Paper ballots must be manipulated one by one. Voting computers can be hacked in huge vote-batches at a time.
A machine is a little harder to register an ambiguous result with. You push button A or button B. A paper ballot, marked with a pen, can have a big messy smear mark running through several choices, forcing the ballot to be discarded. And we all remember hanging chads.
Machine votes can be tallied, summed, and counted in a tiny fraction of the time taken to count paper ballots by hand…and it sometimes comes down to hand-counting.
Obviously, the detriments outweigh the advantages, by a damn long sight, but there actually are some advantages.
Yes, Bush v Gore is the obvious example of potentially seriously damage to the political system’s credibility caused by problems with paper ballots. And in that case IMO it became clear that elections on paper ballots don’t really have a winner, if they’re extremely close enough, since we’ll never measure it exactly through the fog of human imperfection. That grey area is probably narrower with electronic means, but at the potential risk of being easier to rig or interfere with elections that aren’t razor close.
I’m not sure which you’re saying has more disadvantage. I would say it’s insane to put voting on the internet or have any voting machine connected to it. I don’t know the details of how web based hacking and security actually work but it doesn’t seem possible to convince reasonable non-experts that any system is 100% safe based on the track record of highly damaging info from sophisticated sources that hackers have been able to get. So that uncertainty would weigh on the political system. Electronic machines physically separate from the internet are common, and perhaps superior to paper.
We should do both. The main reason we want electronic balloting is speedy efficiency, and that is a good thing. But I favor producing a printed “receipt” ballot for the voter to place in a ballot box as “back up”. Which we should use to “spot check”, count the paper ballots against the electronic results regardless of who won or lost.
A pain in the butt? Sure, but voter confidence!
Careful (by which I mean diabolical) screen layout can be done on machines to still create the “butterfly ballot” effect where clicking the obvious button has a non-obvious effect. And for which the user will be none the wiser for having voted wrongly.
I’m sure we’ve all seen commercial websites where it’s [Submit] [Cancel] on most of the pages to process a purchase, but one page is laid out as [Cancel] [Submit]. Arrgh!!!
It’d be easy to play those same games with voting machines.
Jokes about the clown car notwithstanding, this group was a relatively young group of serious candidates.
Of the 17 who declared:
• 4 were in their 40’s (Cruz, Rubio, Jindal and Walker);
• 3 were in their 50’s (Christie, Paul and Santorum);
• 9 were in their 60’s (Trump, Kasich, Bush, Carson, Fiorina, Gilmore, Graham, Huckabee and Perry;
• 1 was in his 70’s (Pataki).
Average age was 59. Seven out of 17 were under 60, and 4 of those were under 40.
As presidential politics go, that’s a high proportion of young people (only 3 presidents have been elected while in their forties: Teddy Roosevelt (when he ran for a second term), Kennedy and Obama).
It was also a group with a lot of experience in government:
• 4 governors (Kasich, Christie, Jindal (at the time he declared), and Walker;
• 5 former governors (Bush, Gilmore, Huckabee, Pataki and Perry);
• 4 senators (Cruz, Rubio, Graham and Paul);
• 1 former senator (Santorum).
This was the “deep bench” that the Republicans and pundits talked about. Whether you agree with their politics or not, by most objective standards it was a serious group of contenders, with considerable youth, as these things go.
Trump’s victory over all of them can’t be put down to it being a weak field. Too many, more likely, but it was a relatively young and serious group of contenders. The fact that Trump beat them all is stunning.
Nice analysis, NP. It makes me embarrassed that I know about very few of the Canadian political personalities.
And that is why Hillary Clinton, and this country, are in grave danger. Donald Trump is the most atrocious nominee in memory – maybe ever. And he’s now virtually tied with someone who, despite having character flaws, is demonstrably a more qualified candidate and better choice. But as you pointed out, most of the people he has vanquished were better choices. However, millions of American voters just don’t accept it. He is the political equivalent of MRSA. We think we’ve rid ourselves of the sonofabitch, and he just keeps coming back.
