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What if it just took 3 days to count the votes? People looking over each ballot and calling out the results, seconding them, and having someone keep a tally on
by krrrh 9y ago
What if it just took 3 days to count the votes? People looking over each ballot and calling out the results, seconding them, and having someone keep a tally on a big chalkboard. They could even close the markets during the counting process to prevent the rampant speculation from causing wide swings. Does it need to be that efficient? If America can wait 2 months to swear in the new president, surely it can wait 3 days for the results to be counted. It's not like the world stopped spinning in 2000 when it took several weeks to finish the Florida count.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoFlorida is a pretty bad example because the Supreme Court ruling was that (1) Bush had to be declared the winner because if the original declared winner was overturned people would lose their faith in the voting system, and (2) resolving the case was taking too long so Florida had to stop trying.
- krrrh 9y agoAll true, but the fact that “hanging chad” became part of the national lexicon for a while really speaks to a poorly design ballot.
- specialist 9y agoThere are a lot of examples of incompetence. eg the butterfly ballots where the candidates and the circles don't line up. With the "hanging chads", the administrators hadn't cleaned the machines for years (after each election, turn over the machines and shake out the chads), so the holes filled up with chads, preventing new votes. Otherwise, the punch ballots weren't the worst option. Sorry to geek out about this stuff. It was my thing for a while.