-----Original Message-----
From: Edward Cherlin <cherlin@pacbell.net>
Sent: Feb 3, 2005 4:35 PM
To: ovc-discuss@listman.sonic.net
Subject: Random choice. (was Re: [OVC-discuss] Accuracy and repeatability...)
On Wednesday 02 February 2005 18:32, charlie strauss wrote:
> At some point any election is a tie in the sense that both
> candidates are equally qualified and desired in the eyes of
> the voters. That is a large fraction voted for each so by
> definition they are qualified regradless of other measures of
> their intellect and ability. Thus selecting one of them by a
> game of chance is not an affront to democracy.
>
> Since this would eliminate almost all challenges to an
> election
I doubt that. What if a candidate misses the random choice cutoff
by 10 votes?
ANSWER: the cutoff is graded. Your game of chance is proportional to how far you are from the "cutoff". Example the cut-off is 5000 votes. One candidate wins by 4500 votes. So the odds in the game of chance are 4500:500 favoring the winner. If the margin is a healthy one then dogfighting over handfulls of votes only trivially alters the odds.
> and elminate any need to recount on suffieintly
> accurate machines
Never. "Any measurable error rate is too high." Bill Godbout
ANSWER: Uh did you read the logic I laid out. Machines more accurate than the ability of election to decide voter and citizen intent are meaningless. to re-cap but one point if voters made errors 0.5% of the time then having machines more accurate than the expected deivation of the voters errors would be meaningless. You would precisley know an innaccurate number.
> it solves a heck of a lot of issues in
> voting and promotes public confidence that no swindle took
> place.
ROTFLOL. Look, if you want random choices...
Its not adding randomness it is removing bias. It's a more sophisticated decision criteria then being a slave to the whims of the weather and traffic which are the random elements we have now. I am replacing these random but non-fair elements with fair and random elements. The degree of randomness is not enlarged but the bias is reduced. Much better.
-- Edward Cherlin Generalist & activist--Linux, languages, literacy and more "A knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it!" --Alice in Wonderland http://cherlin.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ OVC discuss mailing lists Send requests to subscribe or unsubscribe to arthur@openvotingconsortium.org _______________________________________________ OVC discuss mailing lists Send requests to subscribe or unsubscribe to arthur@openvotingconsortium.org ================================================================== = The content of this message, with the exception of any external = quotations under fair use, are released to the Public Domain ==================================================================Received on Sun Feb 27 17:17:03 2005
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