Lest We Forget: Notes on the Late Election
By Ernest Partridge
University of California, Riverside
www.igc.org/gadfly // gadfly@igc.org
April, 2001
On Reliability, Validity
and "Chads"
Trivial Pursuits and the Triumph of
Info-Tainment
One Dollar, One Vote
Post-Script: On Reliability, Validity and "Chads"
(An Unpublished Letter to the New York Times)
Are hand counts of punched ballots more "accurate" than machine
tabulations? It depends upon what one means by "accurate." Machine
counting is more reliable. Advantage to the Bush team. Hand counting is more
valid. Advantage to Gore. The Gore team has the better argument.
The reliability/validity distinction is well-known to most practicing
teachers and to all applied statisticians. Reliable instruments give consistent
scores with narrow margins of error. Valid tests yield the information that one
is seeking. IQ tests are certifiably reliable. But do they validly measure
"intelligence." That is a very controversial question. True-False and
multiple choice tests are unquestionably more reliable than essay exams. But
philosophy professors correctly prefer essay exams (notoriously unreliable),
since they more validly display a student’s ability to express an idea and to
criticize or construct an argument.
Punch-cards machines reliably tabulate whether or not a laser beam has passed
through a hole in the card. However, they do not validly count votes, for when a
voter punches through a card, clearly expressing an intended vote, the chads
occasionally remain attached, or previous chads "build-up" preventing
a "clean punch." . And since the machine does not count an undetached
chad, such intended votes are not tabulated. Accordingly, punch card voting
systems, while reliable, are not completely valid.
The best remedy is visual inspection of the cards, as the laws of Florida and
Texas have recognized.
Trivial Pursuits and the Triumph of Info-Tainment
According to the
media, the great issues of this campaign are kisses (planted on Tipper
Gore and Oprah), rodents ("Rats" and "moles"), dog medicine,
lullabies and sighs. There are other issues, less conspicuous in the media, that will
be decided by this contest:
- should we allow the courts and the Congress to continue to cede the
rights and security of the citizens to the corporations?
- should we consent to the "privatization" of public lands,
the public schools, and even the Social Security system?
- will we absent ourselves from international attempts to save the common
oceans and to prevent catastrophic alterations of the common global climate?
- shall we allow the government to claim control over a woman’s body?
Or else, to the contrary:
- shall we, the citizens, take back our government from those who have
purchased it through campaign "contributions"?
- will the budget surplus be used to improve public education and health,
and to reduce the national debt (6 trillion dollars, 2/3 of which was
accrued during the administrations of Reagan and George The First), or will
half of it be turned over to the wealthiest 1% of the population?
- shall we, at last, put an end to "reverse Robin-Hoodism,"
whereby wealth moves from the poor and the middle classes (who produce the
wealth) over to the rich (who own and control the wealth)? Incidentally, the
attempt to reverse this trend is called, by "conservatives,"
"class warfare." Conservatives do not approve of such
"warfare," preferring instead, unconditional surrender.
These issues are eclipsed because discussion and contemplation thereof
require serious reflection, and critical linear thought has become less and less
"fashionable" of late. In the evening network TV news shows,
word-laden "content" has been replaced with "images." In
cable TV, ideas and events give way to "personalities." Public
Television has fallen ever more under the control of its corporate
"contributors." Even the so-called "educational channels"
(e.g., the Discovery and History Channels) have become the video equivalents of
"The National Enquirer," whereby every sort of far-out kookery might
be displayed, while informed scientific inquiry recedes into the background. The
public demands "entertainment," and images have been found to be more
entertaining than ideas, astrology more entertaining than astronomy, and
"show-biz celebs" more entertaining than scholars, writers and
scientists, who are dismissed as mere "talking heads." The
"free-market of ideas," envisioned by Jefferson and J. S. Mill has
succumbed to a kind of "Gresham’s Law," whereby quality ideas and argument
are driven out by junk and drivel. And so, a new regime prevails in the media:
If information is not also entertaining, then fagedabowdit! Hence "Infotainment."
Thus, in the present campaign, rats, moles, kisses, lullabies and sighs prevail
over health care, education, national defense, global warming, etc. And in the
"Great Debates," we have seen the media behave more
like drama critics than journalists, as they meticulously examined demeanor,
tone, charisma, "comfort level," and "connection," while
they ignored substantial issues and policies.
The media, with the acquiescence of the candidates, have adopted "the
mushroom theory of politics: "Keep ‘em in the dark and feed ‘em bullshit."
Quite frankly, as a citizen of the US of A, I am acutely embarrassed, and I
fear for the future of my country as I contemplate Jefferson’s observation:
"That nation that wishes to be ignorant and free, wishes what never was and
never will be."
One Dollar, One Vote
Carved over the front entrance to the Supreme
Court Building are the words "Equal Justice Under Law." The justices
who voted in the majority in Buckley vs. Valeo (1976), must have
habitually entered the building through the rear entrance. In this, the most
wrong-headed decision since Dred Scott, the Supremes proclaimed that "cash
is speech." Thus the court apportioned electoral influence with wealth –
in effect, legalizing bribery. So much for "equality before the law."
And so we have a system whereby the demand of the majority for handgun
control is effectively "outbid" by the arms industry and its
surrogate, the NRA. Prevention and treatment of nicotine addiction is squelched
by a Congress which, in fact, pays subsidies to the tobacco farmers. The oil
consumption spree continues unabated, as no politician dares to point out that
some day, sooner or later, the Earth must yield the final barrel. (Sooner,
given our aversion to energy conservation). Meanwhile, research in alternative
energy sources languishes. All this is the result of a Congress that is more
"bought and paid for" than elected – that represents its sponsors
more than its citizen constituents. (See our
"Modest Proposal," this
site).
No other Western democracy has so completely mortgaged its election
procedures to private and corporate wealth. And, since 1976, this outrage has
been validated by the Supreme Court. The Court must be given another go at this,
but only after it has been sufficiently "liberalized." Don’t expect
this from George W. Bush, whose exemplar of the ideal Justice is Antonin Scalia.