It is no coincidence that Donald Trump frequently speaks of and flirts with conspiracy theories, and no coincidence that one of his top advisors peddles them. What this election is showing us right here and now is that millions of voters – probably not a majority but quite possibly a decisive plurality – are the sort of people who make serious decisions about civic matters and who interpret the world around them based on nothing more than flat out bullshit. And I’m sorry, while our constitutional system of government has enjoyed more than 225 years of qualified success, no democracy can survive the corruption of the mind and spirit of the people who control it.
Even if Donald Trump loses, America still has its problem: us. We ain’t going away and we ain’t gettin any smarter.
Thanks, but just realised I made a
mistake: Clinton was also in his forties when elected, so that makes four.
Very well said. Thank you.
BUT …
Recall that this
was written in the summer of 1920 in reference to the election between Warren Harding / Calvin Coolidge (R) and James Cox / Franklin Roosevelt (D) to replace incumbent Woodrow Wilson who was not running for a third term due to health. I know little of Cox (who lost), but history tells us the other three were hardly morons.
IMO much of the difference this time is still political activism by cohorts that have historically voted in small numbers. IOW, while the common clay *might * (*pace *Mencken) be a bit more credulous than 20, 40, or 60 years ago, the big difference today is that they’re much more engaged and much more noisy. And each is equipped with an individual social media megaphone.
A couple of years ago during the height of the Occupy movement I saw a bumper sticker that said “The 1% wouldn’t matter if the 99% voted”. They were discussing activism on a different social dimension, but their point is sound. If only the elite and semi-elite vote, you get a (much?!?) different outcome than if everybody including the dispossessed and the malcontents votes.
The voter suppression efforts of the nastier factions of the Rs have understood this for years. What’s different this time is Trump’s found a wellspring to increase their own support instead of just trying to decrease the D’s support by means both fair and foul.
As citizens we each face a choice; you’re either for true democracy or you’re not. Favoring democracy except for when “those people” vote the “wrong” way is evil and undemocratic. And IMO utterly UnAmerican.
What this election, regardless of who wins, *should *teach us members of the thoughtful semi-elite, is that social inclusiveness matters. As does quality universal education. And quality universal prosperity, or at least meaningful participation in the total economic gains over time. As does ensuring there is a continuous flow of rational effective information, publicly funded if necessary. Gresham’s Law applies to information vs. BS as surely as it applies to real vs. counterfeit currency.
Agh! Another typo - should have been “4 of those were under 50”. Dangers of doing maths type work late at night.
It was all in the wiki article on the Republican primary; I just pulled out the numbers.
Not too much. Democrats made some noise about changing the electoral college, but we pretty much got on board to support Bush pretty soon. Democrats are generally not disagreeable, hyper-partisan, demagogues who wants to claim power at any cost. Especially after 9/11, when we knew that the country had to come together, most of us abandoned challenging Bush on the results of the election. We moved on, occasionally making jokes about it here and there, but nothing serious
However, I see the GOP, and especially the deplorables that make up Trump’s base salivating over their perceived slight for years. They will be wound up tighter than a snake’s sphincter, ready and willing to attack anyone for daring to suggest that they lost fair, and that Trump was a terrible, racist candidate that would never be elected even against the 25 year conservative campaign to create a Democratic boogeyman candidate. I’m sure whatever “reform”, if you can even call it that, will continue the GOP’s plan to disenfranchise voters because they win when less people vote. That is their long term plan win or lose, and losing will just make them more desperate.
I think the problem is that Americans (or at least Republicans) are learning, after GWB and Palin, that being a governor doesn’t mean you’re actually competent. If “experience” is in elected office, and can be gotten by wheeling & dealing or vapid bullshitting, then does it matter?
Actually, the governors turned Presidents before GWB were Carter (almost OK, but put a monster in charge of the Fed), Reagan (bit mad, anti-mathematical), & Clinton (vainglorious). So we know being a governor means only a little.
And legislators? Any office which can be clung to by Denny Hastert (briefly Speaker of the House!), Steve Israel, or Louie Gohmert is even less indication of intelligence or competence. Legislators don’t even have to be responsible.
Not for nothing are the GOP looking to businessmen, even though that’s ridiculous for choosing a US President. Trump trumped the whole “deep bench,” and the establishments of two parties—excluding people like Sanders & Kucinich—when he pointed out that these smart, serious, professional public servants will whore out their offices, and give giant kickbacks or even give away public assets, to “donors.” He made himself look bad, but the filth stuck to almost everybody else. That may be the real reason that Ben Carson was performing so well—no history of selling his office, due to having no office. And, of course, the media won’t admit that—because they are the ultimate beneficiaries of the vast majority of campaign spending.
