Yes, but I'm not a techie, don't want to be a techie, use my computer for Websurfing, word processing, email and games primarily - and I still got the idiocy behind your four listed misconceptions. It doesn't take technical knowledge as much as it does common sense, and it scares me sometimes how little of the latter our leaders have...
I don't think it's a matter of politicians being too stupid to get this. After all using computers to purge the voter rolls in Florida of ppl who have the same names as convicted felons (knowing that the effect would be to strike more democrats than republicans) is an act of subtlety. I think it's a matter of their believing that the electorate is either stupid enough to buy their lame excuses or unable to really do anything about it.
Slight clarification re Fla: They did NOT purge the voter rolls of ppl with the same names as convicted felons when those names were Hispanic -- knowing people with Hispanic names are more likely to vote Republican.
...don't want to be a car operator, don't own a car, have no real interest in owning a car. Do I still need to know what a spark plug is and what it does (I vaguely sort of know this, although one car I did drive for a while years ago didn't have them), or how to change oil (not a damn clue)? That shouldn't mean that if you tell me something about cars is intrinsically unsafe (narrow wheel base to height ratio on SUVs for instance) that I shouldn't be able to grasp it. In fact, there are a lot of people out there who don't know anything about cars; you can generally find them in relatively densely-populated urban areas with decent public transit. :)
I'm not sure which is the greater hazard, though. Voting machine failures can do a lot of damage to society, but a lot more people die from automotive incidents than from failures of American democracy, inasmuch as such a thing exists, generally speaking...
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It doesn't take technical knowledge as much as it does common sense, and it scares me sometimes how little of the latter our leaders have...
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Agreed. To the other half of the metaphor: I'm not a car operator...
I'm not sure which is the greater hazard, though. Voting machine failures can do a lot of damage to society, but a lot more people die from automotive incidents than from failures of American democracy, inasmuch as such a thing exists, generally speaking...
Glenn, that was a bad metaphor to use. :)
agreement