From: vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten)
Subject: Re: Voting Results
Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 02:26:09 GMT

Paul Roberts writes:

>In article <=hsyygq@rpi.edu> vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten) writes:
>>     I still find it amusing that people are so scared to openly
>>express their vote on such an issue. 
>
>What makes you think that if someone didn't send you a cc of their vote, it was
>because they were "scared"? This just doesn't make any sense at all; why would
>anyone be "scared" to let you know that they support Ferrell?

Paul, why are you arguing my side? :-) The answer to your question is
what I want to know.  People seemed to get pretty torqued about my
suggestion, for no apparent reason.  It wasn't a "secret ballot with
the special decoder rings" so I didn't see anything wrong with my
suggestion to tally the votes as well.  In all honesty, I thought the
number of votes would be up in the hundreds, and I didn't expect the
tabulated results to be posted in the form that they were (i.e., I
thought Ferrell would have gotten enough votes that he would only be
able to post the totals, not a breakdown).  And the fact that the two
sides of this issue are skeptical of each other is nothing new.  When
is the last time that you folks told me that you think that the
wildlife biologists of the game departments should be trusted to set
the total game take in an unbiased fashion?  I can't remember it. :-)
My suggestion to keep a tally on behalf of our side was not meant to
be construed as a lack of trust, just a check on the system.  My
opinion is still that any result of the vote was non-binding anyway,
although I was hoping we could give Ferrell a hint to put his stuff on
a mailing list and distribute it.  Hey, did you know it's already on a
mailing list?  It still would help me if everyone would get it from
there directly, instead of the unnecessary cross-post.  But I'm afraid
it's become too much of an "us against them" argument now...  Oh well.
Don't blame me if I blow off a few followups, since it isn't my fault.
:-)


>As far as I can see, Ferrell supporters have been quite open about their 
>support.
>
>One good reason not to send you a copy of my vote: to do so implies that I
>accept your suggestion that Ferrell's vote-counting is not to be trusted,
>but yours is.

Paul, you've really got to stop arguing my side.  Is this a ploy to
wear down my debating skills from lack of use? ;-)  Look at what you
said.  You implied that you would be skeptical of *me* counting the
votes.  So why is it so terrible for me to be skeptical of Ferrell
counting them?  I just thought that if a vote were taken, it should be
open, that's all.  Ferrell had not mentioned that he would post the
results like he did.
     Also, I would consider someone's willingness to send a cc to me
as an indication that they *do* trust Ferrell to be above board and
correctly tally the votes and are willing to openly place his count
under comparison with another's count, not that they *don't* trust him.


John

--
******************************************************************************
               John S. Van Etten     vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu
       Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  1000 MIPS GaAs F-RISC Project
       --"If sand didn't irritate oysters, there would be no pearls"--
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