Interesting Links for 07-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• Ken Clarke defends secret courts. I, of course, think they're an awful idea.
  (tags: law secrecy security_theatre uk )
• 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying
  (tags: money income society )
• Jews in Scotland may be disenfranchised by a Saturday vote.
  Is there a reason why voting has to happen on one day? Give people a week to vote, with daily updates on the ongoing count!
  (tags: voting uk scotland independence jews )
• Kids born later in the year more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD
  (tags: adhd diagnosis children )
• Govt. agencies, colleges demand applicants' Facebook passwords. (And they can, frankly, fuck off)
  (tags: facebook privacy employment usa )
• Dammit, I find myself largely in agreement with esr on Hollywood, piracy and the internet
  (tags: censorship politics freedom )
• A man who informed police when he found child abuse images on his computer has not been allowed to be alone with his daughter for four months.
  (tags: uk Child_abuse )
• How I became Amazon’s pitchman for a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant on Facebook
  (tags: lubricant facebook amazon advertising )
• On Writers Block
  (tags: neilgaiman writing )
• I hadn't realised that Gillian Anderson stood on a box for The X-Files
  (tags: GillianAnderson x-files tv )
• Either be offensive, or don't be offensive. Being offensive and then pretending you weren't is just dumb.
  (tags: humour offensive )
• Rather than a mansion tax we should be sorting out council tax
  (tags: tax uk housing )
• Romney vs Mr Burns - can you tell which quote belongs to which one?
  (tags: simpsons politics usa )

Comments

[akicif.livejournal.com]

You'd have to be very careful to ensure that information on the count so far didn't get released - I think it's only been in comparativelty recent years that even exit poll results have been published while the polls were still open.

But the whole "disenfranchising people by holding the vote on a day when they can't get to the poll" thing is a complete and utter straw man: it's possible to vote by post.

[andrewducker]

My suggestion was that information _was_ released. I want actual figures out there so that people know which of the candidates might win, and thus how to place their votes.

If I can't have Instant Runoff Voting then this is better than plain FPTP.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

That would mean that you would need tellers (paid) and scutineers (unpaid) for a week rather than just a day. I'm also fairly sure that publicising how a poll is going has got more drawbacks than advantages (numbers at each individual polling station can be low enough that split over a week you've a reasonable chance of being able to tell how a particular group of individuals voted, so you can re-invent the market in buying and selling votes: which is a seriously bad thing).

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

It's a total straw man, especially given that laws can be changed. You would think that there is nowhere civilised, with a similar country size, using a very similar electoral system, that votes on Saturday, whose law and experience could be referred to.
More than 10% of the votes in the recent NZ election were Advance Votes. Most of those were from people walking into one of the polling stations that were available for the two weeks before polling day. IT'S NOT DIFFICULT!