Looks like the shenanigans of the Asheville Tea Party have not gone unnoticed.
Go get 'em, Bill. I've noted before that an endorsement of Eichenbaum was not a surprise, and questioned their use of weird voting.
And, shortly after the WCU Young Americans for Liberty Forum, the moderator of that event (Matthew Hoaglan) announced that he was going to be Eichenbaum's Campaign Manager. You can see a video of Matthew at the event here.
This is not the first time that ethical concerns have been raised about members of the Asheville Tea Party. Read this comment thread at Conservative Thunder.
The common thread in all this is most of the people involved are Ron Paul Supporters and have been involved in an attempt to take over the Buncombe County Republican Party.
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11 comments :
Hello Bobby,
When the Asheville Tea Party become a target for your blogger-scorn?
Would you care to tell me what "shenanigans" you are referring to?
By the way, I am the Chairman of the Asheville Tea Party and I am not a Ron Paul Libertarian nor do I give a damn for any alleged "takeover" of the GOP, failed institution that it is, so what's with the accusation of a BCGOP takeover related to the Tea Party debate?
We ran a well executed, well documented, professional debate that REFLECTED THE VIEWS OF OUR MEMBERSHIP. I think your real problem is that you're hacked that the Tea Party in Asheville genuinely prefers Eichenbaum to the other candidates and you are finding flaws where there aren't any. If I'm wrong, you tell me what we did to game the debate.
I'm all ears.
Erika Franzi
@Erika:
Blogger-scorn? Can you say Range Voting?
You ask me about shenanigans? I'll quote from your own website if you can't remember what was posted on your own site:
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Bill Fishburne, a Republican Party official and Senior Editor of the Tribune newspapers, said the limitation on distribution of campaign literature was a worrisome and unprecedented restriction on the candidates at a political forum. “I support the Tea Party concept,” Fishburne said, “but their attempt to muzzle the candidates while taking advantage of their time deeply disturbs me. This is a political campaign, not the coronation of Dr. Eichenbaum.”
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Source: Asheville Tea Party
You are allowed to pass yourself off however you like. I have read your messages on meetup and various google groups during the 2008 primary, and have seen the Ron Paul articles and videos on your blog.
I relate the BCGOP Takeover because many of the same people that were involved in it are involved together in the Asheville Tea Party and other groups, such as Liberty Asheville together...a number in leadership positions.
"Game the debate?" I did not accuse you of that in this post. I've questioned the wisdom, or lack thereof, of using Range Voting to select the winner of the debate, for reasons that should be clear in that post. Range Voting allows fringe candidates to obtain the appearance of more support than they have from a particular voting group. Even Dr Dan's Campaign recognized that fact, and chose to inculde my interpretation of your Straw Poll rather than the raws numbers on his website.
I've not attacked you personally, and I belioeve that I have posted the reasons for my opinions at every step of the process.
If I have scorn for anyone, it is Ron Paul. I think some of his ideas are insane (in particular his foreign policy views) and more harmful to this nation than a dozen 9/11's. Some of his fiscal ideas are based in sound economic theory. If I were President, he'd be my first choice for Secretary of the Treasury.
And, Erika, I'll further note that even your quote itself is deceptive.
You (or Tim) dropped off the end of Bill Fishburne's statement, changing the meaning of the sentence.
So, "This is a political campaign, not the coronation of Dr. Eichenbaum.”
bcomes, "This is a political
campaign, not the coronation of Dr.
Eichenbaum or any other candidate."
The proper way to have quoted him and indicated that it was not a complete quote would have been to say "This is a political campaign, not the coronation of Dr. Eichenbaum...”
"I have read your messages on meetup and various google groups during the 2008 primary, and have seen the Ron Paul articles and videos on your blog."
So agreeing with Ron Paul on a wide variety of issues makes me the enemy? Um, isn't he a Republican? Careful, Bobby. You might be the enemy too.
If you can make a cogent argument against score voting, we'll talk more. I guess the International Olympics Committee better listen in to this conversation since they'll want to change the way they judge their competitors too, you know, since you and Fishburne think "...Range Voting allows fringe candidates to obtain the appearance of more support than they have from a particular voting group."
