Thursday, October 28, 2004
The animations of the migration of the vote over time are cool. I just wish it tied back to something (like: whatever the candidate said that day.) If the graphic on the left appears blank, it's in part because the maintainer has been fighting off continuous Denial of Service attacks against his web site - an infowar that bodes ill for America. Click on the blankness for the data that is still up.
There's also the chart for each month, here's what october has looked like: http://electoral-vote.caida.org/october2004-slow.html
I have been coping with an unusual amount of election related email. One contained the rumor that the US had banned UN inspectors from monitoring the election - published Oct 12, 2004.
Um, no - In august Colin Powell of the current administration
granted the request for the UN to monitor the election.
The first article was written 2 months after the first. What gave?
- the non-governmental groups decided to seek action from the Economic and Social Council, known as ECOSOC, after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned down a request for international observers from 13 members of Congress, led by Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Tex. Annan said the U.N. needed an invitation from the U.S. government, not Congress.
Aha - one version of the request was granted, another request has been making hay, and providing confusion and doubt to all. It's all just PR.
Even so, the rules under which the UN observers can "observe" strike me as overly strict - The monitors are only allowed to come within 50 feet of the polling places. How close are the after-election pollsters allowed to get?
I'd like to know more of the details behind other UN vote monitoring efforts - and the rules under which they were conducted. And while I'm at it - I'd love to know - in all these polls of 1000 people with an "accuracy" of plus or minus 2 percent - how many phone calls went unanswered? With over 60 million people uniting behind donotcall.gov, how many Americans bother to answer their phones - or answer intrusive political questions?
¶ 8:23 PM
