CONGRATULATIONS, BRETT AND ANITA!!
Brett Marston and Anita Padmanabhan got married in San Francisco last weekend. The marriage decision was catalyzed, in a manner of speaking, by the same-sex marriages in San Francisco, so naturally the marriage had to be there, too.

The groom is a political science professor -- for now -- at SUNY/Oswego. The bride is program administrator at Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute (GELPI).

And such a nice young couple they are, too. Sigh. (photo)

All the best to two good friends! And keep taking that folic acid. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:47:00 PM -- |    

 
Theoretical and practical perspectives on electronic transactions: differences between voting and buying gasoline
I recently added "Marginal Revolution" to the blogroll at the left; it's written by two economists at George Mason University, Tyler Cowen* and Alex Tabarrok. It's an excellent blog whose writers bring their expertise to bear on a wide range of interesting topics.

That won't stop me from taking issue with them on occasion, though. Alex Tabarrok recently wrote recently about electronic voting:

Many people fear electronic voting. What if there is an error? Don't we need a paper trial? How can we be sure that the election won't be stolen? My response is simple. Ever buy gas? When you buy gas do you pay cash or use a credit card? And when the terminal offers to print you a receipt do you take it, save it, and check it against your monthly Visa bill? Or do you press "no receipt" and drive away?

I have never once checked a gas receipt against my monthly credit card bill and I suspect most people don't either. The credit card companies have big incentives to record transactions quickly and accurately. The system isn't perfect but it's good enough so that I don't worry about being ripped off and, the key point, the electronic system is certainly more accurate than the primitive process of counting out paper and metallic tokens and handing them over to a minimum-wage cashier who repeats the process by counting out change. I see no reason why electronic voting should not be far superior to punch cards or other manual machine. (link from original leads to blackboxvoting.com)

Dan Glick notes in his post responding to Tabarrok:

I work for a payroll company, and the core of our business is a computerized payroll system. But we also keep a good deal of paper files; and I can assure you that any audits or disputes are going to pull in that paper file for comparison. [...]

I agree with Tabarrok that there's no need to be paranoid about computerized voting, especially if the software is open source. But that doesn't eliminate the need for an audit trail.

Right. I think there are other -- dare I say it -- economic problems with Dr. Tabarrok's post as well. I imagine Dr. Tabarrok's receipt checking behavior for routine gas purchases ($10-$20) are different from those for once-every-4-years-or-so major purchases, say a TV set, a desktop computer, or a car. I won't attempt to put a value on a vote, but it's worth a lot to some of us.

Further, we're more relaxed about gas purchases precisely because we know there's recourse if we do happen to notice a discrepancy -- that's not at all clear in the case of voting machines, even in the rare case where the voter notices a problem. It's true that's a matter of State or county procedures, but it also illustrates why people want paper receipts so much.

Turning Tabarrok's point around: I imagine he wouldn't patronize a gas station that actually refused to provide receipts. But by definition, taking your business elsewhere isn't an option for a voter in a given State or region using these machines. (If they move to another region, they're no longer a voter where they were.)

Dr. Tabarrok brings up the matter of incentives. At least in the situation I'm somewhat familiar with -- Maryland -- the voting machine company (Diebold) appears to believe it has incentives to charge "out the yin yang" for 'additional features' like printed receipts. The State of Maryland, it's true, has at least theoretical incentives to ensure fair and accurate voting, but were arguably conned by Diebold (and/or unaware of the full range of issues to address) in the first attempt to do this electronically.

Finally, concerns about these systems don't just exist in a theoretical vacuum; they exist in a real world where the voting machine company itself lobbies and cajoles, and a state bureaucracy becomes committed to a system that turns out to be unacceptable to many of us.

I would also say, however, that some concerns about electronic voting are really concerns about transparency in any vote-tallying process. Just as a Diebold machine might be 'hacked' at the voting booth level, so a state or county employee could always have been bribed to alter totals in some fashion, with or without computer assistance. In this respect, the open-source voting project Dr. Tabarrok mentions does look interesting.

He was also kind enough to send me an article of his about Patent Theory and Law that interested me; thanks again!

FURTHER READING:

A Better Ballot Box? Spectrum Online, IEEE

Tammany Hall Wikipedia entry

History of voting technology, PBS Online Newshour item

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* Dr. Cowen also maintains an excellent D.C. area ethnic dining guide.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:40:00 PM -- |    

 
They were just regular folks back when I knew them
Andreas Schaefer announced a while back that a group of German bloggers has produced a book: BLOGS! Blogbar -- Text und Form im Internet (text and form on the Internet).

I'd skimmed over the sidebar image the last several times I checked on Andreas' blog, thinking it was just another ad. But it turns out Andreas is a co-author, as is "siebenviertel." Congratulations to both! I profiled Andreas and "siebenviertel" last year on this blog -- both were then living in the United States, Andreas has since moved back to Germany. That gets me some kind of finder's fee, I assume.

The book also features writing by a number of other German bloggers: @lles wird gut, andrea diener, anke groener, argh!, elfengleich, emilybeat, freakshow, jetzt.de, kutter, ligne claire, luna_lu, miss.understood, spackonauten, wo+man, dotcomtod, dogfood. A lot of these blogs and people are new to me. Should be interesting. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:38:00 AM -- |    

 
A pod of whales, a murder of crows, a Panda's Thumb of blogging evolutionists
A quick introduction to a really good blog:

The Panda's Thumb is dedicated to explaining the theory of evolution, critiquing the claims of the anti-evolution movement, and defending the integrity of science and science education in America and around the world.

Very good and prolific writing -- and no wonder: it's a group blog by 23 people, most with graduate degrees in the biological sciences. Unabashedly esoteric at times; skip those posts -- or see if you can learn something new.

As a "mysteries of the Internet" aside, I have to admit I wouldn't know about them except that they're showing up on my referer list, for no reason I can see. Whatever. As a marketing notion, let me suggest CafePress: I'd buy a coffee mug or a t-shirt with their logo for a gift or just for the hell of it. (That goes for you, too, Gary -- once you develop a logo. But that should be fairly easy.) I've added this and a few other "narrow focus" blogs I like to a separate blogroll: specialty blogs. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:52:00 AM -- |