From: hal@finney.org
Date: Wed Jun 20 2001 - 13:16:35 MDT
Harvey writes:
> Living through the experience in Florida, I saw major cheating on
> *both* sides. I am not just being diplomatic here. Most people don't
> realize that disputes and cases had to be filed an processed at the county
> level and escalate to the major court cases we saw. Both sides initiated
> these complaints in all counties. Both sides also argued all sides of all
> issues in different locations to see which arguments would survive to the
> next level. It was very bizarre and illogical. The complex mess reported
> by the media was the "short" version of events. I tried to keep track of
> this, and there were literally tens of thousands of votes in dispute, with
> illegal actions on both sides of the aisle. I think it is silly to even try
> to figure out who cheated more when both sides obviously cheated as much as
> they could. The Florida election strengthened my disgust of both major
> political parties.
This is unfortunate, Harvey, but keep in mind that over five million
people voted in Florida. Errors in tens of thousands still constitute a
relatively small percentage. It is not necessarily cause for despair that
social institutions were only able to make a measurement with an accuracy
of about 1%. It's not easy to measure people's thoughts and intensions.
They're not like inanimate objects. 1% may be about the best we can do.
It was unfortunate that in this case we had to make an arbitrary
choice inside this fuzzy margin. (Although of course this goes on
in every election, the only difference this time was that it was the
U.S. Presidency.) The measurement was well within the error bars and
in the end it was arbitrary. But it had to be done.
I don't see Florida as a cause for disgust, it was the inevitable outcome
of the need to force a final decision in a case where we are squarely
within the gray area. Any system which had a similar requirement for
finality could run into the same problem.
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:13 MST