Thursday, December 18, 2008

Thursday Evening

There are rumors that Caroline Kennedy's appointment to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat is a "done deal." Boy, I hope not. I'd hate to think you could get a job like that just because you were related to some folks who had the right surname and a lot of experience. And how come that didn't help Andrew Cuomo? He even has some experience in government.

• Posted at 8:19 PM · LINK

Repair Work

I just fixed the link in the item about the cereal boxes. It pointed to the wrong place.

Sorry about the error. It's the first mistake I've made in eight years of blogging.

• Posted at 7:47 PM · LINK

Self-Congratulations

I just realized. I started blogging on December 18, 2000. So today is my eighth anniversary of doing this.

• Posted at 4:52 PM · LINK

Best of Bugs

Our pal Jerry Beck is attempting the impossible: To winnow the list of great Warner Brothers cartoons down to a "One Hundred Best" list for a forthcoming book. Go over there and give him a hand.

And try to help him with the lower half. So far, most of the commenters are listing the obvious choices: One Froggy Evening, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, Duck Amuck, What's Opera Doc?, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, Rabbit Fire, Coal Black & De Sebben Dwarfs, Rabbit of Seville, Three Little Bops, etc. There's very little chance of any of them not making the list. I'm sure Jerry would appreciate some nominations of cartoons that aren't always seen.

• Posted at 4:49 PM · LINK

Sugar Frosted Link

Phil Pollard sends me this link to 100 old cereal box covers. I don't remember about a dozen of these products at all (Kellogg's Corny Snaps? Nabisco Malted Shreddies?) and wonder if they were experiments tested only in certain regions.

• Posted at 4:35 PM · LINK

Update

The canvassing board in Minnesota ended its workday with Coleman a mere five votes ahead. There are many ballots left to examine and the way things are going, Franken will almost certainly pull ahead — perhaps significantly — before they're done. They expect to finish tomorrow.

Here's a pretty good overview of where this stands and how it got there.

• Posted at 3:16 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Andy Rose writes...

The reason they can't be identifiable...vote buying. Potential buyers obviously don't like to shell out the money unless they know that you actually voted for their candidate like you claim you did. An easy way to make that possible would be for them to insist, "Make [some specific] mark on the ballot where we can find it later."

It probably seems like a silly thing in L.A., but I spent several years in eastern Kentucky, where it is still a big problem.

So then my question becomes how the rule stops that. Let's assuming I wanted to buy your vote in the last election and I somehow have access to inspect the ballots. I pay you $3.85 to vote for Bob Barr for president and then, instead of telling you to make that specific mark on the ballot, I instruct you to write in "Bullwinkle Moose" for some judgeship. It makes your ballot identifiable to me. What difference would it then make to ban "identifying marks?"

For that matter, we have a growing vote-by-mail trend in this country. If I want to buy votes, I can buy hundreds of thousands of them. I give you money. You give me your mail-in ballot with everything filled in except the votes. I fill in the votes I want and drop your ballot into a mailbox. No identifying marks necessary.

If I can buy votes that way, why would I bother with the method you describe?

In any case, I've been intermittently watching the live feed of the vote counting in Minnesota and I've watched Mr. Franken go from 150+ votes down to, at this moment, only 30 down. At this rate, he'll pass Coleman before they're done. I've only seen a few "calls" by the judges that strike me as arguable and I've seen none where I thought they were wrong. The same was true yesterday when I watched them ruling on the ballots that were more likely to go Coleman's way. It's a nice, transparent process...and I wonder how many other countries could ever have something like this where ballots are (re)counted in full public view.

On the matter of identifying marks, they seem to be allowing any vote where the voter's intent is clear, regardless of scribbles in the margins. The only exceptions are when the scribbles might denote the voter's name. So that's how they're interpreting the rule, which is not how the candidates' lawyers did in issuing their challenges. And while I've been typing this, Franken has picked up five more votes.

• Posted at 2:38 PM · LINK

Briefly Noted

Now, I owe Bob Elisberg another lunch.

• Posted at 12:50 PM · LINK

Electile Dysfunction

I am somewhat fascinated — it's about an eight on a scale of ten — with the Senate recount in Minnesota. I'd like to see Al Franken win but that's of less interest to me than the process being made public here. I think we are very sloppy in this country about how we count votes. You wouldn't go near a bank that counted your money as haphazardly as we count votes...and no one ever seems to care except when caring might enable them to win an election they would otherwise lose.

