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> No voting system can accurately register the vote of an individual What do you mean by this? Do voting machines have an error rate? I would assume the county

> No voting system can accurately register the vote of an individual What do you mean by this? Do voting machines have an error rate? I would assume the county would be notified and these ballots counted by hand during a recount (which is what happened in 2000). I think 2000 was contentious because the Florida AG stopped the recount as Gore's numbers were steadily improving and threatening to overtake Bush's.

chatmasta 8y ago
I think GP was referring to the “hanging chads” generated by the voting machines in 2000. The machines punched physical holes in paper ballots, but for some “hanging chads” it was unclear which hole was meant to be punched. So I suppose that qualifies as failing to “accurately register the vote of an individual.” Although I am skeptical of the assertion that no voting machine can do so.
jcranmer 8y ago
There are several ways that this can happen. For example, instructions can be misleading. Consider boilerplate instructions such as "vote on every page" combined with a race whose possible candidates extends to multiple pages. How many people are going to be confused by those instructions? Another possibility is that labels and voting regions might not line up properly. The infamous butterfly ballots of 2000 had the property that, if you viewed from the appropriate oblique angle, the arrow next to Al Gore's name very neatly lines up to the hole next to Pat Buchanan. Unsurprisingly, in Palm Beach, there was an unexpectedly high vote count for Buchanan in a region which most observers would think highly unlikely to vote for him. What happened during the 2000 recount was that Gore asked for a recount of specific counties that he felt would improve his tally; the Bush campaign countered that all the counties should be recounted, since recounts in other places might improve his tally. The Bush campaign also argued that the varying standards of what constituted a vote (did you need to have at least two corners of the chad hanging, or did you merely need a dimple, to constitute a vote?) also was too lenient a standard for the recount. The general consensus of most observers, after the election furor died down, is that Al Gore would have won the state under a 100% accurate vote counting mechanism. A full recount likely would have been to Gore's favor, but the recounts that Gore asked for do not appear to have been sufficient to get that result. When the results of the election change depending on the exact measure you use to determine the intended vote, it is fair to say that, in a statistical sense, the election is a tie. I would argue that election laws should treat such cases as a tie, even if the numbers aren't actually identical.
- everdev 8y ago
  I really like the idea of a tie within a margin of error. I didn't know that Gore asked for recounts in specific counties while observers thought a state wide recount would have helped him as well. What a blunder...

chatmasta 8y ago

I think GP was referring to the “hanging chads” generated by the voting machines in 2000. The machines punched physical holes in paper ballots, but for some “hanging chads” it was unclear which hole was meant to be punched. So I suppose that qualifies as failing to “accurately register the vote of an individual.” Although I am skeptical of the assertion that no voting machine can do so.

jcranmer 8y ago

There are several ways that this can happen. For example, instructions can be misleading. Consider boilerplate instructions such as "vote on every page" combined with a race whose possible candidates extends to multiple pages. How many people are going to be confused by those instructions? Another possibility is that labels and voting regions might not line up properly. The infamous butterfly ballots of 2000 had the property that, if you viewed from the appropriate oblique angle, the arrow next to Al Gore's name very neatly lines up to the hole next to Pat Buchanan. Unsurprisingly, in Palm Beach, there was an unexpectedly high vote count for Buchanan in a region which most observers would think highly unlikely to vote for him. What happened during the 2000 recount was that Gore asked for a recount of specific counties that he felt would improve his tally; the Bush campaign countered that all the counties should be recounted, since recounts in other places might improve his tally. The Bush campaign also argued that the varying standards of what constituted a vote (did you need to have at least two corners of the chad hanging, or did you merely need a dimple, to constitute a vote?) also was too lenient a standard for the recount. The general consensus of most observers, after the election furor died down, is that Al Gore would have won the state under a 100% accurate vote counting mechanism. A full recount likely would have been to Gore's favor, but the recounts that Gore asked for do not appear to have been sufficient to get that result. When the results of the election change depending on the exact measure you use to determine the intended vote, it is fair to say that, in a statistical sense, the election is a tie. I would argue that election laws should treat such cases as a tie, even if the numbers aren't actually identical.

everdev 8y ago
I really like the idea of a tie within a margin of error. I didn't know that Gore asked for recounts in specific counties while observers thought a state wide recount would have helped him as well. What a blunder...