Recounting Virginia

Recount Starts, but Without Va. Ballots

Interesting story going on in Virginia, with the race for Attorney General being decided by a scant 323 votes out of 1.94 million cast, with the Republican candidate on the winning end of the bargain. The vote was certified, but a recount is ongoing.

Well, sorta. By "recount" I mean they're really not counting anything at all. Just comparing the computer tabbed numbers with the handwritten totals by precinct. Naturally, Virginia Dems would much prefer a full recount. And considering that many of the ballots cast were done so with the technologically preferred optical scan system, you'd think that'd be easy to do.

But check this rejoinder from the other side:

J. Randall Minchew, chairman of the Loudoun County Republican Committee, argued that running the ballot tapes through the optical scanners would only increase the risk of human error.

Doesn't that simple admission pretty much negate the perfectability of the first vote count? And why is it that the current Republican fad is to make it more difficult to vote out of concern for fraud when there's no expressed concern over the infallability of the current system?

In the end, however, this story does seem to be a solid data point indicating that there simply is no perfect system. Any and every voting option comes with it's imperfections. When it comes down to any close election, however, there should be an emphasis on transparency and as much accuracy as possible. We didn't get that in Bush v Gore. Yet the trend seems to indicate that more and more higher profile races will be decided by such razor thin margins. Part of that striving to find a more workable system that makes the recount system better is going to take some trial and error. But right now, it just seems that there's a lot of error going around.

Witness the Washington election for Governor. Witness Texas' own Heflin v Vo (which oddly enough has a leg up in terms of transparency). These aren't new, but the change in technology for voting was designed to remove at least a few more shades of doubt over the outcome of close elections. Shouldn't it be time for recount processes to do the same?