So, let me get this straight
We have computers that can:
Perform trillions of calculations per second
Render impressive graphics displays in more colors than the human mind can even pick up on.
Guide lasers for brain surgery
Run billions and billions and billions of business transactions with minimal error that result in financial statements that can be reasonably opined on
Get robots to Mars
Parallel park a car
But we can’t make fucking computers that can count with any level of confidence? Gimme a break.
November 7th, 2006 at 11:55 am
The computers are not the problem. The problem is the people.
November 7th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Tennessee Court of Appeals has degreed that we have the right to vote, but there’s no constitutional guarantee that every vote must be counted.
http://www.tsc.state.tn.us/OPINIONS/tca/PDF/063/MillsDGopn.pdf
“In short, while the right to vote is fundamental, there is no recognized right to a certain balloting system. Furthermore, there is no right to a perfect voting system.”
Let’s all pretend we live in a democracy.
November 7th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
You forgot “safely land a manned spaceship on the moon”.
November 7th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Representative republic. Please.
November 7th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Representative republic. Please.
Thank you. It is different from a democracy. Unless you are a far left liberal.
November 7th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Good thing there’s no right to a “perfect voting system”, since one’s impossible.
And even if we limit that to a perfect voting mechanism – that is, just the counting of votes as they were intended to be cast – we still can’t achieve perfection, though we can get tolerably close.
I do wonder what Storm’s complaint was really supposed to be. Did he even read the decision he cited? The one that dealt only with the Tennessee constitution, not the US one? The one that rejected Mills’ argument that paperless voting was not ‘equal’ under the law to paper ballots because the equality was that of suffrage, not of mechanism? (See pages 9, 10.)
That there is no right to a certain balloting system, based on the use of mechanical voting machines in 1938? What specific part of any of that argument is incorrect or anti-“democratic”?
To complain that the nation is not “democratic” because a state court decided that electronic voting, in the absence of any showing of harm (“The Complaint in this case does not allege facts that rise to the level of a violation of the Plaintiff’s constitutional rights.“) was acceptable, boggles the mind.
It’s one thing to suggest that paperless voting is a bad idea; it probably is. But that has nothing to do with the court’s decision or its logic or the constitution of the state of Tennessee.
#9: To be double pedantic, in at least one one of the common and accepted uses of “democracy”, a representative republic is a democracy (a state where the people control the government). It’s just not a democracy in at least one of the other uses of the term.
November 7th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Okay, when I read this post I laughed.
Out Loud.
There are times I’m smitten with this blog.