Thursday, November 04, 2004

Every Vote Matters -- Post Election #2

Shouldn’t it be every vote counts? Ideally, yes, but let’s be realistic. We are asking a small group of people to accurately count over 100 Million ballots in a couple of hours of time. It’s obvious that it will not be 100% accurate. I’m sure that spread over the country that several hundred, or even several thousand votes were mis-counted. But let’s face it, those miss-counts should statistically follow the voting. I’m sure that close to 51% of the miss-counts were votes for Bush, while close to 49% were votes for Kerry. Statistically it shouldn’t affect the overall outcome of the election.

It may sound a little harsh to open admit that we shouldn’t expect to have a 100% accurate vote count, but we need to be realistic. There is a way to ensure a more accurate vote count, but it would never be allowed. My recommendation would be that we take more time to count, as I mentioned in my last post.

Taking more time to count would allow the election officials to take time, and not be rushed. It would also allow all of the provisional ballots to be investigated, before they are counted and finally it would allow all of the absentee ballots. If you remember, absentee ballots are how most of our military personal vote.

The results could be certified as soon as it is statistically impossible for anyone but the leader to win. But votes would continue to be counted until every vote was counted. Once the results were certified, the results would be released. Now obviously it would take a little longer to find out who won, but isn’t it important enough to get an accurate count. Let’s look at other countries. Afghanistan just had an election, a couple of months ago, yet they are only now declaring a winner. Is it that important to find out immediately who won? It only serves a selfish purpose to find out who won, on the day of the election.

I just realized that there would be another side benefit for not releasing results right away. It would minimize bogus claims of voter irregularities. Individuals would have to file a claim immediately. One would not be able to come back a couple of weeks later, after they found out that their guy is behind.

I think I’ve rambled enough for this post.

Up next: A mandate from the people.

1 Comments:

At 2:51 PM, Blogger Carrie L. said...

Good point...not a bad idea when you phrase it that way.

 

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