I know that, that’s what I am talking about. Why you defend it, I do not understand.
I can think of several ways of doing it, but in third grade, I performed the exact same trick, but with colored marbles in the film canisters rather than scraps of paper.
My trick was to hold the film canister that I wanted to pick in my hand nice and tightly for a few moments before putting it in. It really only needs to be 10 seconds or less. Then when you reach in, you feel for the warm one. There are other ways, putting a slight notch or other rough spot on the canister, taping a coin to the inside bottom to make it heavier, or having one of the pieces of paper be slightly smaller so that it will rattle inside the container when shaken.
I don’t know that they cheated, but it would have been so easy to do so, it seems as there should be no confidence in this result whatsoever. If they had wanted to do something that would be perceived as being fair, they could have done a coin flip. One candidate tosses, the other calls it in the air, there really are no easy ways to cheat that result. That they chose to do something more convoluted and with more chances for cheating does not fill me with confidence.
At the time I wrote that, I was not as aware of the party affiliations as I am now, thank you. Anyway, that still doesn’t mean that he wasn’t paid or offered other favors (or threats) to pick the right one.
Add to that, as you said, the one to pick was a democrat, so if he had picked the democrat, would you now be looking at it suspiciously, asking for a do-over?
There are several ways it goes down. The first is someone offers Alcorn a bunch of money. The second is that someone threatens to harm Alcorn or his family. The third is that if Alcorn picks a democrat, the republicans call shenanigans on the rather easy to cheat process, and demand another draw.
All this could have been avoided if they used even the most basic common sense with regards to the design of the draw. Whether it be having a random third party pick, or my preferred method, a coin toss, where one tosses the coin, and the other calls it in the air.
I like the latter, as there is really no way to cheat on that without collusion between the opponents.
It is just that that set up is so prone to cheating, that it should never have been used. There are too many questions, and it is hard to have confidence that there was not cheating going on.
Gosh, maybe someone bribed Simonds to concede. Or maybe someone threatened her family.
And maybe the coin tosser would be an expert slight-of-hand artist who has spent years practicing how to influence a coin toss and more year learning how to apply subtle psychological pressure to make it more likely that the caller will call the wrong option.
There’s really no way to know for sure, if you think about it.
On this side issue Bricker has more support IMHO k9bfriender, of course overall he is as effective as the blind squirrel that finds a nut once in a while…
Well, my confidence in the voting process is certainly harmed. The only cure is to make it more difficult for poor and minority citizens to engage in the democratic process. Who’s with me?
Read it again, that part of you being right on a side issue is still there.
(You really do have a lot of reading comprehension trouble lately) You still got someone to say you were correct on something, and still you do not like the few bits you can get.
So I will have to say that I do agree with ElvisL1ves, The Tooth,Gyrate, Bryan Ekers, septimus, elucidator and virtually all of what k9bfriender said.
Yes, yes, the question of the fairness of the drawing process is absolutely a side issue. I agree.
Funny how your interest in highlighting its side-i-ness arises when it cuts against you, though. When posters were confidently declaring that cheating in the process probably happened, you were as quiet as fucking Marcel Marceau.
Aw, hell, I probably shouldn’t be punishing you for saying this. Not many people here would even concede the side issue. Sorry.
You seem to also have no life, but I have one, so I do not check all the time for all threads. Specially when my father passed away. (Was expected, he is suffering no more)
BTW I remember that there was also a thread where I was critical of an OP that you disagreed with and you boggled down for several posts because if I was not being 100% against the OP or others in that thread that that was not good enough, or that the fate of our nation was on the line.
As I said, you really do get hung up on the nice legal twigs while missing the forest of bad that is on your side.
I will have to say here that you are really begging to sound a lot like Trump when he tells others about how nice he is with someone after tossing ugly or dumb stones.
But seriously, you need to unfriend a lot of people that are giving your sorry talking points or to remove bad sources of info from your links.
Going forward, I have to say that I do follow the advise of Hegel, progress is messy. And one has to look at what others in favor of voter ID do say, but the elephant in the room can not be avoided.
Once again, I do think that ID laws are not bad in theory, the issue remains that flawed humans (that are more flawed in the Republican side nowadays) are gaming the system and the current narrative is to ignore what while most people do favor voter ID, the very ugly issue of many of the supporters of the Republicans not bothering to watch who the voter watchmen are and are doing does remain.
Those are possibilities, sure. But I was just pointing out that the set up was very easy to cheat, and I don’t understand why you would use a system that is very easy to cheat if the idea is to have confidence in the result.
Your speculations about an expert slight of hand artist are not relevant, I was pointing out that the way it was set up is something that an 8 year old can do with less than 15 minutes of practice. That you would equate that to being able to influence coin tosses (which is something that no one can really do consistently) demonstrates your apathy towards ensuring that the election is fair, as long as it goes your way.
