The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: A note to the County Board of Elections

The Rules of Bureaucracy

Rule #O: "The Rules of Bureaucracy are mutable, non-canonical, non-ordinal, and contradictory, except in the cases where they are not."
Rule #1: "Document everything you do; if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen."
Rule #2 [The Sixty Minutes Rule]: "Never do anything that would cause Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Steve Croft, Leslie Stahl, or even Andy Rooney to persue you down a hallway with a camera crew."
Rule #3: "Nothing Simple is Ever Easy"
Rule #4: "It's about the money; follow the money."
Rule #5: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Rule #6: "Politics is the enemy of good government."
Rule #7: "The biggest detriment to public service is the public."
Rule #8: "The second biggest detriment to public service is the service."
Rule #9: "There's a reason; there's ALWAYS a reason."
Rule #10: "The Law is a harsh mistress: The rigorous and exacting application of which can benefit of society when used correctly to advance good policy and block bad, and be the bane of society when used incorrectly to advance bad policy and block good."
Rule #11: "Public service often involves waking up in the morning, opening up the newspaper, and discovering that someone, somewhere out there thinks that you're a dickhead."
Rule #12: "No one really knows what you do."
Rule #13 [Luke's Rule]: "No one ever acts like the bastard they really are."
Rule #14: "Bureaucracy endures."
Rule #15: "The longer you work in bureaucracy, the more Catch-22 resembles non-fiction."
Rule #16: "Politicians are not smarter than you."
Rule #18: "Money is not created equal."
Rule #19: "Mediocrity is normalcy."
Rule #17: "Within any bureaucratic structure, resources (e.g. people, money, knowledge, etc.) are not distributed uniformly."
Rule #20: "Don't assume a fiduciary liability without a committed resource allocation."
Rule #21: "If you do your job and obey the law, they can't reasonably fire you."
Rule #22: "The Budget will always be wrong."
Rule #23: "Always sign in blue."
Rule #24: "A Bureaucrat must be able to explain and justify his/her actions to laymen without resorting to the phrase 'because the Rules say so.'"
Rule #25: "Never voluntarily relinquish control of an original document."
Rule #26: "Sometimes you just have to say 'Screw the rules'"
Rule #27: "Change sucks."
Rule #28: "Sometimes the answer is 'No.'"
Rule #29: "It is very easy to make difficult decisions when no one has a clue what's going on."
Rule #30: "If you hang around long enough, eventually you will become an expert in something."
Rule #31: "Data, technology, and automatic processes can never completely supplant human interaction."
Rule #32: "Cover thine own ass."
Rule #33: "It's not real until it has its own acronym."
Rule #34:There is nothing more dangerous than an elected, resourceful idiot.
Rule #35: It will always take longer than expected.
Rule #36: Coming Soon...

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

A note to the County Board of Elections

Two significant digits are more than enough. I know it's mathematically correct, but it's a bit silly to say that 82.9207920792079% of the precincts are reporting.

82.92% or even 83% works just as well.

2 comments:

MH said...: I conducted a survey and 66.66666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666667% of people agreed with you.; 10:55 PM
Anonymous said...: What really irritates me is that PCNC, with the political guru (LOL) Bill Green were reporting results with 12% in while the County Website Elections Department page were reporting 90%. Wouldn't ya think someone at PXI would have the common sense to have their computers directed to the Elections site and hit the update button every few minutes (as I did) to get accurate and up-to-the-minute results? I wonder how they could have been so far behind? For instance, Bill Green was saying that Payne would win the race "because she is the endorsed democrat and the numbers are early" when in real time, Lavelle was never behind and 96 percent was in. Green was reading very early numbers and saying that although Lavelle was ahead, many more precincts were still out and Payne would gain the lead. What a joke Bill Green and that broadcast are. And at another point, a screen graphic and David Johnson referring to Blotzer as 'Blauser". Do our newscaster not even know the candidates names?; 12:43 AM

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The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

A note to the County Board of Elections

2 comments:

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