The whole electronic ballots/voting thing has been a mess. Most technology professionals are generally in favor of it but we're also wary of it. Doing it securely is hard to do.
I strongly feel that the machine specifications, schematics, and source code should all be publicly available for independent auditing and that there should be a paper audit trail. Some might argue that since we have our entire financial system built around electronic-only transactions how is it not possible to do an electronic vote. It is different. Financial transactions are all logged and traceable. Funds transfers have sources and destinations. Anonymous voting without a paper audit trail is too easy to tamper with.
Because they generally lack the needed audit trails, I and many others are not confident in the security of the existing electronic balloting systems. Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) was working a bill through Congress "that would encourage states to conduct verifiable elections by converting to a paper ballot voting system, offering emergency paper ballots, and conducting hand-counted audits".
This might sound backwards, going from electronic voting to paper voting, and it sorta is. But it is necessary because electronic voting has been approached wrongly and been implemented in an unsafe manner. Sadly this bill died on the floor. You can read more about it in Rep. Holt's press release and you can see how the votes came out on the Office of the Clerk's site. I was pleased to see that my Representative, Lousie Slaughter voted in favor of the bill.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
sporter vs Wells Fargo
A few months ago I was looking over some paperwork and I realized that my mortgage company should have dropped PMI over a year ago. PMI is like $45/month and over a year it adds up. So I called them in Feb and was like "hey, I shouldn't be paying PMI". After a few days they got back to me and agreed to eliminate it. I was like "ok, that was easy". Well, it wasn't that easy... I get my next bill and I was still paying PMI. WTF?! So now I'm annoyed and I start a new round of phone calls. First they deny the original finding and they argue that I need a new appraisal. I'm not backing down at this point... I want PMI removed retroactively. I've had about 10 phone calls with them in the last couple months but finally today they wised up and removed PMI retroactively back to when they should have. I had them credit that amount, $625, to the principal. Sweet. Victory for the little guy!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Am I a Libertarian?
So an old friend of mine remarked the other day "And here I thought you were going to be a Libertarian back in college." This was in response to a blog post I shared that discussed immigration and Paul Krugman's take on it. My response was basically to say that I do consider myself a libertarian (note the little "L"... thats cause the Libertarian party is a bit extreme for me) and that I didn't think that supporting more open immigration was inconsistent with that.
The blog post in question was sort of mocking Krugman for some views that one could argue are inconsistent. I liked it because I really enjoy making fun of political extremists of all stripes. I particularly enjoy liberal-bashing because they tend to think they're so cool... also conservative-bashing is just too easy. :)
The NY Times, in particular, can be entertaining. It cracks me up the efforts they go to to explain how the group that calls themself "al-Quaeda in Iraq" is actually not part of "al-Quaeda" and how they should be referred to as "Al Qaeda in Mesopotami". IMHO they're concerned with making the point that al-Quaeda wasn't in Iraq before we invaded. The Bush administration seems to like to make that area seem more gray than it is and the Times seems to think they have an obligation to clarify that. We get the point already!
I subscribe to the Best of the Web online newsletter from the WSJ OpinionJournal. They really enjoy liberal-bashing and I love to read it. I even occasionally chuckle at BotW itself when their logic falls apart or they engage in the type of blinders-on perspective that is more prevalent among liberals. Conservatives can be funny also.
Economists write some really good blogs. I find that they seem to be logically consistent and economists seem to be more honest about their biases than your regular political opinion blog writers. The post that prompted this whole thing was by Will Wilkinson. He also seems to enjoy finding bias in things that are seemingly objective and pointing out the logical inconsistency or intellectual dishonesty or generally incorrectness of things.
Anyways, I would say I consider myself libertarian, but more than that I try to be objective, practical, and emperical when I look at things from a political perspective. I believe in reason above conservatism, liberalism, or even libertarianism. Now reason doesn't mean there is no room for emotion or value judgements, but that those things need to be a considered input to political decision-making, not the domineering force.
/rant
The blog post in question was sort of mocking Krugman for some views that one could argue are inconsistent. I liked it because I really enjoy making fun of political extremists of all stripes. I particularly enjoy liberal-bashing because they tend to think they're so cool... also conservative-bashing is just too easy. :)
The NY Times, in particular, can be entertaining. It cracks me up the efforts they go to to explain how the group that calls themself "al-Quaeda in Iraq" is actually not part of "al-Quaeda" and how they should be referred to as "Al Qaeda in Mesopotami". IMHO they're concerned with making the point that al-Quaeda wasn't in Iraq before we invaded. The Bush administration seems to like to make that area seem more gray than it is and the Times seems to think they have an obligation to clarify that. We get the point already!
I subscribe to the Best of the Web online newsletter from the WSJ OpinionJournal. They really enjoy liberal-bashing and I love to read it. I even occasionally chuckle at BotW itself when their logic falls apart or they engage in the type of blinders-on perspective that is more prevalent among liberals. Conservatives can be funny also.
Economists write some really good blogs. I find that they seem to be logically consistent and economists seem to be more honest about their biases than your regular political opinion blog writers. The post that prompted this whole thing was by Will Wilkinson. He also seems to enjoy finding bias in things that are seemingly objective and pointing out the logical inconsistency or intellectual dishonesty or generally incorrectness of things.
Anyways, I would say I consider myself libertarian, but more than that I try to be objective, practical, and emperical when I look at things from a political perspective. I believe in reason above conservatism, liberalism, or even libertarianism. Now reason doesn't mean there is no room for emotion or value judgements, but that those things need to be a considered input to political decision-making, not the domineering force.
/rant
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