Well said. Another factor:
Given how many of our states are more or less one-party operations now, being governor of one of those is not good training for President of a 50-50 nation with a 55/45 or 60/40 Congress.
Regardless of the margin, in defeat, Trump will piss and moan about how crooked Hillary stole the election. It was rigged. The media is against him (with out ever pondering why).
Trump will go on to do a few interviews for $ and keep in the spotlight saying the same thing again and again. Because after all, everyone loves him, and nothing he did led to his defeat.
His base supporters might lash out briefly, but will slink back into the shadows of their own delusions. It will take generations for their bigotry and misogyny to boil off in a slow simmer until it’s gone for good.
I hope.
[del]If[/del] When he loses, I don’t think the election will fade to a slow simmer at all, because I believe the election and everything around it will be the central narrative of the new Trump News Network-- after-the-fact in-depth news analysis (blahblahblah). Hey, maybe he’ll have Putin on as a special guest and he can tell the USA how his people messed with the election or whatever. He’ll have enough fodder to churn and spew from his new channel for a long time. He can have all the fallen generals on to object to and criticize whatever President Hillary is up to. He’ll be bigger and better (that is: badder) than FOXNews ever dreamed of being.
Yeah, I’ve heard that proposed. But I think it will die on the vine.
Melania will become the newest FOX ‘News’ anchor when she dyes her hair.
In the past, it was easy for elites to control the masses because they could employ violence. As societies liberalized this became untenable. They turned to propaganda to guide the masses down their preferred path. This was formulated quite well by the likes of Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman. Managed democracy is a wonderful tool of social control because people believe they’re making their own decisions, having real debates of substance, and that the outcomes are legitimate. So unless that mold is broken then more people voting won’t matter.
If anything, the internet may have helped crack the mold which in turn caused Trump. Now the people can create and disseminate their own propaganda memes, or be open to influence by those outside of government and corporate circles. As you say, each person has their own megaphone now. This is a big problem and I don’t know how the 1% plan to wrest control back. Maybe they can get a handle on Trump, but he could just be the leading edge. There’s still a lot of older people who follow traditional media as their primary news source, but what happens when they’re gone?
“The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.”
- Bernays
Nothing you said here is disagreeable, it’s the standard managerial style of liberalism, but it’s a bit optimistic regarding human nature. There are studies showing that giving people facts often does not make them change their opinion. It can make them double down, coming up with even more elaborate rationalizations.
Although some Trump supporters are lower on the economic ladder, many of them are fairly well off. Just as many Tea Partiers were so called local notables.
During the height of the Bush era I was afraid America was about to be taken over by theocratic elements. Trump could be better than the likes of Cruz and Huckabee. A type of progress, maybe…
Agreed. Progressivism is built from the children up. Somebody who’s 25 today and of a conspiratorial mindset or otherwise prone to fanciful thinking isn’t going to change their beliefs too much in the face of good info. Their ego is more important than their connection to reality. As Obi Wan might say “Gresham’s Law is strong in that one.”
The situation is even more hopeless for old farts like myself. And it’s far more hopeless for people who believe (rightly or wrongly) that the mainstream consensus is actively harmful to their interests. What cynicism I have is certainly closely coupled to the areas where I feel A) hard done by and B) powerless to change things. I’m hardly alone in that correlation.
It’s clear we can improve society without having to improve humans. The differences between modern societies and medievalism are stark. As you point out about elites ruling by force which was assumed to be an immutable fact of the human condition for millennia but is widely demonstrated today to be nothing but a now-dying fashion.
Maybe the reactionary elements in the US today are right and we’ve actually taken Progress farther than human nature can ever be safely pushed, and a retreat to the conveniently located 1950s would be returning to a society most perfectly in harmony with our immutable inner selves and our highest ideals.
But that timing sure looks suspicious to me. “What luck to be born in these times so close to the epitome of human potential! Just back it off a tad.” Or so the reactionaries say. “Bunk!” says I.