Dear Folks,
It's interesting that microphone use and the use of
vote counting machines have something in common.
A vote counting mechanism is a lump of bits with
no possible use until it's mated with the card it's intended to read.
Same with an amplifier and mike. Until a voice is fed
to the face of the microphone, it has no function.
The default and original mode will always be hand
counting of a vote: cast and counted in a manner that is not particularly
foreign to that with which the voter is familiar. A counting mechanism
yields a quick result and if the margin is large enough, no-one cares
about the "drop-outs," and that's the term the machine manufacturer
doesn't like to use.
One defective card invalidates the whole process
in a near count and cards that can't survive hand counting also label
the process intrinsically defective.
The use of the microphone and amplifier to synthesize
a magnificent singer singing magnificently, remains a trick by
which the illusion is achieved. The inaccuracy with which it mirrors
the glorious original, just like a machine count, is recognised, but
ignored. Masking of inferior technique is both reasonable and
routine in this industry with certain remarkable exceptions,
but most of these are in the ' classical music catalogue.'
I think it's strange that in the arena of government, a
face to face confrontation is regarded as the only acceptable means
of resolving the sincerity of the opponents, and yet in the voting
process, as with synthesized vocal technique, we are urged to
accept without question, something considerably less.
There are plenty of vocal equivalents of the pregnant
"chad" and we enjoy their efforts to rise to the heights, even if at
times they DO fall short, because it is human evaluation that
recognises the UNsynthesised developing technique and credits
it accordingly. An analogue function, not a digital one.
In analogue terminology a few hundred or thousand
votes in so many million is only noise. The noise of mis-casting
and mis-counting. The result is a draw unless the mechanisms are
defective as it appears both systems are.
Still if near enough, is good enough, there can be no
argument with either of these devices, but if we desire to approach
the ultimate human resolve, the effort can be Herculean and the
result wondrous.
In vitro runs a very poor second to the alternative. : ) Reg.
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