"ryanm" wrote in message
...
Again, you're mistaken on this. It has nothing to do with horses, and
everything to do with balancing the states with dense urban populations
against the more lightly-populated, rural states. Each state needs equal
say
even though the populations may be drastically different, but at the same
time each person needs equal say despite their state's population (or lack
thereof). The *only* feasable solution was a represenetive (republic)
system, where the reps are voted in and the number of reps varies based on
state population. Just to be clear, this has *less than nothing* to do
with
horses, time limits, or anything of that nateure.

And again, you a missing my point. I know the idea behind the electorate,
devised when it was part of the voting of "the several states" and obviously
not reconciled to technological advances that allow that electoral vote to
be cast based on the "intentions" of the populace. It's not a factor of
"balanced" voting that is a problem, nor has it been. It's the rules that
are adhered to that are antiquated and negate the options of the people to
have their votes counted. I suggest that you look up the ratification of
Amendment XVI in terms of income tax and the now KNOWN fact that the
admendment never passed ratification of the necessary states within the time
frame allowed. And yet we have income taxes that are not supported by the
very framework of the Constitution's directions on the state's ratifications
of Constitutional Amendments. A clear violation of the "intent" of the
Constitution. And I'd suggest that if the Founding Fathers were around
today, they'd find that such Constitutional enactments, such as the
Electoral College, would be antiquated by technological advances.

In the old days, no one knew squat about who was actually going to be
elected because, other than before Congress, there wasn't an actual
representation of the vote, and for all practical purposes, the elector
didn't have to abide by the popular vote. Perhaps, even then as today,
someone that didn't abide by the popular vote for their district wouldn't be
re-elected to their electoral post again, but it wouldn't change the outcome
of the vote, and there is absolutely NO legal recourse to a misapplied
electoral vote.

In today's technologically advanced environment, the capabilities of
communications have antiquated the original approach, which was based on the
abilities of the individual electors to reach the capitol city and lay their
vote before Congress. This meant that there were imposed time frames that
aren't important today but are still binding on Congress as to when they
have to have the votes presented.

Even with the Supreme Court decision that many say "gave" Bush the election,
the idea was that, regardless of the Florida Supreme Court's decision the
questioned votes be recounted, the US Supreme Court determined, in fairness,
that all Florida votes would have to be recounted and in such a time frame
as available, it wouldn't be possible. Therefore, George Bush became the
43rd President of the United States. And the decision was based on the hard
fast date of December 15th, which was the timeframe allowed for individual
electors to reach the capitol city by horseback.

Now by statements made by the presiding lower Florida Court's judge, his
intentions on what would be counted and what would not are known, and even
though the press made much to do about their own recounts of the votes, they
didn't jibe with what the judge's intentions were and had those votes been
recounted as to the judge's intentions, Al Gore would have won by more than
the number necessary to alleviate any additional mandatory recounts. In
today's technological environment with response times being cut down
significantly by negating riding horses to DC, Al Gore would have been
President.

Now I'm not whining that Gore isn't President. I'm saying that it's obvious
200 year old rules and procedures aren't in the best interest of the
populace who are asked to vote for a President and then have to put up with
someone who wasn't THE elected President. It's easy to say "margin of
error" as you did, but when some of those "errors" are imposed from outside
sources such as Jeb Bush's efforts to negate legally placed votes by
ficticious inclusion on a "felons" list, and the recount situation that
could have come to a full audit within days of the "original" time
constrained framework, then it doesn't become a margin of error, it becomes
a miscarriage of the voter's desires.

I now not only foresee additional problems in Florida for this election
cycle, as evidenced by the 2002 interim elections, but the addition of the
same in Maryland and other states who are implementing electronic voting
without a paper trail. Unless the opportunity to have unbiased qualified
programmers verify the code that "counts" the votes, we are going to see
even more serious "margins of errors". Again, if the margin of errors
becomes an error of margins due to outside influences that cannot be
verified and are not allowed to be verified (an "intellectual property
rights" thing), than the rights of the people to vote for their chosen
leader will be negated, possibly with impunity. But both Florida and
Maryland, along with other states, are going forward with electronic voting
machines whose programming is not subject to outside verification as to it's
authentication capabilities, and are suspect because of that fact.

In other words, we can't be involved with antiquating the manual ballots
that have served for some number of years without negating the antiquated
elements involved with the time constraints implied by 200 year old
processes and procedures. Implementing a new complex system based on
terminology and time constraints from 200 years ago incorporates new
breakdown points within the new complex system. But complex systems is a
discussion for another day.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio