A Stitch in Haste

More evidence, courtesy of Wired, supporting my previous argument that adjusting the Electoral College from a (mostly) winner-take-all system to the District Method is preferable to a simple popular vote:

State and county election officials from around the country are praying that this year's presidential race ends with a wider margin of victory than it did four years ago when George W. Bush beat Al Gore in Florida by only 547 votes. A close victory this year would likely result in more charges of voter fraud and calls for recounts, two things that election officials don't relish.
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"If election 2000 was under a microscope, this one's probably under an electron microscope"[said an election conference director].
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[T]he United States has nearly 200,000 polling places and 800,000 voting machines. There are also 1.4 million poll workers and 20,000 full-time election officials who administer elections.
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"We're under attack this time because it is a campaign strategy, and party strategies, to put the process itself at risk. If you call the process into question, it gives you standing then in court before you get there," he said.

As I have blogged previously: The electoral infrastructure in the United States simply cannot accommodate pure popular election of presidents. A massive modernization (and standardization) program -- whether electronic or not -- would have to precede any movement toward total abolition of the Electoral College.

I also have posts on the Colorado proposal and the never-ending Florida recount.

This does not bode well for the November elections:

Many New Orleans voters were unable to cast ballots Saturday on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage because voting machines had not been delivered to polling places, a state official said.

At least 35 precincts did not have voting machines because drivers hired to deliver the machines had apparently not shown up for work, said Scott Madere, a spokesman for Secretary of State Fox McKeithen.
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Madere said inconvenienced voters would be allowed to vote after polling places officially close at 8 p.m. if they are in line at that time.

There are two kinds of chaos that will erupt from this embarrassment. First of course is the disenfranchisement factor for this particular anti-gay initiative, with which I'm honestly not familiar -- some raw data here. (There are also some local elections being held together with the ballot initiative.)

It seems to me that unless the margin of victory or defeat exceeds the total voter registration rolls of the 35 affected precincts, then the entire amendment vote may have to be thrown out. If I show up during voting hours, then I'm either voting or suing, but I'm not waiting in line until after 8PM.

Second, this nonsense can only serve as yet more kindling for those who are already marshalling their forces to unleash litigation when election day arrives, or even before then. See also this post, and this related news story today about lost e-votes in Florida, or this story about alleged voter intimidation in Florida.

I realize of course that Louisiana had some other agenda items over the past few days, but there need to be some very public firings over this -- why couldn't the voting machines have been delivered prior to Ivan's arrival? Why can't they just rush a slew of absentee ballots to the polling places and have people vote that way?

UPDATE: The count is up to "at least 59 precincts" that did not have machines when the polls opened. Meanwhile, very preliminary results indicate the gay marriage ban will pass overwhelmingly (not surprsing, I suppose, given Louisiana's demographics). In addition, there were legal challenges in the works even before the "no voting machine" scandal (also not surprising, I suppose). Details here.

I'm in shock over this:

Thomas Esposito's campaign for the [West Virginia] Legislature seemed to be following the usual pattern. The longtime Democratic mayor issued press releases, raised money and bought newspaper ads. Signs bearing his name popped up in yards around rural Logan County.

But less than a month before the May 2004 primary election, Esposito dropped out, saying he had to withdraw because of his ailing mother-in-law.

The real reason surfaced only later: The FBI had planted Esposito among the field of candidates to help find evidence of vote-buying in southern West Virginia.

I couldn't care less how serious, or rampant, election fraud is in West Virginia or anywhere else. What right does the FBI have to play mind games with voters by planting fake candidates?

Has the FBI never heard of the Butterfly Effect? Perfectly innocent people — from voters to campaign workers to lobbyists to the other candidates themselves — all went through processes that were immeasurably and unpredictably altered by the planting of a fake candidate. Thought processes, spending decisions, appearance scheduling, speech writing. All based at least in part on the totality of the circumstances, including the actual field of opponents.

I try to avoid hyperbole and histrionics, but this is the worst case of coordinated government misconduct since Watergate. Many high-ranking heads must roll.

If West Virginia politics are hopelessly corrupt, then fine, bring in the Feds — but to supervise the elections, not to treat them like bait (or more correctly, like trolling nets that ensnare the guilty, the innocent and the wholly uninvolved).

Voters have a right to a tamper-free election the same as they have a right to a functioning voting machine or a paper ballot that doesn't leave dimpled chads. But neither the FBI nor any other agency has the right, or the need, to destroy an election in order to save it.

An egregious example of the cure being not only worse than the disease, but downright fatal.

UPDATE: Here's another, totally unrelated example of FBI misconduct.

Will chaos be declared the winner on Election Day?

In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them — 90% — will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. When that many people collide with that many high-tech devices, there are going to be problems. Some will be machine malfunctions. Some could come from sabotage by poll workers or voters themselves. But in a venture this large, trouble is most likely to come from just plain human error, a fact often overlooked in an environment as charged and conspiratorial as America is in today.

This is not new news. We have seen it coming ever since Florida 2000 and the resulting Help America Vote Act.

[A]t least 27 states have built in a backup that requires electronic voting machines to provide an attached voter-verified paper trail — a running ticker that allows voters to see on paper that their votes are recorded as cast.

"At least" 27 states? How could that be anything less than "all electronic voting machines"? Who could possibly have sat down with the task of designing an electronic voting machine and not come up with the requirement that it produce a receipt, just like an ATM? I find this situation totally dumbfounding.

George Will has a slightly different statistic:

[M]ost touch-screen machines — including those that the New York Times reports will be used in about half of the 45 districts with the most closely contested House races — produce no paper that can be consulted for verification of the results if a recount is required.

Again, who could possibly have designed these machines in other other way than by saying, "These voting machines will be a lot like ATMs, so let's start with the basic design and functionality of an ATM and proceed from there..."?

One last hasty stitch: The Help America Vote Act, which mandated modern voting technologies, also gave $3.8 billion of taxpayer funds to states to help underwrite this mess. Why exactly should local governments, and local taxpayers, not pay for their own voting machines? This is the federal version of the Politics of the the Warm Fuzzy Feeling: Federal politicians and bureaucrats did something, just in case state and local politicians and bureaucrats didn't. Because federal politicians and bureaucrats are just so much better and wiser than state and local local politicians and bureaucrats, right?

The results speak for tabulate themselves — just without a paper trail.

More laughs thoughts from Jason Fox.