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How You Can Rig the UNOP Election
August 7th, 2006How can you rig the election yourself? Go to Spam Gourmet and register. It’s a service that let’s you create disposable email address to catch spam. You can now create an email address by typing it out, the same way I do.
Update: You can cast all the votes you like at the UNOP voting form. You’ll need your email address, and a neighborhood and district. I live in the “French Quarter” which is in district one.
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Comments 
So… any particular candidate about which, say, an interested non-resident might want to become familiar?
Any suggestions on how to improve the voting process?
Yes.
You could have neighborhood organizations that have reconstituted themselves choose the planners according to the procedures for voting in thier by laws.
You could have City Council choose the planners, since they are elected to do so.
Or you could simply appoint the planners, say that they are appointed, and let it be that.
“Your email address has been confirmed and your submission has been counted.
Thanks for your support. Your submission is complete. We will be posting the results soon.”
Cool! I’m officially involved in a New Orleans election. By the way, I voted for ACORN.. first on the list is the best, right?
Only 73 more email addresses to go through. Seriously, if this is how they’re electing people in New Orleans, a delegation from Chicago will be down shortly to get some pointers.
Oh, this is on Digg, too.
http://digg.com/world_news/Outsourcing_Democracy_How_to_Rig_an_Election_for_Fun_and_Profit#c2605721
A couple options I’d consider if I were running the selections process…
Expanding a little on Alan’s thoughts above: in addition to the hasty “come up with selection criteria” and “speed date your planner” meetings, schedule a (well publicized) meeting for each district. Work with the active neighborhood groups to organize the meeting, and have the district-dwellers themselves decide how best to gather and tally their own votes, both at the neighborhood/project and district levels.
Or, before scheduling anything, look for specialists in polling and non-governmental voting. All sorts of businesses and non-profits have worked out their own procedures. Of course there are some big differences between this and a shareholders’ election or a committee meeting, but I bet you could also call a political science department or an election-observation NGO and at the very least get some recommendations on where to start researching good polling practices.
Good, spread it. I would like to see a large audience not only watching this but also participating. America in recent years has become infamous for questionable elections, this time my home is on the line.
The supposed process suffers many flaws (see ther posts in this category) which denote either a level of planning I cannot trust my future to, or a behind the scenes appointment of predetermined faces.
I will be putting up an article later on my Powers and Morrison column. I like the idea of the UNOP and I like the fact they seem to have backing. I do not like the fact that they only “seem,” to be democratic. That would not even be a massive problem if they were not masquerading as such.
No. That’s not how we elect political officials. It’s just how we elect the professionals who will plan the city’s future physical and economic landscape. Does that make sense now?
Please help us in New Orleans.
This is massive public fraud for our planning process.
We need outside research and monitoring, desperately, now, before the money comes.
The same group of people is in control and they are definitely strangling the city.
If you can’t help, please pass this on.
Same answer I left on TNO: we need to review closely the records of all voting, including logs, once they receive their first penny of public funding as a matter of public record.
Mark
Too late now. There’s no way to know that the records we are given were the records generated. In order to have a valid vote you need to verify the voting machines, in the case of an electronic vote, we’d need to verify the software.
Okay. So, let’s say that we forgive the software. How do I know that any given vote is not forged? Am I supposed to contact the persons listed, through their street address, and ask them to verify their vote? There was no vefification, and I could easily have plucked a Broussard off of the Yahoo! White Pages.
I’m sorry too, that I can’t find a post at TNO. My spam filter was over anixous there. Did I miss your comment?
My daughter voted. Is there an age limit?
This is not an election! This is simply a consultation. The planners are finally going to be selected by a small group of people, who will consider the results of the “votes” and then assign planners. How is it even possible for this to be an election? If one planner won all the votes, that organization could not possibly do all the work! It would be necessary in that case to assign the work anyway. I think that the idea of “rigging the election” shows a basic misunderstanding of the process.
No, it isn’t an election, but neither is it “simply a consultation,” at least not as it’s been depicted by the UNOP. As poorly planned as the two public UNOP meetings were, they were quite clearly intended to convey the notion that neighborhood and district residents were to have a significant voice in how their planners were appointed. To what end were developing criteria, perusing booths and viewing proposals, let alone voting, if not to be involved in making the decision? The districts and neighborhoods may not have directly selected their planner via this vote, but there was an expectation that a considerable weight would be attached to the appointment process based on its outcome.
