Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Democracy and Lawyers
In Canada we vote by marking a "X" on the ballot and putting it in a box. The person with the most "X's" wins.
If the vote is close, we count the ballots again and declare a winner.
It doesn't work that way in America as we learned in 2000. It took several truckloads of lawyers and many judges to count the ballots in Florida. Ultimately it was the US Supreme Court who decided that George Bush would be President.
Now they're doing it again, only this time it's a Senate race in Minnesota [Funny Business in Minnesota]. The lawyers and the judges will decide who actually won. Meanwhile, politicians in Washington will fight over which candidate they will put into the Senate while the court cases are being decided. Apparently the Senate doesn't have to accept the recount as long as the loser is unhappy.
This must be why they call America "the greatest democracy on Earth." It's because America has so many lawyers.
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You can bring your lawyers in Canada, if you choose: Contested Elections
All concerns respecting the regularity of an election – other than for matters that are handled through judicial recounts – are addressed through the contested election process. After a person is declared elected, any elector who was eligible to vote in a district or any candidate in that district may bring an application for a contested election before a judge.
In a contested election proceeding, a judge is required to determine whether the person who won the election was eligible to be a candidate or whether there were any other irregularities, fraud, or corrupt or illegal practices that affected the result of the election. The Chief Electoral Officer, along with the Attorney General, the relevant returning officer, the candidates in the election and the person bringing the application are all parties to a contested election proceeding. This is a court proceeding at the end of which the judge either dismisses the application or invalidates the result of the election.
Here in Brasil a decade or so ago they introduced standardized electronic voting machines. They aren't as complicated as the touchscreen ones in the US: just type the candidate's number and press the "confirm" button. Usually we get the results before the next day.
There is technically a paper printout from each machine in the end of the day, but I don't remember any time when they actually had to make a large recount.
I used a touchscreen voting machine here in the US in the last election. It wasn't complicated at all. Of course, I'm not a complete idiot (some parts are missing).
It really isn't that simple.
1. Votes are machine counted the methods of counting vary from location to location; there is no uniformity. Hence the count is more accurate in some districts than in others.
In the case punch cards, there is the possibility of mechanical errors in counting.
Hence, the counts are really, well, stochastic complete with margins of error.
2. There are also eligibility issues; is someone really eligible to vote in that location? Hence you have the problem of some ballots being counted and others not being counted.
So, eligibility standards (which indeed vary from state to state) plus non-uniform voting and counting methods imply large "margin of errors".
Part of the fact stems from the tradition we have in the US of each locality having power that can't be superseded by higher level authorities.
Larry says: "This must be why they call America "the greatest democracy on Earth." It's because America has so many lawyers."
Word.
Ollie says: "Hence, the counts are really, well, stochastic complete with margins of error."
Maybe ballots should be counted by the same sort of machines that banks use to count money.
They never make a mistake. I mean they won't miscount a single dollar bill, even as bank CEOs magically make billions of dollars disappear.
That is why America is also the greatest economic power on Earth.
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