Forest, trees, missing

Think for a minute--about the amount of paper, the number of articles, the number of blog posts, and the hours of debate--about the Iraq war. Specifically, the intelligence failures (if you're an R), or the misuse of intelligence (for I's and D's).

It all misses the point.

Which is the President's "Pre-emptive war docrine".

Right now the administration is parroting talking points about 1) how the D's had the same intelligence as the White House, and that they went along, so you know, every thing is Kosher, 2) how the CIA misled the poor White House, who shouldn't be responsible, and 3) Iraq totally had WMD, btw.

This is the thing about waging war based on predicting the future: you have to be right.

None of this "the CIA said..." and "D's agreed too, so nobody is to blame."

I'm all for pre-emptive war. As long as you're right.

In high school a teacher of mine had a rule about kids who threw paper balls into the trash from their seat. If you got it in, no problem. If you missed, detention.

Why should the President be held to a lower standard?

Solving the wrong problem

eVoting machines are the answer... but what is the question?

In the 2000 election, Florida was on the hanging and pregnant chad it list. All eyes were glued to election workers holding ballots up to glaring florescent lights, looking for what the voter intended. Each possibility was examined in the courts: "What if they punched out the chad for one candidate, but only sortof punched out the other one?" "What if the ballot has a dimpled chad, and the punch didn't go all the way through?"

The list went on and on.

Which brings me to the topic of this post. The fiasco in Florida in 2000 was caused by ballots which did not clearly indicate the voter's intent. In other words, the ballot was not clear and consistent. The question we might want to answer becomes "How do we build a voting system that makes sure that the ballots, when cast, will easily and clearly identify the voter's intent?"

Unfortunately, current eVoting machines do not answer that question. They answer the question, "How can we count votes slightly faster?"

A machine that answers the first question is easy to build. Simply have the voter select the candidates they want, review their selection on the screen, and hit the "Print" button. A full-sized optical scan ballot would be printed out, the voter could examine it, and then put it in the ballot box. No hanging chads, no holding the ballot up to the light. No worries about Diebold, or tampering, or anything.

But hey, at least with current machines, we get the results at 9:30pm, instead of 10:30 or 11. Isn't that worth the trouble?

The 2/3rds rule

I've got an answer to our political troubles that's way better than campaign finance reform (which, keep in mind, would be a HUGE advancement for democracy).

Let's make it so that to win an election, you need 2/3rds of the vote. If neither candidate gets that much, we have a run-off election. If after the runoff, neither candidate has 2/rds, then the political parties have to pick a new, better candidate.

I know what you're thinking: "Who in the world would get more than 52% of the vote? Isn't 52% a landslide these days? A mandate?"

Well, once the candidate wins, they are supposed to represent 100% of their constituents.

So the least we can do is have 'em go 2 for 3, at least as practice for when they have to go 3 for 3.

The bootstrap problem

Yesterday I served as a poll clerk in Alameda County. More on that in a future post.

Many people made sarcastic comments about the Diebold electronic voting machines. Trying to be as apolitical as possible (I have a LOT to say about those machines personally...), I responded as follows.

Voter: So where is the accountability here? Why are we using a machine with no paper record?

Me: All of the machines used in this election were certified by the Secretary of State, who is accountable to the voters, given that he is an elected official.

which seemed the best answer I could give at the time. But when I got home, it occured to me: how does electoral accountability work when the issue at hand is the electoral process? A classic bootstrap problem, and probably the best argument against the machines.

PS: After working in a run down gym for 14 hours, it gets really hard to smile when voters imply that I'm part of a conspiracy with Diebold to manipulate the election. We were given name badges that said "Election official: how may I help you?". They should have said: "You elected the person who chose the eVoting machines: Blame yourself!"

Maybe the R's should just disband the court?

In the right wing's assault on the Judiciary as a concept, the frame du jour is that we need strict constructionalists and origionalists. They claim that judges should simply apply the law as written and not "legislate from the bench".

My question is: if applying the law was such a no-brainer, why do we need 9 supreme court judges? Why not 1? Actually, now that you mention it, why do we need an entire appeals court system as well?

That's the problem with Lakoff-style debate framing: your frames often mean more than you think they do. The right wingers should just say what they mean: we want judges who are extremely conservative. The left already knows that, and the right would probably support them even more if they talked in that manner.