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Counting Glitches In Washington Governor Race
Fjornir writes "With 19 votes currently seperating the challenger from the incumbent in Washington state's race for governor, local news sites sites are reporting more glitches in the process for counting votes. This one, which has been described alternately as 'computer problems' and 'human error' as I've watched the story unfold, caused 6,200 ballots to be counted twice. This raises the question -- how many 'isolated incidents' are there going to be before we admit we have a 'real problem' on our hands?" Votes must be certified today, and a difference of less than 2,000 means an automatic statewide recount. If the difference is less than 150, that recount will be by hand (which is hard for the voting machines that have no paper trail). Update: 11/18 05:46 GMT by P : One candidate finished with a lead of 261, so the statewide recount will not be by hand, and should be completed before Thanksgiving.
No.
1. We are concerned with the will of the people, not the candidates themselves.
2. There is no such thing as "margin of uncountable votes." In the end, even if there is a difference of 1 vote, that person wins. Margins of error only apply to polls, not actual elections. It's true that there is error involved, but the laws do not -- thankfully -- attempt to take that into account in the final tally.
3. There is no incumbent in this race.
I'm not sure I fully understand your comment. If your "we" refers to the collective Slashdot crowd, then yes, I'd say for the most part we've admitted there's a problem.
However, I do not think the United States at large has admitted there is a problem. Information like this isn't common place on local or national news programs, or it is buried deep in the newspaper. Sure, the information is out there, but most people don't go searching for this and most common people do not read slashdot, etc.
Perhaps if some secretary of state responsible for these areas where we've seen some recognition of the problem stood up and made a stand and said that he/she fucked up, the electronic voting machines have tainted the election, and made some major public dispute of the validity of such machines and of our whole recent election. Perhaps then common folk would come to realize what the majority of the slashdot crowd/blackboxvoting.org/many other damn people/etc have realized. But that won't happen.
The post says there's an incumbent in the race, but there isn't. The current governor, Gary Locke (D), chose not to run again, so both Gregoire (D) and Rossi (R) are challengers.
The race is between Chris Gregoire (D) and Dino Rossi (R), both vying to replace the outgoing Gary Locke.
This is the reason the blanket primary was overturned in the first place, and it is the reason it will be overturned now. The only reason there was not more of a fight against it during the election is because the parties knew it would pass, and the only way to defeat it would be going back to court.
I-872 is even worse than the previous blanket primary system, because not only is it unconstitutional in its blanket primary, it -- as you note -- destroys third parties and even in some cases will take away ANY party choice in the general election, denying the right of the people to petition to get a candidate on the general election ballot.
Also, you're wrong if you are implying both governor candidates would be listed on the general election ballot. That would never happen. That would rarely, if ever, happen for any statewide or national office. (Not sure if you meant this or not.) It would, however, happen for local candidates, but this would be the case in Eastern Washington too, but for the Republicans.
And you must have missed the story yesterday where a Democrat was elected because of a glitch in Indiana.
Read it again.
The 'glitch' referenced by yesterday's story gave straight Democratic Party votes to the Libertarian Party, thereby reducing the number of votes cast for the Democratic candidate and giving the victory to the Republican. The 'glitch' helped the Republicans (if it had not been caught).
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I am a Washington State voter, and my whole county (Snohomish) uses the same type of voting machine. Other counties are different. But here you can watch the little ticker-tape coming out of the back of each machine. I don't know how the votes are encoded, but there is definitely a paper audit trail.
I'm actually concerned about the accuracy of the recount, since it is likely to be hand-counted (required by law when the difference is below some threshold -- I don't know the specifics.) Despite any bugs in the electronic systems that may or may not affect the count, hand-counting pretty much guarantees a certain margin of error.
Anyone ever tried to accurately count a stack of ten thousand pieces of paper, dividing them into two separate piles in the process? I screw up occassionally just separating puzzle pieces into separate groups of edge and center pieces -- for small (100 piece) jigsaw puzzles!
I pray this nonsense is overturned by some "activist" judge.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Yeah, a guy who ran (and lost in the primary) for the Republican nomination Congress in my district told me a couple days ago that he could not in good conscience support overturning I-872, because it is the will of the people, and that would be judicial activism.
I say, bullocks.
Judges are there to strike down unconstitutional laws. That's part of their job. I am as against judicial activism as anyone, but this is not activism, it's the job description.
The problem with paper trails is that you have to have people to handle the paper.
Don't get me wrong, I WANT a paper trail, but I've been intimately involved enough in the mechanics of the voting system that I know a LOT of things have to change.
Ever notice who your election judges are? Old retired people, unemployed people, high school drop-outs, etc. Why? Because we expect them to be at the polls at 5:30 am to set up and open at 6, then stay until 8pm after closing at 7 and doing all the things that need to be done. And we pay them rather well for that - $85 for the whole day!
If we value our voting system, we need to treat it like National Guard and Reserve duty: your employer must let you off to do it, (not just vote, working the polls, too) and then we should pay people $200 a day to do it. Then we would get qualified people who could not only properly handle the system, but actually (and accurately!) count the paper ballots 1 polling place at a time.
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