[extropy-chat] polls again

[spike]

A couple weeks ago we had a discussion on how paperless voting machines may
be causing loss of confidence in the outcomes of elections, which I
commented is a serious threat to democracy, perhaps the most serious threat
we have seen in some time.  A new twist I saw today.  The local newspaper,
the San Jose Mercury, reported in big bold headlines the outcome of next
week's elections.  The outcome was based on some poll that someone did.

There are a number of ways to look at this.  The Merc and the newspaper
industry is in decline, for reasons that are no surprise: the internet
offers more material, more quickly, at no cost, content that can be more
controlled by the user and effectively searched.  Even the classified ads
are in steep decline due to the same services, actually superior advertising
services offered by eBay, Craig's List and others, for free or nearly so.
Declining revenue leads to layoffs in the news room, thinner papers and
fewer readers, spiraling downwards.

Newspapers once made endorsements of candidates and propositions before the
biannual elections.  Now with fewer readers, this is a new way to state an
endorsement.  No need to pay for a poll when one can simply dream one up
that matches one's endorsements.

Another way to look at these headlines is that as confidence in elections
declines, the difference is made up by making the local news poll the de
facto standard by which the honesty of the election may be verified.  Thus a
process with unknown controls is supplanted by another process with known
but suspect controls.

Politics is full of paradox.

spike