Reply #41: I agree. [View All]

[Bill Bored]

Since Kerry didn't fight, the number crunching has limited utility now.

It is not the strongest of the evidence either. For one thing, it doesn't suggest a methodology for HOW the theft was done or HOW it can be prevented in the future. It's also actually very easy to dispute by simply suggesting that the numbers, whatever they are, were biased in some way.

What we need is transparency in the process and the right to question the results and a means to independently verify them.

This means forcing the vendors to waive their intellectual property rights, if not immediately, certainly in the event of any contest of election.

Also, the independently auditable paper trail. Whether it's a paper ballot (RIP Andy) or a voter-verified paper record, it would have to be made of paper until such time as there is another human-readable medium that can't be manipulated electronically. Chris Dodd doesn't get this but many other Democrats and some well-meaning Republicans do.

And the last thing is recount laws that make it easy to count this paper by hand whenever there is doubt about the outcome.

Then we need candidates who will be willing to use these laws and a media that won't chastise them for doing so.

The other alternative is counting all the paper all the time by hand. I'm not quite there yet but I wouldn't object to it if it happened.

But getting back to the number crunching, I'd hate to think what would happen if we had an election with exactly the same infrastructure, obfuscation, lack of auditing, and outcomes, in which the exit polls were all within their margins of error! What would the EPTBs (Exit Poll True Believers) do for fun then?