be reasonable yet because of your hate. Your hate drives you too far from reason. But it does not have to take over. You can do better. Please try. First, get rid of you hate.

Stop and think real good before you respond emotionally again. Then think about it again. Echelon has probably been watching you for a long time.

Have a nice day!

Actually, Mike, you just DID attack someone else. Brad does give people a lot of room to comment, but when you so consistently irk people, and other trollish behaviors, including smilingly try to provoke paranoia, something startling starts happening to your posts.

Dear Agent99,

It's interesting for you to chime in here because just the other day you called me a "bottomless pain in the ass" w/o asking for permission from Brad, as you did with someone else a while back, "Brad, can I please tell him to pull his head out of his ass?".

Since links to other comments won't work now, cut-and-paste:
https://bradblog.com/?p=2986#comment-82975

Irk you? As I have said before, I give an alternative opinion. I'm not trying to irk you. I am a lot nicer than many other people posting on this forum. Sure, like you, I'll get irked now and then. But for the most part, I try to be respectful.

Provoke paranoia? How do I do that? There is only one person here that I have mentioned that word to, and it's not you.

Attack? I do point out that Charlene is full of hate, but I also try to help her by saying that she does not have to be that way, that she can do better. Or did you not read it all?

Yes, startling is right. I just noticed post of mine of this thread that is now completely missing. Maybe it didn't make it. Maybe... so I'll do it again.

I appreciate this forum that Brad operates. It is his site and his property. But when my post gets deleted and the very next one attacks me with foul language (that I don't use), then I see a pattern of un-fair behavior. But he has the right to make that choice on his site.

See #58, #59, and #68:
https://bradblog.com/?p=2956

Too bad you got rid of your MG's. I know a lot of people who have a lot of fun with those cars. But just like the comments on this forum, it's a matter of personal opinion.

flag image

Note: this post was supposed to appear on 6/23/2006 and would have been #47.

Winter Patriot #45,

I like the idea of the Instant Runoff, but I'm not sure about giving votes of the removed loser to other candidates based on higher rankings.

As for the multiple-candidate races and having a runoff to get over 50%, why look to other countries? Look to Louisiana.

Louisiana has an open-primary system instead of a closed-primary system like all other states use. In a open-primary system, all candidates that qualify for the election will run regardless of party affiliation. If no one candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, then the #1 and #2 candidates move to the run-off. New Orleans just had this occur two months ago for the Mayor's race where the incumbent had many challengers. None received more than 50%, so the runoff was one month later between the #1 candidate, who was the incumbent, and the #2 candidate, who is the Louisiana Lt.Governor, both Democrats.

The closed-primary requires that each party settle on a candidate before the general election. But the open-primary system is non-partisian. Any number of Republicans and Democrats and Independents can be in the open-primary.

The run-off between the #1 and #2 candidate will always result in a winner. The voters who voted for the #3,#4,#5,etc will then decide which of the top two they will choose. The #2 candidate is not necessarily at a disadvantage since the voters from #3 on down did not choose the #1 candidate.

Usually the #1 and #2 are of different parties, like in the Governor's race and US Congressional races. But not always, as shown in New Orleans last month in the runoff.

Now, is that not a more fair system of non-partisian elections?

Several years ago, back in the 1990's I think, the federal government tried to force Louisiana to change to a closed-primary system and threatened loss of federal money. But Louisiana did not change.

Waving flag of Louisiana at 3dFlags.com

Ok, a link to a comment here without the code gets automatically coded. I was looking at the preview and it was not appearing.

Thank you.

You confuse disrespect with hatred.

Roger Hedgecock--yet another blowhard draft-dodger.