For as much talk about how you think that Voter ID will increase the confidence in the electoral process, you seem very cavalier about how this rather controversial closure to the election took place.
I never got a chance to air any concerns, no one asked me, and I never agreed to any terms. I am pointing the flaws out now. I knew they were drawing lots, but my first encounter with the setup they were using, and the process they went through, was when I watched the stream. I immediately thought of how easy it would be cheat in that situation.
To be fair, I don’t have any proof that the selection was rigged, in fact, I don’t even have a really strong suspicion of that. I have not stated that I believe that this is what has happened.
I have only stated that this is what could have happened, and in a thread where we talk about people losing their ability to vote because of a perception that it will increase confidence in the outcome of elections, it is appropriate to bring up other things that reduce confidence in the outcome of elections, and it is amusing to see Bricker dismiss concerns about the process and the perception it creates of the integrity of the election process.
Put it this way, my belief that this drawing of lots was rigged is greater than my belief that any election was ever fraudulently swayed in a way that Voter ID would have prevented. (the latter is very, very close to zero, the former, slightly higher.)
I have not declared that it probably happened. I have declared that it could have happened, and explained how. I will certainly declare that it would be far easier to have cheated in that draw than it would be to turn an election based on fraudulent votes that would be prevented by Voter ID.
More or less paranoid than thinking that without Voter ID, people will come in and sway your elections by voting fraudulently?
Now, Bricker, will you at least agree that this was a poorly chosen system by which to break the tie? You don’t need to accept that any cheating did happen, you don’t need to accept that anyone cynically set it up that way in order to be able to challenge the result if it went to the democrat. I am only asking if you had the chance to influence a future draw, would you be supportive of the recent procedure, or would you suggest something that would give more confidence in viewers/voters of a fair result?
Of course, I also don’t think that that ballot should have been counted, and that choosing to count it also does not reflect well on the integrity of the electoral process.
I do agree with you: because you can point to an easy way in which cheating might have happened, a system should be developed that eliminates those objections. It seems trivially easy; perhaps the three people on the board could have the following roles:
Person A loads two identical film canisters with identically-sized paper, each containing the name of one candidate.
Person B, who does not observe the loading, then picks up both canisters and places them in a cloth sack, which he turns inside and out to show observers it’s empty, then shakes the sack vigorously and steps around to Person C, who is seated facing away from these actions.
Person C then takes the sack, shakes it some more, and dumps the contents into a glass bowl. He removes the winning canister, opens it, and reveals the name for all to see, and then immediately opens the second container to reveal it contained the other name.
Thoughts?
Because truthfully, I think there are way to cheat coin flipping, if the coin flipper and the one calling it are colluding.
I agree. But the rule tries to protect the “intent of the voter.” I’d adopt a rule that requires the ballot be crystal clear and under my system, that ballot would be judged spoiled.
Of course, who knows how many others during the recount should have been spoiled but were counted anyway? Perhaps a strict rule would have unambiguously given the win to one candidate. But since a tie is always possible, I agree a method that comes closer to avoiding speculations of possible rigging is best.
Or, ETA: each candidate writes down, secretly, “ROCK,” “PAPER,” or “SCISSORS,” then at the count of three, each reveals their choice. A spoiled choice loses.
Other than adding in giving the parties or their representatives the ability to inspect the canisters, to ensure they have no alterations or distinguishing marks, that could work.
The idea would be that it is the candidates or their chosen representatives doing the flipping. They should have sufficient incentive not to collude. If we are really in a situation where opposing candidates are colluding, then the fairness of a coin toss is the least of our problems.
Any time I have ever messed up a ballot (once), I went back and got a new one, rather than scratching it out. I always took great care in filling out my bubbles, under the fear that any slight deviation may end up leaving my vote uncounted. I may be more careful than I need to be, but there comes a point where the voter actually does have a responsibility to make an unambiguous selection. I had always operated under the assumption that if you filled in two circles when you were only to fill in one, then that ballot (or that vote on the ballot anyway) is spoiled, and would not be counted.
Reading throughout the rules of the manual counts in virginia, I will admit that they do make sense for determining the will of the voter, but they shouldn’t be necessary in the first place, and in any case, this ballot didn’t really conform to either section 5 or section 8, it wasn’t really a strikethrough or a clarifying mark.
Not serious: would it be wrong to have a voting test, not to demonstrate knowledge or or ideology, but just to make sure that you are capable of filling in bubbles on a piece of paper? (And if not, then you can get assistance from someone who can)
ETA: Many years ago, I think on NPR, they were talking about close elections, and how if a vote is really close, the last few ballots don’t really matter anyway, as the error in the count i going to be greater than those contested ballots make up. The guy proposed a system, where if you were within .5%, you automatically went to a random selection, rather than a recount. I am not sure how I feel about this, but it is an interesting idea.