Boolean Logic, missing brackets and the 2023 Nigeria Presidential Election

Boolean Logic, missing brackets and the 2023 Nigeria Presidential Election(markessien.com)

43 points by markessien 3 years ago | 14 comments

seunosewa 3 years ago |

We know that the intention of the people who drafted the law was not to treat the Federal Capital Territory as a special state whose votes count more. There are cases in the past where judges determined that the FCT is to be treated as a 37th state.

The Obidient camp may have the better candidate, but this part of their case is just grasping at straws.

The only thing that should matter in the end is the determination of whether enough rigging occured to change the outcome of the election.

c4obi 3 years ago | |

Which cases are you referring to (provide links) and are they related to the presidential election?

churchill 3 years ago |

Once again, we're finding out the importance of commas in logical statements, especially when they're misplaced.

There's a world of difference between, "let's eat, Timmy," and "let's eat Timmy."

The first is perfect at the dining table while the second is inevitable when you're stranded on a raft out at sea [0].

[0]: https://cutt.ly/v4Yz0hk

denton-scratch 3 years ago | |

There's a reason that punctuation marks in legal documents are generally supposed to be ignored. Drafters should write in language that is unambiguous even if all punctuation marks are deleted. My will, for example, contains no punctuation other than full-stops.

netsharc 3 years ago | |

There was a legal case:

https://www.onelegal.com/blog/dont-write-wrong-10-million-la...

benj111 3 years ago | |

A farmer friend named their cockerel after my grandad Austin.

Everybody took great delight when Austin ended up on the dinner table.

BenJong-Il 3 years ago | |

Is there a way a comma would have helped in the clause of the constitution?

dang 3 years ago |

Related (I assume?):

The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35272227 - March 2023 (137 comments)

markessien 3 years ago | |

Yes, related.

i_see_things 3 years ago | |

off-topic: I used to love HN. Now HN is dead to me.

dang 3 years ago | | |

I'm sorry to hear that. What went wrong?

nomercy400 3 years ago |

Doesn't the constitution mention anything about equality? Is a vote from a person in the FCT more valuable than a vote from somewhere else? Or should each vote be equally valuable?

What is the spirit of the constitution? Why are there general elections?

wodenokoto 3 years ago | |

I imagine the US constitution also says something along the lines of all votes are equal, yet presidents have won, while losing the popular vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...

the_third_wave 3 years ago | | |

The US constitution says something about the College of Electors and that each state and the District of Columbia appoints electors pursuant to the methods described by its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation (representatives and senators). Of the current 538 electors, an absolute majority of 270 or more electoral votes is required to elect the president and vice president. It explicitly does not give each presidential vote the same weight so as to avoid the federation being ruled by the most populous states. This is only true for the vote for the president (and vice-president), in other matters the Electoral College does not get involved.