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SilasBarta comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 4 - Less Wrong
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Strange occurrence in US South Carolina Democratic primary.
The Washington Post profiled Alvin Greene last week
10 minute video interview with Greene
What happened here?
Wikipedia has a list of possible explanations.
Fivethirtyeight lists possible explanations and analysis.
Rawl and co presented five hours of testimony that the results could only be attributed to a problem with the voting machines.
What is your probability estimate for Alvin Greene's win in this election being legitimate (Greene getting lucky as a result of aggregate voter intent+indifference+confusion, as opposed to voting machine malfunction or some sort of active conspiracy)? What evidence do you need in order to update your estimate?
Not ready to answer the rationalist questions, but why is it that, as soon as elections don't go toward someone who played the standard political game, suddenly, "it must be a mistake somehow"? You guys set the terms of the primaries, you pick the voting machines. If you're not ready to trust them before the election, the time to contest them was back then, not when you don't like the result.
Where was Rawl on the important issue of voting machine reliability when they did "what they're supposed to"?
I understand that elections are evidence, and given the prior on Greene, this particular election may be insufficient to justify a posterior that Greene has the most "support", however defined. But elections also serve as a bright line to settle an issue. We could argue forever about who "really" has the most votes, but eventually we have to say who won, and elections are just as much about finality on that issue as they are as an evidential test of fact.
To an extent, then, it doesn't matter that Greene didn't "really" get the most votes. If you allow every election to be indefinitely contested until you're convinced there's no reason the loser really should have won, elections never settle anything. The price for indifference to voting procedure reliability (in this case, the machines) should be acceptance of a bad outcome for that time, to be corrected for the next election, or through the recall process.
Frankly, if Greene had lost but could present evidence of the strength Rawl presented, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
ETA: Oh, and you gotta love this:
Damn those candidates with autism symptoms! Only manipulative people like us deserve to win elections!
I should point out that most of the people who ought to know about the issue, have been screaming bloody murder about electronic voting machines for some time now. Politicians and the general public just haven't been listening. This issue is surfacing now, not because it wasn't an issue before, but because having a specific election to point to makes it easier to get people to listen. It also helps that the election wasn't an important one (it was a Democratic primary for a safe Republican seat), and the candidates involved don't have the resources to influence the discussion like they normally would.
This doesn't sound like autism to me. It sounds more like a neurotypical individual who is dealing with a very unexpected and stressful set of events and having to talk about them.
Be that as it may, those are typical characteristics of high-functioning autistics, and I'm more than a little bothered that they view this as justification for reversing his victory.
Take the part I bolded and remove the "incoherent rambling" bit, and you could be describing me! Well, at least my normal mode of speech without deliberate self-adjustment.
And my lack of incoherent rambling is a judgment call ;-)
Well... knowing that someone is autistic is some inferential evidence in favor of them being a good hacker.
Yes. Exactly. This is true for lawsuits as well: getting a final answer is more important than getting the "right" answer, which is why finality is an important judicial value that courts balance.