----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 22:56:53 -0800 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: [skeptic] On the art of becoming an uncarved rock (was: Please allow me to introduce myself...) Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting Eva Durant (durant.eva(a)gmail.com): Dear Eva: There's a perceptual bias that people unfortunately labour under, that says that definitive election results can be expected the same day, and that whatever's available the same day needs to be considered the outcome. This attitude of impatience doesn't mislead people 95% of the time -- the times when the margin of victory is clear, early on. In the other 5% of cases, there's really no alternative but to wait -- and people really don't want to hear that. They want elections to be settled on Internet time. When elections are close, or when elections are atypical and difficult to model, this bias leads people into adopting early, shaky guesses as if they were fact. Here in most-placid, Democratic Party-dominated California, it's been obvious all along that the state's bloc of 55 Electoral College votes would go to the Democratic Party ticket (which ended up being Clinton/Kaine). But even here, it's actually not even remotely possible to fully model and predict the statewide vote on Election Day -- if only because of the several categories of ballots that are counted only slowly _after_ Election day: all mailed-in ballots, all provisional ballots, and all early-voting ballots. To picked mailed-in ballots as an example: As long as a mail-in ballot has been postmarked by election day and received within three days, it must be counted, by state law. However, as it happens, the third day will be Veterans' Day, a Federal holiday with no mail delivery, with the effect that mail-in ballots received even by Monday, November 14, 2016 are valid and must be counted. So, California's Secretary of State cannot even in principle know fully what the results of the election are until _six days_ after Election Day. I'm really not familiar with the specific situation in the other 49 states plus District of Columbia, but I'll bet there are similar problems everywhere else -- and this is not what those of us conditioned to a 24-hour news cycle and instant Internet-timescale results want to hear. But it's the cold, hard, unpleasant truth: In a close election, you just have to wait. Days, maybe even weeks. It _is_ apparently a close election. The interim results are (mostly, in many places) all we have yet, and are at best poorly reliable and subject to upset by later, better data. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to take go on holiday and wait for futher developments, remembering that nothing actually need be settled until Monday, December 19th, when the Electoral College casts its votes. Meanwhile, I'm going to resume watching 'Borgen', the Danish show about the story of an effective, powerful, rational, intelligent female head of government. Catch y'all on the other side. -- Cheers, A woman's place is in the House, Rick Moen the Senate, and the White House. rick(a)linuxmafia.com McQ! (4x80) _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message -----