Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Monday, June 16, 2008

Nothing matters without verified voting

By Libby



Via Avedon comes a story about a touchscreen voting machine screwup so convoluted I can barely follow the particulars about what happened but the bottom line is the results of this vote are in no way guaranteed to reflect the will of the voters.



There was probably no nefarious attempt at sabotage here. It appears to be simple human error, but that's the point. The machines are operated by humans who are prone to make errors in programming and mistakes in judgment. And this was just a minor local election but the ramifications for November, when it will really matter, can't be overstated.



No system is perfect and someone can always find a way to commit fraud if they're determined but still, we need a tally that the public will have in confidence in as accurately reflecting their votes. I think paper ballots are our best bet, even if they use an optiscan system to tally. At least there's a hard copy to hand count in the event glitches arise.



I'm thinking now would be better than later to push our legislators into decertifying touchscreens altogether and mandating paper balloting for everyone. Having a publicly accepted vote is more important than a instant tally. Besides, the only people who really care about instant results are political junkies and the media.



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