Category: Culture

My Day at the Polls – Maryland Primary ’06

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Avi Rubin:

I don’t know where to start. This primary today is the third election that I have worked as an election judge. The last two elections were in 2004, and I was in a small precinct in Timonium, MD. This time, I was in my home precinct about 1/2 a mile from my house. We had 12 machines, over 1,000 voters and 16 judges. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and was at the precinct before 6:00. It is now 10:18 pm, and I just got home a few minutes ago. As I have made it my custom, I sat down right away to write about my experience while everything was still fresh. In anticipation of this, I took some careful notes throughout the day.

The biggest change over the 2004 election was the introduction of electronic poll books that we used to check in voters. I was introduced to these in election judge training a few weeks ago. These are basically little touchscreen computers that are connected to an Ethernet hub. They each contain a full database of the registered voters in the county, and information about whether or not each voter has already voted, in addition to all of the voter registration information. The system is designed so that the machines constantly sync with each other so that if a voter signs in on one of them and then goes to another one, that voter will already be flagged as having voted. That was the theory anyway. These poll books turned out to be a disaster, but more on that later.

Madison could use more poll workers. Contact the City Clerk for more information.

Incisive Questions

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Three recent and often rare examples of reporters asking incisive questions:

  • Cliff Christl:

    What happens if Koren Robinson kills somebody in Wisconsin driving drunk or fleeing the police?

    Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson wore a smile late Monday afternoon as he prepared to meet the media in the Lambeau Field atrium to announce the signing of wide receiver and kick returner Koren Robinson. When that was the first question fired at Thompson following his brief introductory remarks, he turned ashen and somber as he tried to collect himself and provide an answer.

    “Oh, I can’t answer anything like that,” Thompson said after a two-second pause. “There’s issues in his past that obviously he’s made some mistakes, but most of those issues are covered under the confidentiality of the NFL and the NFLPA. There’s programs set up and that sort of thing, and that’s where that lies.”

    More on Robinson

  • Bill Lueders:

    I only asked because no one else did. When Kathleen Falk announced her candidacy for attorney general against fellow Democrat Peg Lautenschlager at the City-County Building on Monday, I thought it would be one of first things that came up. But while several reporters quizzed Falk about Lautenschlager’s 2004 arrest for drunk driving (Falk deftly evaded the question, saying voters would have to reach their own conclusions), none asked her directly about her own record in this area. And so I raised my hand, waited until Falk called on me, and popped the question.

    Whether or not Falk choose to make an issue of it, I prefaced, the key reason Lautenschlager was seen as vulnerable was this drunk driving arrest, even though this is conduct that most people in Wisconsin have engaged in. And so I asked Falk point-blank: “Can you say whether you have ever in your life gotten behind the wheel of an automobile after consuming alcohol? Have you never done that yourself?”

  • Jason Shephard:

    The State Journal points to studies that suggest its readership is at sky-high levels. “The numbers for Capital Newspapers are absolutely stellar,” boasts an internal memo from the company’s marketing director, Jon Friesch. “In Dane County, 83% of adults read the Sunday Wisconsin State Journal, and 79% read the daily or Saturday edition of The Capital Times or Wisconsin State Journal.”

    But while these numbers come from an independent company, Scarborough Research, they may be misleading, since they include even casual readers. The 83% number, clarifies Friesch, measures respondents who have read the Sunday paper “in the last month”; the 79% number is respondents who have read either of the two dailies “in the past five days.”

A Discussion of Madison & Milwaukee

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Marc Eisen:

adison and Milwaukee are two distinct cities with radically different histories. Yet there are telltale signs that the same trends — economic, social, political and educational — that have rocked and weakened Milwaukee over the past 50 years are beginning to show themselves in Madison.

That’s the topic of discussion at the Isthmus “Pint and Policy” Forum scheduled for Thursday evening, Sept. 14, at the Club Majestic: Can Madison Avoid Milwaukee’s Problems?

9/11 Legacy: Five Years, still Fears?

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Flight International:

Almost five years after the World’s single most bloody act of terrorism – when hijacked aircraft were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon building – aviation was again last month at the centre of another terrorism scare.

This time, UK security services foiled an alleged plot to bomb transatlantic airliners. 9/11 changed history, prompting the invasion of Afghanistan and the continuing US ‘War on Terror’ that led to the ousting of Iraq’s Saddam Hussain.

But what has the lasting legacy of the 2001 attacks been on aviation? The industry has recovered strongly after a two-year nadir, but US airlines are still feeling the effects. And what of aviation security? Are we ever going to be able to terror-proof air travel?

Mike Boyd has more:

This, we would submit is only the tip of a very obvious and well-known corrupt iceberg. Five years after 9/11, there are more holes in aviation security than an Arkansas stop sign during hunting season.

Truth Doesn’t Really Matter, Apparently. We covered it in detail last week (go there), so there’s no point in trying to review the range of really stupid news stories we’ll see today – the ones generally with the headlines that imply, “Security Much Improved Since 9/11” or “Passengers Adjusting To New Security Measures” or a range of other examples of slapdash journalism.

As you’re regaled today by push-piece media stories, outlining the great “improvements” in aviation security, just ask yourself the following:

as does IAG along with Jeevan Vasagar.

Ethanol, Ethanol Everywhere, Time to Stop and Think

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Elon Musk:

Ethanol (a.k.a. alcohol) will certainly grow as a business and serve as a partial solution to our energy problem, particularly given that it is now taking the place of the gasoline additive MTBE. However, even if large-scale cellulosic ethanol technology is perfected, I don’t believe it can become the primary solution to the world’s energy needs.

The often-used example of Brazil does not apply to most parts of the world and may not even apply to Brazil if they see high economic growth with its attendant energy demands. Brazil is in the tropics with an all year round growing season and an enormous amount of arable land relative to its population food requirements and the number of cars on the road.

In contrast, domestic ethanol as the primary solution will definitely not work for the world’s most populous countries, such as Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. Those countries are either breaking even on domestic food production or are net importers. If you argue that ethanol is to be grown elsewhere and shipped, where are the vast tracts of unused arable land? And, bear in mind, the calories burned by two ton cars are much greater than those burned by 170 pound humans.

Who Knew? Third Coast Surfing in Sheboygan

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AP:

Sheboygan is the Capital of Freshwater Surfing because the county juts out 10 kilometres into Lake Michigan, meaning winds from most directions cause water to swell and form waves. It doesn’t hurt that the Williams brothers constantly hype their Malibu of the Midwest.

“Lake Michigan is an inland ocean, it can create waves in excess of 24 feet (7.3 metres), two and a half stories, several times a year,” said Larry Williams, pointing just down the 10-kilometre stretch of coastline. “North Point is now considered the Mount Everest of freshwater surfing. We had top California surfers come in here and they were backing off on a lot of waves.

“We get more waves than anybody else (on the Great Lakes), more quality waves, bigger waves, because where we’re sitting, from North Point to North Pier, about a mile, it’s really a deep bay and the waves sweep in.”

Surfer Movie Endless Summer II visited Sheboygan some years ago.