[FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

Nah. That's simply false and cleverly ignores my post entirely. Tools don't solve problems. The typical Republican approach of throwing money at some vague problem doesn't work. What does work is to identify the problem and develop candidate solutions to it using the extant tools. Resources devoted to your nonexistent tool will make the problem worse. And even if your tool did exist [⛧], it would make the problem worse.

The problem is our mechanism for representative government. That mechanism lenses in, magnifies, the wiggle and defocuses the "bases" to the periphery. You see it every day. Just yesterday, there was a segment on some TV show asking the panel about whether or not Harris as VP will help sway the "undecided" ... the "independent". Pffft. It's nonsense. Your tool will do that, enable that, magnify that, if the actual problem isn't addressed *first*.

And it's a very difficult problem to solve. So the more time we spend on distracting nonsense like alternative voting technology, the *less* time we spend working on the actual problem(s) -- the electoral college, first-past-the-post, informed citizenry, gerrymandering, etc. It's not zero sum, of course, but there are opportunity costs. The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging. The USPS, vote fraud nonsense is more eshatological Trump disinformation designed to distract us dorks from the real problem(s) while the gamers continue their game.


[⛧] There are *many* exploratory alternative voting efforts going on all over the country, all of which exhibit a panoply of security flaws.

On 8/20/20 7:53 AM, jon zingale wrote:
> To be clear, the challenge set before me was to sketch out an alternative
> voting technology option. While liberating elections from a winner-takes-all
> modality is also something I want, it relates to a mostly orthogonal
> problem. Ranked-choice voting can be implemented for polling stations, phone
> apps, and snail-mail alike. Sooner or later the technology I am advocating
> for will be here, what it will be when it arrives is what I wish to direct
> concern toward. Witnessing an endless procession of squandered opportunity
> is what I find so abhorrent. If the first actionable steps are being taken,
> great, we now have the opportunity to take others.