In sci.stat.edu Ronald Bloom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So far, NOT ONE person here has responded to my
> point that the likelihood of getting into a tangle
> of some sort with a machine or mechanical procedure
> of some kind does not necessarily have anything
> to do with one's level of literacy! (And that
> illiterate persons may function Quite Well with
> mechanical devices, &c)
OK, one person has :)
IMHO, the efforts to describe difficulty with the Palm Beach ballot as the
results of "illiteracy" or "stupidity" are mostly simple propaganda
tricks: in American culture, illiteracy and lack of intelligence carry a
high degree of social stigma, whereas difficulty with machines, outside of
geek circles, doesn't (and in some cases is treated as a matter of
perverse pride). If you're a strong partisan, you want to attach socially
stigmatized labels to your opponent's supporters.
OTOH, it's also possible to use such labels almost unconsciously. Most
Usenet users are probably far more adept with human-machine interfaces
than most people, and it's easy for us to take a lot for granted. We tend
to surround ourselves with people of similar adeptitude and fall into the
assumption that we're typical and that there must be something wrong with
people who aren't as adept as we are. In a way, this is just a form of
fundamental attribution error.
Finally, I think there's a cognitive dissonance phenomenon going on
here: most of us *want* to believe that our system of elections is fair,
and when presented with evidence that *might* indicate that this isn't so,
we're inclined to interpret it in such a way as to confirm that things are
the way we want them. And American culture strongly favors explaining
outcomes in terms of individual, rather than systemic or structural,
phenomena; at first glance, the idea that Gore voters were stupid or that
Jeb Bush directed a campaign of fraud in favor of his brother "make more
sense" to us than the idea that there are inherent inaccuracies in the
system of vote-counting.
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