McCain lies? No!

So this might seem to be somewhat at odds with my last post, but I just couldn't resist posting it. I'm not actually surprised by any of this, but maybe Republicans will be, since every time Obama varies his position in the slightest they go nuts. This guy took the time to make a massive list of all the lies McCain has told. And not small stuff like Obama's generally are, these are complete reversals on virtually every position he's ever had, including the same things Republicans attack Obama about. Technically these aren't "lies", they're more like flip-flops, but I'm more than willing to adopt Republican rhetoric in this case. Next time a Republican whines that Obama changed his position on something, direct them to this list

Politicians lie? No!

I've been bleeding my RSS feeds dry recently, which means I'm forced to read the bottom of the barrel:



80% of Digg articles are about the same thing: some politician said something that makes people sad. Usually, said politician is on record saying the opposite thing sometime in the past. Diggers are shocked, hurt, betrayed, etc. Diggers will never vote for said politician ever. Unfortunately, every politician is in the category of politicians that can never be voted for, which puts us in a predicament (if we listen to Diggers, anyway).

This just in: All politicians lie an alarming percentage of the time. They have to, or they'd never get elected to anything. Too many voters have positions that are deal-breakers, so if a politician has solid positions on everything a majority of people will disagree with one of them, and they're screwed. Not to say politicians don't have standings on these issues; of course they do. They just have to make sure you don't know about them. This either means they have to dance around things they know will alienate voters (that is, everything), or they need to change their position depending on who they're talking to. Unfortunately, with the Internet this no longer works, because now we know that the things they told people on the other end of the country aren't the same things they're telling us, but that doesn't stop them from doing it over and over again.

Yes, it would be awesome if we could elect politicians who didn't lie to us on a regular basis, but there are so many issues that America is divided on that it can't happen anymore. Stop being surprised when it turns out a politician lied about something.

This post is a trade secret

How hard is it to write voting machine software? Seriously, ignore all the problems we've had with them, and (if you're a CS, or just bored) picture it. How long would it take you to write something that asks the user who they vote for, and records it?

Who do you vote for?

 

DONE. Slap a database connection on that thing and it's already more successful than the voting machine software in use today. What is wrong with these companies? Furthermore, what could possibly make them think this is ok:

Union County has backed off a plan to let a Princeton University computer scientist examine voting machines where errors occurred in the presidential primary tallies, after the manufacturer of the machines threatened to sue, officials said today.

A Sequoia executive, Edwin Smith, put Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi on notice that an independent analysis would violate the licensing agreement between his firm and the county. In a terse two-page letter Smith also argued the voting machine software is a Sequoia trade secret and cannot be handed over to any third party.

Excuse me? How can we possibly still allow security through obscurity designs? Haven't the *epic failures* of these designs in the past proven that we should maybe not do them anymore?

If you missed what actually happened that prompted this investigation, there's coverage elsewhere, I'm not going to go though it all. In short, dozens of voting machines in New Jersey were disagreeing with themselves: the number of votes for each candidate didn't add up to the total number of votes the machine said were cast. The article I just linked to had a fantastic example of how bad this is:

This is a single voting machine, disagreeing with itself about how many Republicans voted on it. Imagine your pocket calculator couldn’t make up its mind whether 1+13+40+3+4 was 60 or 61. You’d be pretty alarmed, and you wouldn’t trust your calculator until you were very sure it was fixed. Or you’d get a new calculator.

We (as in, the country) should refuse to so much as consider a voting machine that isn't completely open. And I know this is the OSS inside of me talking, but in this case I would think everyone would agree that a voting machine that can be examined by everyone is better than "It works and doesn't cheat at all, pinky swear. Love, Sequoia". Anyone that wants to can view the source code for this page and look at how my voting buttons above work, so they can clearly see that clicking Hillary's button seems to very suspiciously cast a vote for Obama anyway.

Finally, this is somewhat unconnected to the general "closed-box voting machines are bullshit" argument above, but I noticed this in the article too:

Sequoia maintains the errors, which were documented in at least five counties, occurred due to mistakes by poll workers. The firm, which is based in Colorado, examined machines in Middlesex Count, and concluded that poll workers had pushed the wrong buttons on the control panels, resulting in errors in the numbers of ballots cast.

Why in the world do poll workers have buttons that change the number of votes that have been cast? Why do poll workers have buttons that do anything at all? Let's take a poll on what poll workers should be able to change:

Add votes
Subtract votes
Nothing at all
It doesn't matter, I'm just going to change your votes anyway

Good news, you all voted for "nothing at all", because I changed your votes. Perhaps I shouldn't have this power, and neither should the fairly technology-illiterate poll workers who just have to see what the blue button does.

Democrats and our primary

Between blogs and listening to the news I've heard more than one Republican make fun of the Democrats because they've had their "presumptive nominee" figured out for a while now and we're still working on it, as though somehow they accomplished this through superior strategizing or something. I'd just like to apologize on behalf of Democrats everywhere for having two candidates the people mistakenly think are qualified to be President instead of your one. Your guy won by default, his main competitor was the guy who thought Guantanamo was awesome and should be doubled in size, and after him the guy who thought the only laws we need are the 10 commandments. For the picture-oriented readers, your guy's main competitor was the green line on this graph:

Bush depresses electorate - Part 1 of 97

Apparently at a news conference yesterday, someone mentioned to Bush that analysts predict $4/gallon gas, to which he responded: "Oh, yeah? That's interesting. I hadn't heard that." I'm actually not surprised that Bush was unaware of this, considering he seems unaware of most things; I'm more surprised at our surprise that he's surprised. I for one find this to be a fairly standard Bush reaction, so I'm not sure why people are shocked. If he ever turns around and decides we shouldn't be in Iraq after all, he could probably manage to convince the country he's so out of touch he didn't realize we're still there. I have no trouble picturing Bush saying "What do you mean, pull out of Iraq? I thought we did that months ago!"

I find these quotes more interesting. I've elided the actual name from both of them:

"Bush waded into presidential politics, criticizing the Democratic contenders for their positions on free trade and taking particular aim at ______________ . . ."

"He reserved his harshest comments for ______________'s recent statement . . ."

Now, it's the same name that goes in both blanks, and you can probably guess which one it is. Obama should seriously run an ad where he says "Vote for Obama: I'm the one Bush doesn't like"

EDIT: Jon Stewart made fun of the first thing on the Daily Show: