Gratitude for Political Trials

(From a post to FB:)

I have been spreading my #givethanks tags in dark corners of the web.

So I'll post a few here, too.

It's a great world God gave us, where we don't have to all do the same things, where everyone is allowed to make mistakes, even rather drastic mistakes, and we all do.

It's a wonderful world where we don't all have to be grateful for the same things.

I can be grateful it's Donald Trump and not me going the extra mile to point out how vulnerable our election process has become to foreign influence. I sure don't have the money to do it, and it needs to be done. 

I can likewise be grateful it's Joe Biden who is going to have to face the ambiguities of having won the popular vote in an election seriously marred by bad polling practices. And I can be grateful we have a few months to make it clear to as many people as possible why I have to feel this way.

And I am grateful.

And I'm very glad that enough of my fellow Americans are willing to put up with the ambiguities and continue solving their own problems while it gets worked out -- that there will be enough people who keep on keepin' on that the world won't come grinding to a halt and the country won't be torn apart.

(And, while there is a bit of irony in this post, I am not being sarcastic. I am just acknowledging ironies. We can and should be grateful that the world doesn't match our ideals.)

Once More About Elections Processes and Fraud

If you haven't yet listened to the challenges to the election results, you should.

When I posted about usually getting the president we deserve, I was assuming that none of the factions in the current contest would be stupid enough to make use this soon of the tools of voter fraud that they have been putting into place. I was naively hoping that there would be time for common sense to reign back the erosion on election practices that has taken place.

I had been hearing what the normal news outlets have been mentioning about the challenges that the Trump Campaign legal team have been mounting with a mixture of, I don't know, cynicism, ennui, exasperation, disappointment, rolling eyeballs, etc., that they would be "dragging this out yet again".

Last night, a friend posted a link to a youtube video of the Trump campaign's legal team' press conference:

https://youtu.be/buQCdCSDWQQ

I don't know why I find it astonishing. I don't know why I want to be so naive.

Voting has to be a transparent process to be valid. 

In the simplest case, where voters are not intimidated by threats from the parties presenting their proposals and candidates, secrecy is not necessary. A simple raise of the hands in favor or against is all that is necessary. Everybody can see who voted for what/whom, and everybody can count.

But people get their ego's all tangled up in the results of elections, and then attempt to alter the outcome unnaturally. So the simplest case doesn't scale well.

There are many ways to try to alter the results of elections:

• Campaigning itself is one such attempt.
  
• If campaigning doesn't appear to be working, and people aren't willing to accept that, they might use intimidation, explicit threat, and actual force to prejudice the outcome. 
• And if that doesn't work, they might prepare to attempt to alter the outcome by legal technicality after the fact. 
• But legal technicality relies on vagaries of courtroom process, so, if, during the election, it becomes apparent that they are going to lose, they might try to alter the outcome by interfering with the process, so they don't have to gamble on those vagaries.
  

Election best practices has provided a means of circumventing these problems.

Elections best practices require that the ballot be cast in secret, but counted in the open.

With or without a lot of thought, it's clear that there are contradictory requirements here: cast in secret, count in the open. 

Once it's open, it's no longer secret.

Somehow, you have to reliably separate the identity of the voter with the content of the vote in between the moment the ballot is cast and the moment it is counted.

Here is one simple way to do it: 

1. A place to store the ballots which have been cast -- a ballot box -- is prepared, and inspected and shown to be empty, and secured before voting starts.
2. The ballots are counted before voting starts, to be sure there will be enough for all the registered voters, and to be able to check the number of ballots in the box and the number left over against the number of voters receiving ballots.
   
3. Judges, ballot handlers, and observers are also provided. Observers must include representatives from all parties with interest in the results, and they must be allowed to actually stop the process and ask for corrections to be taken, if irregularities are observed.
4. Votes are taken as follows:
   1. A voter requests a ballot.
   2. The voter is given a ballot and some sort of covering that hides the content of the ballot. Neither the ballot nor the cover provide a means of identifying the voter.
      
   3. The voter is provided a place to mark the ballot in private.
   4. The voter marks the ballot by hand in private,  and places the ballot in its cover before submitting it.
   5. The ballot is submitted directly to the election judges, who transfer it directly to the ballot box without exposing the ballot contents.
5. At the end of the designated balloting period, the ballot box is opened and the contents counted in the presence of the judges and observers. The counting process itself has to be observable. If machines are used, they should only be used to verify a hand count.
6. Judges and observers must be allowed to record the counts taken and take their records with them.
7. The ballots must be packaged and the packages sealed before being transported from the balloting place.
   
8. Ballots and counts must be transported to a central place where the ballots can be securely stored until the election results have been properly certified, and the counts can be tallied with the results from other ballot places, and the results for each balloting place must be published.

The reasons for being so particular are roughly as follows:

1. If we aren't careful with the ballot box, it's too easy to stuff it with fake votes.
2. Counting the ballots used and the ballots not used is a way to anonymously check that the box hasn't been stuffed and that valid ballots haven't been discarded.
   
3. Without observation and without someone competent to judge, it is way too easy for the election place staff to do all sorts of things to undermine the results. Especially, observers from each party can help to keep the others honest.
   
4. Concerning what the voter does:
   1. It's way too easy to buy the vote of someone with an unrequested ballot.
      
   2. Disclosure of the contents of the ballot also subjects a voter to potential reward and/or retribution.
      
   3. Observation of the voting being cast is another way to discover the contents of a ballot.
      
   4. Use of a machine provides places to hide devices to eavesdrop on the vote. In fact, it's hard to design an electronic machine that would not leak at least some of the details through radio noise.
      
   5. The more hands and the longer a distance a ballot passes through before being put in the ballot box, the more opportunities there are to use sleight-of-hand to misdirect the ballot, slip an added ballot in, or surreptitiously observe the contents before the ballot goes in the box.
5. Counting the votes once at the voting place helps assure that the ballots that are sent to central storage are the same as the ballots that are received there. It means that more people have to be present from the time the polls close until the counting ends, but that is a good thing. More eyes reduces temptations and provides more opportunities to blow a whistle on fraudulent activities. Moreover, no voting place should be set up to take more votes than two or three people can count and check by hand in an hour or two. And machines at this stage are too much temptation for hidden shenanigans.
   
6. The more records of the results at the various stages, the more opportunities to confirm their validity.
7. Sealed packages are significantly harder to open and alter the contents of than unsealed packages.
   
8. Central counting is too much temptation for shenanigans, if it's the first count. On the other hand, centralizing the second count allows the use of machines at that point. Secure storage and published results from each step allows greater confidence of the results, and of the results if a review and recount is required.
   

• First observation: Yes. This takes time. 

There is no necessity that the process be finished overnight, or even in a day. This can actually a good thing, because it can help prevent parties with too much interest in the results from knowing whether they want to take the risk of interfering with the process until it's over.

• Second observation: Machines which can be used to hide or expose parts of the process must not be used in the voting or counting process.
  

Except, there might be limited use for those voters whose physical limits would prevent them from marking the ballots by hand. And they can be used at a central location to confirm the original hand counts.

• Third observation: Mail-in ballots prevent the use of both observers and judges in critical parts of this process. Their use must be limited to by-necessity-only.
  

It's extremely frustrating for me to have to point this out, but it's just not possible for judges and observers to see what happens between the time the ballot is requested and the time it is submitted, to make sure that the ballot does not get diverted to fraudulent purposes. 

And it's not easy for them to observe the request and submission process, either.

Cries of "But mail-in is so much less stressful!" notwithstanding, mail-in, if allowed, must be limited to cases of necessity.

• Fourth observation: Society must support the polling process in ways we do not presently support it, if we want valid results.
  

People whose jobs prevent them from attending a regular voting place during the designated times are prevented from voting, and that also biases the results.

But mail-in is not a solution.

This is a place where we can improve current practices. I can suggest a few things that would help:

1. Employers should be required to give employees necessary paid time off to go vote.
2. Voting judge, observer, and counting duties are no less important than jury duty. Failing to properly staff a voting place is just begging for fraud to occur. We should be willing to do something similar to jury duty for election duty.
   
3. Alternative voting places and times should be provided instead of mail-in. Alternative voting places would make it easier to provide election judges and observers, and more possible to confirm who has already voted. Computer systems could also legitimately be used to determine who has voted already, but only carefully secured systems.
   
4. Mail-in ballots, if used, must never be opened and counted until after the voting places have closed and all voters have been confirmed, to avoid encouraging ambitious voters from doubling up. They must also be stored securely and opened and counted in the presence of judges and observers, just as in-person ballots.
   

