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I've recently added the much talked about facebook "like" button to this blogger blog. (For those that are interested the code is at the bottom of this post)

And as I was doing it I wondered how to gain access to the stats this will inevitably collect. I don't have the precise answer to that one yet, but I did find some interesting things on the Facebook Query Language page.

Just for example, this link https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=SELECT%20total_count%20FROM%20link_stat%20WHERE%20url=%27blog.killerbees.co.uk/2010/04/no-i-dont-have-my-ipad-with-me.html%27 will show you how many times that blog post has been shared on facebook.

Why don't I care that this information, and a whole lot more, is in the public domain? Mainly because I assume that if I use facebook everything is available to everyone and I should be careful what I say, we need to educate each other, as we do with our kids, not to post things online that give away the secrets of our private life.

But also because facebooks attempt to predict the result of the election (here) has predicted a victory for the lib-dems.

This is something that is clearly not going to happen, but is also something that a quantative approach to predicting the election will always come up with. Why? Hopefully its because we lie to pollsters, even if that includes lying to ourselves. We're not rational or very sane, and as long as we don't publicise information that can be used to harm us predicting future behaviour using facebook data is no better or worse than using any of the other sources of information available.

Why should I be worried? The one doubt I have in my mind is that it would be possible to track all of your associations, and you may not want me to know who your friends friends are, or what interests you share, particularly if your friends achieve notoriety or your shared interests reveal your social circles in an unfavourable light.

That fb code:

1st put these in the top of the template html, I had to put them directly under the opening "head" tag to stop blogger from removing them.

<meta content='your site name goes here' property='og:site_name'/>
<meta content='your app id goes here' property='fb:app_id'/>

Then put this beneath your posts, look for div class='post-footer', you may need to "expand widgets"

<div id='fb-root'><div/>
<script>
  window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
    FB.init({appId: 'your app id goes here', status: true, cookie: true,
             xfbml: true});
  };
  (function() {
    var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true;
    e.src = document.location.protocol +
      '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';
    document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);
  }());
</script>

<fb:like action="like" colorscheme="dark" expr:href="data:post.url" layout="standard" show_faces="true" width="500">
</fb:like>

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I blogged, before the Scottish elections last May, that I was pretty sure there would be some degree of chaos.
And I was right, there was. Now its official, the official report concludes, amongst other things, that..

We strongly recommend against introducing electronic voting for the 2011
elections, until the electronic counting problems that were evidenced during
the 2007 elections are resolved

and

combining the Scottish
parliamentary ballot papers onto one sheet was primarily responsible for the
high level of rejected ballot papers

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"ORG’s observations from polling places and count centres offer some insight into the reasons behind the spoilt ballot rate"

As I predicted "It was the combination of two different voting systems that also served to
confuse voters and complicate the voter education message"

It also, alarmingly, goes on to describe a count at which one of the candidates challenged the result before it had been announced. They had forgotten to include the SNP column in the calculations, if this had gone unnoticed we would not only have the wrong MSP's but also the wrong party in government.

And finally to the person who commented on my earlier post "... secure counting centres where there is no realistic chance of anyone tampering with the machines or the software." I say, Oh Yeah? Read the report.

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I thought everyone had heard the story of tory Shirley Bowes who didn't get a single vote in the English local elections. ROTFLMAO. But Martin hadn't so I thought I'd blog it for posterity.
What we know is that she didn't live in the ward so couldn't vote for herself, unlike the Arkansas Mayoral candidate who complained about the voting machines when he got zero because he'd at least voted for himself, we must charitably assume that her nearest and dearest were also not voters in the ward, because the other option is too cruel, but that still leaves the question of what she must have done to annoy the fifteen local people who had to have signed her nomination papers?

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There's a sneaking suspicion that perhaps it wasn't too complicated to vote but instead we're a bunch of idiots, as the BBC report that the total was even higher at ~142,000 or 3.5%.
Doh!

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I posted a few days ago that I though the voting for the Scottish parliament and the local councils was perhaps a trifle too involved, there were two different forms of PR in use, and that it might cause problems for people. There was some concern being expressed too, about the counting machines. Someone commented to assure me that my concerns were unfounded, it sounded at the time suspiciously like spin.
Well I appear to have had the last laugh. Lol.
While I was away at Apachecon Nikki voted for me by proxy, and whilst she maintains that it wasn't all that complicated around 100,000 people (about one in ten) still found it confusing enough and managed to spoil their ballots as reported by the BBC here and the Herald here which also mentions issues with the counting machines.
I gather that in some cases there were more spoiled ballots than the majority of the winning candidate.
Democracy? Maybe but only a wee bit.

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I'll be at Apachecon EU 07 on May 3rd when Scotland goes to the polls, so I've filled out a request for Nikki to be my proxy, like a good citizen should.

The hard part has been working out, with two different proportional representation (PR) voting systems in action, how to explain how I want her to cast my votes. We have the Additional Member System in place for election to the Scottish Parliament, which has two ballot papers, and Single Transferable vote (STV) for council elections. That means three ballot papers, and the STV one requires us to rank the candidates in order of preference, whereas the others are of the traditional "X" in the box variety.

Whats more I see that there are now concerns about the electronic vote counting machines.

However If you live in the Tarbolton/Symington/Craigie area of South Ayrshire make sure to put Sam Gardiner "1" for the council, failing that make him "2", or "3" etc. (I'm sure that you can see a pattern emerging)
IMHO, and judging from what I can see around me, local issues are no place for party politics.

Sadly I also think that STV removes some of the direct local accountability that first past the post elections enforce.

Ah well, at least we do get to vote, and can be reasonably comfortable that there won't be rioting , ballot rigging (if the machines actually work), voter intimidation (other than that caused by the complexity of the task!), or a military coup.

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