Well, before i get to the weeks events, here is a really funny link that i saw somewhere. You should definetly check it out.
On thursday i went to the county building for the open forum meeting the that was being hosted to help get input on the new voting machines the state is planning on buying. First, my gut insticnt is that i don't like Dean Heller, he jsut seems like a politician. He always had the big smile and the smooth talk, and he looked like a frat boy/high school varsity football player, just that cocky attitude, but it is probably really nice and good at what he does. Oh yeah, his powerpoint sucked to. The meeting was really interesting. Personally i think that electronic voting is fine, as long as their is a voterverifiable paper trail. The people getting up to speak were pretty clear that this is what they want, but it seemed as if all the panelists were trying to talk about the other features and arguements and what not. Mostly people don't care what they vote on, just make sure there is a backup. Also, a machine that spits out at the end of the day a paper list is not a paper trail. It is like the people supporting it couldn't understand that people don't trust the machine, and if the machine messes up, it is going to mess up that paper trail as well, so really that paper trail is almost worthless as well.
I was suprised at how different the terms conservative and liberal are at the local level. It was like the people were more at the essence of what the parties meant, at least the good sides anyway. I can't think of too many good examples since this was a few days ago. People that i would have stereotyped into one party were coming across quite differently. It was amazing how no matter what party, people just really wan a responsible accountable government. The best part of the evening, besides Sam (watch any reno, sparks, washoe county, airport authority, etc meeting and you will see him) singing a song making fun of dean heller, and the people ranting on about things that had already been discussed / weren't applicable to the discussion / technology they don't understand, was when Lou Montulli got up to speak. Now at first this name should have no meaning, except to Andrew or somebody else really into computers, because he was one of the founders of Netscape. He is now living in Reno (it was funny because they asked him where he was living and he answers "here, in Nevada", so they continue "what county?" he stops, and answers "reno?". Not to quick on that one, but that is okay. He made some really good points, and so not so good ones, but for the most part i think Heller got the message that the real ideological people who would go to county meetings on voting machines are against the new systems unless they have a paper trail. It was only afterwords that i realized how much of a nerd i really am.
Oh yeah, the other best part was all the Diebold (they make one of the voting machines the county was considering, and their source code got released onto the intenet because they didn't secure their website at all, and a bunch of researchers started testing it and have found a ton of security errors and bugs, and the President of Diebold promised to get Bush the votes he needs in 2004 and has donated a ton of money to the campaign. It doesn't matter what party you are, something just isn't right about that) bashing that was going on, i almost felt bad for the rep there, but not really.
Posted by cmorton at December 7, 2003 02:30 PM | TrackBack