• Fifth observation: Counting votes by machine to confirm the original hand count is an extremely simple process. It does not require the use of software developed by big companies, and especially not by foreign companies. 

I suppose I should expand a little on my impressions of the charges being made.

People working for the election are supposed to be working under oath, or as if under oath. Trump's legal team has found people willing to testify under penalty of perjury that people who are working for the election have broken their oaths.

Should I believe a hundred or so odd-ball malcontents who are willing to cooperate with the monkey pretend president with the orange hair? Or should I believe the thousands and hundreds of thousands of dedicated election workers?

I know how easy it is to get swept up into following the egoist.

And I have also worked real jobs for a long time. I know how easy it is for dedicated, hard-working, well-intentioned workers to say, 

This is unreasonably difficult. Getting the job done is more important than getting it done right!

and carelessly invoke truisms like

The perfect is the enemy of the good!

and convince each other to do things that shouldn't oughta be done.

I don't know who has broken their oaths. But it is apparent that a number of people have. At bare minimum, a number of people are seriously deluding themselves about what is right. 

I hope we can solve this without somebody starting witch hunts, but it looks difficult, unless one side yields things they think they shouldn't yield, which is also a bad result.

Whatever happens in these challenges to the election results, we should be looking at these as a wake-up call. We shouldn't be so caught up in our pursuit of good ends that we ignore the potential damage from our methods. 

We are treating our elections processes way too lightly.

We Usually Get the President We Deserve

Trump has been a far better president than we had any right to expect.

What? you say, No! Trump didn't implement any of your favorite hobby-horse ideals!

That's actually a good thing.

We have heard, over the last fifty years, how "The perfect is the enemy of the Good."

Pure and utter mental waste.

Perfect and ideal are two separate things, although it is easy to confuse one for the other.

Let's borrow some ideas from arithmetic. 

One added to one is two, right?

It's a perfect rule -- built on ideal principles. Some people think it a fundamental fact. 

But it isn't.

One crabapple added to one Fuji apple does not make two Fuji apples. Nor does it make two crabapples. 

One balloon's worth of air plus one balloon's worth of air may be two balloons' worth of air, but the volume does not double.

0.6 volts rounds up to 1 V, but 1 V + 1 V is not 2 V, if both 1s are actually 0.6 rounded up.

There are all sorts of ways one added to one might not result in two.

In order for this perfect rule to work we have to start with the assumption of an idealized non-compressible unit vector which adds linearly.

(Wrap your head around that before the next time you berate a pre-school child for having trouble with your mathematics. Arithmetic does not work without mathematics.)

Without the idealization of a non-compressible unit vector and the implicit single dimension in which it adds to itself, without the idealization of a number line, the arithmetic that we think is so basic just falls apart. 

It is basic. It is real. It's useful to understand. It is also limited in scope of application. In order to make it work for us, we have to get used to remembering to add Fuji apples to Fuji apples and crabapples to (the same subspecies of) crabapples. And it's still approximate, because not every apple on the tree is as big or as sweet -- or as small and as sour.

Each apple is different. 

A tree is a calculus of fruit, branches, and leaves.

A beach is a calculus of grains of sand, and when you look close, each grain of sand is different. 

Snowflakes? But a ski slope is a calculus of snowflakes.

Society is a calculus of individuals. We are not all our president. 

There it is. Say it big.

We are not all our president.

A president is not a king-for-four-years on whom we hang all our problems. At least he or she shouldn't be. Nor should we elect a man or woman to four years of taking the blame for all our own problems. 

We elect a president to represent us as a group, and, while he or she does not represent any one of us well as individuals, he or she usually represents us as a group pretty well. That's what the election process is about, finding someone who represents us as a group.

Recent elections have gotten us all excited about whom we choose for president. Most elections seem to be rather close. And then a winner is celebrated and installed into office.

But if you study statistics, you know that elections are a statistical experiment. And less than 2% difference in statistics is generally considered not statistically significant. Often, less than 5% is not significant.

Statistically, it made no difference whether we installed Trump or Clinton in the White House four years ago. And it will make no difference whether we install Biden or Trump in the White House for the next four years, because the United States of America is a calculus of individuals, and the president of the country is just one more of those individuals. And less than three percent is not statistically significant.

