Election Problems

Wherever I live, there are election problems... I don't think it is due to me! ;) Two years ago I voted in Washington and then took a vacation to New Zealand. When I returned three weeks I found out the state of Washington still hadn't figured out who was elected governor.

Now in live in Florida, famous for voting problems in the 2000 election, and there is a voting problem involving four counties and "undervoting", which is the term for a ballot with no choice made.

It's just funny, in a really sad way I suppose. For a country that often touts the right to vote as being so important, we have low turnout, voter apathy, and apparently don't run the process well on top of that.

These problems were with electronic voting machines, which have notorious problems. I've read many comparisons to Oregon's vote by mail system which neatly wraps up voting and absentee balloting, with higher accuracy and less cost than electronic systems. Maybe low-tech is the answer: reliable, cheap, and counting by hand is good enough every two years.

In earlier years Chicago was the butt of jokes due to election fraud and dead people voting. I have this feeling Florida will be the butt of future voting jokes involving miscounts. ;)