Steven Bingler in Todays Times Picayune:
“We’re about equity, we’re about community and we’re about democracy,”
So far it seems he has missed the mark on all of the above.
“Equity”, but the meeting location was not announced till 5 days before the event, and the main method of communication was word of mouth.
“Community” but the “Meet the Planner” event is scheduled on the same night as Night Out Against Crime. A night that Post Katrina has taken on new meaning and urgency
“Democracy” but you need to have an e mail address or fax machine to “choose”, participate.
We need to remember that any “plan” that proposes to adress the rebuilding of the City needs to embrace the Neighborhoods. And the best way to do that may be to actually communicate with them instead of at them.
Many Neighborhood Organizations spent the weekend
reviewing and discussing which planner would be best for their Neighborhood. If the planners are chosen for us then maybe we should have spent the weekend fixing our ruined homes and neighborhoods.
Allow me to drop into the vernacular and vulgar for a moment:
I am a white boy from the uptown area who did not lose his home, has an internet connection, and the knowledge of how to use it. All of the stereotypes in one place to make me The UNOP Target Audience ™.
So if “even I,” am worried it should concern you…
THIS IS WRONG. Period. Those are my damn tax dollars and its my damn cityon the line.
Robert
Of course, this isn’t an election.
I assume that you imagine I’ve gone off the deep end. You would have to have heard the rhetoric of the last weeks, because those that have, know that the UNOP has leaning on this vote as a key to its legitimacy.
No one ever said election, to my recollection, but they have said repeatedly that this was a “democratic process” which is not the same thing as a “consultation”.
We’ve been repeatedly told at times that we would vote to choose our top three planners, and these planners would be selected from our choices. That was communicated in plain English.
People have been voting in earest.
To choose three finalists by vote is to elect them. The process of electing them is an election.
If it were a consultation, that would have had to have been made exceedingly clear at the outset, or at the first meeting at the Pavilion, or the speed date your planner meeting, or in advance of all the meetings and conference calls scheduled over the weekend, or, gee whiz…
How about at any point before the election was exposed as a fraud?
The bottom line is that this process was misrepresented. This process upon which the fate of our neighborhoods and the incoming federal monies to rebuild them relies upon.
It is often touted that New Orleanians need to stop allowing business as usual to be synonymous with corruption and nepotism, so let us embrace that challenge and call this what it is: fraud.
I agree with the Wet Bank Guide: an accounting must be demanded of every cent that is spent based upn these results (if it doesn’t blow up in the media first).
[...] For a look at the buzz that is starting already about the “democratic process,” in place and how easily hacked it is. Read the comments under the original post Alan’s Blogometer » How You Can Rig the UNOP Election [...]
This is not simply a consultation. If it were a consultation, the people of UNOP would have sat down with neighborhood associations and/or districts, assessed their planning needs and GIVEN them the planner most suited to their requirements, from the 15 pre-chosen ones.
It is an election because every single person in the city is trying to get 2-3 of 15, i.e. their choice, their election, their vote.
Now, it’s more a free-for-all and less a process.
I will be pleasantly surprised if districts/neighborhoods end up with the planner they want. If not, and if the UNOP folks then say, “Well, we can’t win ‘em all,” I’ll ask, “Why not?” Why wasn’t the process constructed like so:
Step 1. Consult with neighborhoods and/or districts
Step 2. Assign them a planner from a nationwide search that best suits their needs.
Instead of:
Step 1. Acquire 15 planners.
Step 2. Have neighborhoods/districts “fight” over them in an “election.”
Sarah is right. This is not how we elect our political officials, for if Ater had run this voting process, I wouldn’t have talked about One Woman, Nine Votes.
[...] I’m not really going to discuss my specific concerns about the specific sources of messiness in this specific “democratic process,” as so many keener observers have already done it (see Alan’s and Becky’s comments). But I will take a moment to express some concerns that continue to nag at me. [...]
[...] Concordia has sent me a message for the record. It appears to be in response to How You Can Rig the UNOP Election. This is from Claudia Kent. [...]