What a difference a letter makes.
October 14, 2010, 3:24 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho
You’ve probably seen this correction already (H/T everyone, but Chait has a great kicker). It’s a doozy:
This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men.
But have you heard about this typo? Illinois Green Party gubernatorial candidate Whitney will appear as “Whitey” on electronic-voting machines in twenty-three wards in Chicago–half of which are in largely African-American neighborhoods. Apparently it’s too late to reprogram the machines for Election Day. Care to guess his first name? Rich. Of course.
Can the Green Party catch a break?
When I was studying in Rome in the early 1960′s, a symposium of moral theologians was held in Rome. One of those attending was one of our professors at the Gregorian University, Josef Fuchs. When the Osservatore Romano reported on the meeting, it made the worst possible mistake in giving his name.
That business about the candidate’s name being mis-spelled and it simply being too late to reprogram the machines demonstrates something important that too often is either not even recognized, or is simply overlooked.
The fact is this; just because you can make a computer do something, does not mean it is best to use the computer in that manner.
In short, we should not be wasting time and money on electronic voting.
Here is CA, a few years ago they used some e-voting kiosks, but those in charge insisted it was “too much” to expect the machine to provide a hard-copy of the voters’ choices.
It is simply too easy to hack into any electronic system and tinker with the election results. We cannot trust our election results to the good judgement and values of computer programmers.
No – simply vote via paper ballot; fill in the little ovals and run the ballots through the light-reader. The light-reader can easily and rapidly tally the results and we have the original paper ballots as a back-up reference.
If old sad Al Gore did not like hanging chads in Florida, he would scream about e-voting. It is so much nonsense and most probably would lead to corruption. Like old Stalin said, it does not matter who votes; it matters who counts the votes.
I believe that the local news is reporting this morning that lo and behold, there actually is ample time between now and 11/2 to reprogram the machines, and the typo is expected to be corrected in time for election day. (Although, we have early voting in Illinois, so I suppose early voters will be able to vote for Rich Whitey if they want to).
This guy has garnered more publicity and media interviews out of this snafu than he could possibly have hoped to otherwise.