I was very disappointed in 2000, not just by the presidential election results but even more by the following: That after all the anomalies and lost ballots and ballots that were supposed to be recounted and never were even after other recounts were yielding massive changes in the totals, no Bush backers were the least bit bothered. It was like, "Our guy won so shut up, get over it." My very Conservative friend Roger even believes the Bush side cheated and that was a good thing because the future of mankind depended on Al Gore being defeated, and anything that made that happen was morally justifiable. At least, I think Roger still believes this. He hasn't mentioned lately what a wonderful president he thinks Bush has been...

You'd think even folks who thought Bush really did get more votes would regret that it wasn't a cleaner count; that it was in any way arguable that their guy had triumphed, fair and square. But if anyone said, "Let's fix the process so this doesn't happen again," I sure didn't hear about it. It seems like whatever improvements were made were made only because local election officials around the country were worried they'd get in personal trouble if they were suddenly in the midst of a messy recount some day.

The Secretary of State in Minnesota, Mark Ritchie, seems to be doing a good, honest job of cleaning up the mess. Ballots are being recounted via such an open and visible process that there may even be a few people who will have backed the losing candidate and will actually believe he lost fairly. But I'll bet you that Mr. Ritchie is learning what could have been done to avoid many of the current snags...and maybe others who run elections will learn from this, as well.

Meanwhile, here's something I don't get. There are a lot of things I don't get but here's one that sticks out at the moment. Ballots are being disqualified in some cases because the voter made an identifying mark on them. Here's the relevant law from article 204C.22 of the Minnesota statutes...

Subd. 13. Identifying ballot. If a ballot is marked by distinguishing characteristics in a manner making it evident that the voter intended to identify the ballot, the entire ballot is defective.

Okay, why is that a rule? And I believe it's a rule in most, if not all states. If I put an identifying mark on my ballot, it doesn't count.

Why is it fatal that my ballot is identifiable? And identifiable to whom? If I do a little scribble on the bottom or draw a picture of Snagglepuss, that's not going to tell anyone else that Mark Evanier cast that ballot. In order to "identify" something, you need to be able to link a name to it...and if I don't sign my name or put down my Social Security number or something, that's not going to make my ballot "identifiable" to anyone else. But they'd still toss it out.

So I think, "Maybe they mean it can't be identifiable to me." I can't put anything on my ballot that would make me able to recognize it as mine...but what would be the harm in that? First of all, I'm never going to see my ballot again after I cast it but even if I did, I couldn't prove the little doodle in the margin made it my ballot and I couldn't change my vote, even if I could tell it was mine.

Moreover, the law allows for write-in candidates. See, right here in the same statues, it says...

Subd. 4. Name written in proper place. If a voter has written the name of an individual in the proper place on a general or special election ballot a vote shall be counted for that individual whether or not the voter makes a mark (X) in the square opposite the blank.

So if I write in "Alan Keyes" or "Snagglepuss" for some office — and Snagglepuss would get more votes — my ballot is not void, even though I could easily identify it because of the name and also my ability to recognize my own handwriting. This morning, the Minnesota Election Board tossed out a ballot with a write-in for "The Lizard People" because, apparently, that was a plural. The voter had voted for more than one person in an office and it was therefore an "overvote." On the other hand, there was a voter who wrote in "Flying Spaghetti Monster" for some office. That didn't void the ballot and since that voter voted for Al Franken for the Senate seat, Franken picked up a vote. If the individual who voted for "The Lizard People" had voted for "One Lizard Person," that would have been okay. By the way, at the moment, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is tied with Alan Keyes. Really.

Could someone explain the reason we reject ballots that have identifying marks, even though you can make them identifiable without them being rejected? I assume it has something to do with some impossible scenario where the people counting the ballots have bribed or threatened certain voters to vote a certain way and we don't want them to be able to check and see if the voters complied...but not only does that never happen, the "write-in" provision provides a simple way to circumvent the rule. So why does a stray mark mean my ballot won't get counted?

Oh...as you can probably guess, I'm back.

• Posted at 12:12 PM · LINK

Addenda

Just got an e-mail from someone wanting to know what's with the weird commercial in the Our Place episode in the previous posting. I think this is a transfer from a 16mm print made for overseas distribution, particularly to our Armed Forces stationed God-knows-where. For these films, the original commercials were omitted and sometimes, special ad spots for servicemen or U.S. interests were inserted.

As you may know, a lot of great old TV shows were lost because someone decided to save cash and/or space by erasing the old tapes. Most of Johnny Carson's early years are gone because of this, as are many, many other shows. A few treasures of television history have managed to survive because an old 16mm print of an overseas version turned up in a closet somewhere. I suspect that's how this episode of Our Place exists at all.

By the way: I'm not quite back yet but hope to be, some time later today.

• Posted at 1:20 AM · LINK

December 17, 2008 • Current • December 19, 2008