We think of the president as our leader, but we have it backwards. The president does not lead us.  

The choice of president is a synthesis, a projection of the public or social identity.

The president represents us.

Now do you understand why Trump was installed in the White House four years ago? 

All those contradictions are a synthesis of the calculus of the country, a reflection of the individuals that compose the country. We are a country of contradictions, and we have been focusing a lot on our contradictions lately. So we elected a president of self-contradictions.

And he represented us, complete with our internal contradictions.

As Biden and Harris's less optimal traits become clear, we will find something similar, because we currently compose a nation of factions.

And it wouldn't have mattered if Trump had won a second term. Less than 5% is not statistically significant.

What matters in the calculus of society is what each individual does. Biden/Harris, if the current numbers are confirmed, will represent us as a group. Biden is a politician, and Harris will soon feel the reality of what politics outside the California bubble is like, and know the burden of learning what a real politician has to do. (California's bubble is weakening, as well, but that's a topic for a rant for another day.)

For four years, we have been polarized. The choice of president was not what mattered. It was the calculus of individual discord that produced the polarization. If Hillary Clinton had been elected, it would still have been four years of polarization, because we chose to focus on how are differences don't fit together according to our ideals.

Are we going to continue to waste time and energy fighting each other? Or are we going to go back to finding unity in differences? We've done that before, you know. We have found unity in difference.

It takes many different types of people to make the world go 'round. 

We need our garbage collectors. We need our doctors. We need our farmers. We need our philosophers, including those who make rhyme and rhythm for their philosophies. We need our poor people and our rich people. 

I'm not sure we need our billionaires, their existence is a huge burden to society, warping the weave of social fabric around themselves in excessive and unnatural ways. But if they can quit trying to impose their visions of perfection -- their ideals -- on all of us, using the logic of the weight of their supposed personal worth, we should be able to get along with them.

We definitely don't need to keep our desperately poor in their condition of desperate poverty. If we can learn to let them be different, we ought to be able to find a way to let them get out of their desperate circumstances. (Let them out, not force them out.)

I had no preferred candidate in this election. I have had no preferred candidate in any of the last several presidential elections. (No, not even Romney was that close to what I would consider an ideal president. Maybe Reagan? It's been too long, but I think he represented our country pretty well as we navigated the world conditions that resulted in the breakup of the old Soviet Union. But still not my ideal.) It doesn't matter. I've continued to do the things I think are most important for me to do.

Society is made up of a lot of individuals. Society cannot exist without the individuals. 

Society cannot function if each individual does not do what that individual understands to be the best thing for that individual to do.

I can't do what you think is best for me to do, because your idea of what is best for me is, at best-formed, only a collection of "NO! NOT THAT!" and "YOU GOTTA DO THIS!" opinions -- uninformed opinions, since you have at best only a superficial view of what I'm up against.

If I were wasting time worrying about what is best for you to do, it would be the same. 

None of us really has any time to get more than a superficial view of the struggles others are having. You have to make your choices. I have to make mine.

To the extent we fight each other over the choices we make as individuals, we interfere with the functioning of society.

Sure, there are some choices which themselves interfere with a functional society. Taking bread from the poor man and giving it to the rich man is a wrong choice. And trying to persuade the rich man to share his bread with the poor is a far more functional choice than trying to force him to do so. (And, as individuals, choosing to fight each other instead of looking for places and ways we can work together -- can't we see how destructive that quickly becomes?)

Gender confusion? Yes, that's another place both (all) sides try to force others to conform to their own ideals. I think I could, if we could sit down and discuss it rationally, convince you that most gender confusion is derived from society's imposition on the individual of Machiavelli's false ideals. But we would argue about what that means. It's more functional for me to let you figure out what it means to you, if you will let me figure out what it means to me.

Insurance. Borders. Etc. There are lots of things we could fight about, if we choose to fight. But we don't all have to be thinking, doing, and saying the same things. 

Lasers are useful, but if laser light were all we had, we would have no colors, no warm spread of sunlight, just a bunch of idealistic monochrome beams randomly scanning the darkness, interfering with each other.

Everything we fight about, we can find ways to let each other be what we are -- different. 

And that is how we achieve unity, because it takes a lot of different wavelengths to light up the world, a lot of different people to make the world go 'round.