I’m surprised at myself for starting an election thread, but here goes:
It is clear from the wrangling in Florida and here in GD that there are errors built into the election process. It makes no real difference what these errors are, unless some way is found to eliminate them. I submit that they still exist, and I think people will agree with me (for differing reasons).
Since the margin for error is clearly higher than the number of votes by which Bush has led in each count so far, and it still will be after the current count, perhaps Florida should proclaim the result undetermined. They cannot find, based on the votes, which candidate is most preferred by Florida voters.
My own opinion, coming from a scientific turn of mind, is that any election that turns on less than a thousand votes out of six million cannot be called. The system of gathering and counting votes just isn’t accurate enough to call that a clear result.
At that point, another round of chaos will result, unfortunately. Should the Florida legislature then declare the states electors? Should Florida not send electors? If they don’t, does the required number of electoral votes for a win become 257 (which would leave the election in the hands of New Mexico and Oregon)? Or should the election go to the U.S. House of Representatives?
I’m really interested in the board’s opinions on this.
Sorry, Saltire. I apologize if this sounds antagonistic, but what utter nonsense. Elections are often resolved by as small a difference as one vote. There are even instances where there are ties, and the result is determined by lot. Moreover, while it IS true that the actual intent of the electorate may never be precisely known, it IS clear that the actual VOTE of the electorate can be determined precisely, no matter how many vote. It simply is a matter of having pre-set standards and the proper mechanism for applying those standards to the actual ballots.
In every contest, there is some method for determining winners and losers. How much more precise is it to determine that the winner of a pro football game is the team who scored a touchdown on the last play of the game when the question of whether the ball went into the end zone or not is in dispute and there is no conclusive evidence? True, games are not politics (though one might wonder if politicians think politics is some sort of grandiose game based on current behaviour). Even in the scientific world, some criteria is used for determining an accepted result if there is a margin of error. Just declaring Florida’s vote a tie because we can’t be ‘sure’ who won based on the differing opinions about what should be counted as what, or because we don’t intend to throw sufficient resources at the problem, won’t work.
Just one quibble: In the scientific world, if the effect being studied is smaller than the potential for error, there is no way to determine an accepted result. The result is undetermined, and other experimental methods must be sought (either to show a larger effect or a smaller error).
I admit that this quibble may have little relevance in an election. Too bad people in general can’t treat more things scientifically. It is especially clear right now, since many people around me seem not to care about the methods used, they just want an answer. Human beings are generally uncomfortable with indeterminate results.
Part of the problem is pure pragmatism. If you say ‘if the election is within x number of votes then it won’t be valid’, they you haven’t really solved the problem. If the limit is 1000 votes, and candidate A is behind by 1056 votes, then he will still do what ever it takes to manipulate and legislate votes so that he gets ends up with 57 more so that he doesn’t lose. The other part is idealism, why should someone’s vote not get counted in the big picture just because it was closely contested.
My apologies, DS, but this is just wrong. The whole problem in Florida is that the actual VOTE cannot be determined exactly. Oh yes, they will eventually certify a number, but I guarantee you that they’ll never get a number that couldn’t be interpreted as ± several hundred either way. This is due mostly to questions of voter intent when interpreting punched ballots, but also because local canvassing boards are allowed considerable liberty in accepting or denying absentee ballots. You are assuming that ballots can be interpreted as strictly binary with no ambiguity. There are probably also isolated cases of mechanical or human error that resulted in votes not being counted.
Even if the states had NOT performed a manual recount and relied solely on mechanical vote tallying, the results between the original and recount votes were significantly different. Which was the correct result? If you keep running ballots through the machine until the result stabilizes, you still will never know what the actual VOTE was, because there may have been mechanical damage to some ballots during the operation.
Yes, it is possible to develop a voting system such that the vote can be determined precisely and with zero ambiguity. Florida does not have such a system.
The fact that elections are occasionally won by a single vote does not mean that the votes were tallied correctly or that there was no controversy.
If the popular vote is unable to determine a clear winner, then I think there is nothing at all wrong with the legislature appointing the slate of electors. A Republican legislature will obviously appoint a Republican slate; but why shouldn’t they? They themselves were elected to represent the people; let them represent.
(For the record, I’m a Democrat and I see nothing wrong with this process.)
All Florida really has to do is choose electors to the real election – the Electoral College election. If the electors can’t be chosen via the a popular vote, it’s not really a problem under the current system, because the EC election matters a whole lot more than the popular vote does. (For the record, I think the current system sucks and I support the abolishment of the EC.)
This process has convinced me that the Maine-Nebraska system of assigning electors should be nationwide. I could go either way on whether or not the winner of each state should get the 2 “bonus” votes, or if the President should simply be the winner of the most congressional districts. If that were the case, Gore would have a tight but solid EC win even without Florida. But that’s another thread.
In Florida’s case, the will of the people would seem to be that one candidate should get 13 electors and the other 12. It may not be possible to determine which is which, but I don’t see a problem with saying Bush should have the 13 (of course, Gore only needs 3 as it is, compared to Bush needing 24).
But I cannot see my my clear to maralinn’s argument that the people elected the legislators, so let the legislators pick the President. I seriously doubt ANYONE picked their state legislator in the last election on the basis of whom they might pick in such a bizarre situation - state tax rates and education, maybe, but not Presidential electors. I can guarantee that anyone voting for President in Florida wants their vote respected, and the approach I just described seems like the only way to avoid disenfranchising half the state.
Problem with that apportionment of the electoral votes idea is that a very large margin in one district is completely offset by a much, much smaller margins in another. So in those smaller-margin districts, there would still be the same disputes and the same problems that we curretnly have in Florida. It could be the case that in New York State for example, You can win the 13 electoral votes that comprise NYC by a total margin of 600,000 votes, but still lose the 20 other electoral votes upstate and on Long Island by a total margin of about 100,000. Now is that right?
That’s true of the Electoral College as it stands, too. Proportioning the count by giving 1 vote per district has the same strengths that the EC provides, of making sure all areas have a voice. The difference would be that it would still provide a clear winner, but would more closely match the popular vote. It would be much harder to get a situation like we have now, with a candidate trailing in both the popular and electoral count as well as the district count nationally possibly being able to win on the basis of a few hundred ambiguous ballots in a big state.
I agree with Saltire 100%. Statistically, it is a tie. You can do nothing with a tie until you count more precisely.
So, either we call it a tie, or we endeavour to count more precisely. Are hand counts more precise? In order to determine this, one should take 10,000 ballots and count them twice by hand, preferably by two blinded groups, and determine an error rate. We should not take it as face value that they are more precise than machine counts, although the reported error rate I’ve read for machines varies from 0.1%-5%. Next, if hand counts are more accurate, the whole state must be counted by hand. Preferably twice, by different individuals.
I know, this never in a million years will happen. But in order to get a fair and correct election result, this is what needs to be done. We know the total is within the error margin for machines, so we cannot statistically declare a winner. So, the question boils down to – can you determine the will of the electorate beyond stating that Florida is a tie?
I’d say do what they do in other countries, and have the elected officials in the legislative branch choose their leader, based on votes of confidence.
This two-year process every four years, and then keep the jerk no matter what is just absurd.