Did you happen to notice that Eichenbaum's lead was far NARROWER in our poll than any of the other straw polls? Isn't that odd? Guess that makes your guys the "fringe candidates."
@Erika:
I appreciate your willingness to engage in dialogue.
I do consider Ron Paul the enemy based on his foreign policy views. I have blogged about my concerns in that area ever since I became aware of him. He is more libertarian than Republican. His earlier run (beofre 2008) for President was in the Libertarian Party.
And as long as he stands against Israel, I will spend my last breath opposing him and his agenda.
The International Olympics? This is politics, not a scoring system for an athletic competition. In the IOC, trained expert judges do the scoring, not millions of viewers.
In the context of the Asheville Tea Party membership, anyone other than Dr Dan was a fringe candidate.
Here are the results again, expressed in percentages:
==========
29.05% Dan Eichenbaum
22.55% Kenny West
17.29% Greg Newman
16.28% Jeff Miller
8.66% Ed Krause
6.17% Jake Howard
==============
and here are the votes interpreted in the form of "9" votes only:
===============
107 Dan Eichenbaum
37 Kenny West
16 Greg Newman
11 Jeff Miller
1 Ed Krause
0 Jake Howard
=============
See? Those results are very different. Supporters of Kenny West can use the 1st numbers and say that they finished virtually neck and neck with Eichenbaum at an event hosted by people who can be presumed to be very favorable to Eichenbaum. Newman supporters could claim to still be 'in the game'.
A cogent argument? The results above speak for themselves.
Using the IOC scoring of athletic competitions is not a cogent argument technique. It is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy and
I'd appreciate an argument on the merits.
Now, it would have been cool to have had a double ballot experiment at the debate. One section allows people to score vote, and the other to select a winner. Now, that would have been interesting to look at.
I can safely say that Dr Dan would have won a ballot based on one man, one vote overwhelmingly...even greater than the margin indicated on my interpretation of the score voting data.
How do you like me now?
http://ashevilleteaparty.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/asheville-tribune/
@Tim Peck:
You've still failed to address my arguments instead, you prefer to rely on an appeal to authority (and even added a bandwagon approach by comparing Range Voting to rating "hot chicks").
And with the Range Voting system...just a few people can have great impact on the outcome by choosing not to play the score game and vote strategically just using the maximum and minimum selections.
"...and here are the votes interpreted in the form of "9" votes only..."
You can't compare this to the totality of scoring. It's the proverbial apples to oranges.
In score voting, that's just not how it works. The total score is what matters. Not who got the most 9's. By your logic, If Candidate A got 10 nines and 10 zeroes (total of 90), and Candidate B got no nines and 20 eights (total of 160), then candidate A won.
Dan won by virtue of the fact that he got the highest total when people were allowed to score the candidates on a range of 0-9. The results reflected the nuanced feelings of the audience. If you look at the raw data, you can see that some people who wanted to vote for one man only cast a 9 for one candidate and zeroes for the rest. This is acceptable in score voting. Others had mixed feelings about the candidates and gave each of them a slightly different score, which is also acceptable.
It's not some crazy conspiracy, Bobby. It's a vastly superior form of voting to plurality voting and it would open the door to candidates who currently are barred from entry to elected politics by plurality voting.
For the record, can you please state how our response to the Tribune's article failed to address your points?
Your Israel comment against Ron Paul shows you are the one who is a blatant racist! They have created many grievous sins and errors similar to our own government.
How does one calculate "A dozen 9/11s"?
Thunder Pig,
You seem concerned about strategic voting when you say:
"And with the Range Voting system...just a few people can have great impact on the outcome by choosing not to play the score game and vote strategically just using the maximum and minimum selections."
That's a common criticism of Score Voting, but it's actually not accurate, because it turns out that:
1) EVERY deterministic voting method can be gamed.
2) Score Voting is so much better than other methods, that it still picks better outcomes even when voters are strategic, based on objective Bayesian Regret calculations. For instance, Score Voting is better with 100% strategic voters than IRV is with 100% honest voters.
Here are some pages on that:
http://ScoreVoting.net/StratHonMix.html
http://ScoreVoting.net/UniqBest.html
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