Re: "you prefer the equal treatment approach to fairness. What you've expressing would also be fair, but that doesn't mean that what RCMac expressed wasn't. It's just not as beneficial to you and your candidate. That's different from unfair."
I don't believe this is a matter of benefit to "my" candidate. I don't want County Grubbing to become a part of our election process, and I don't believe it was ever intended to be in the law. Hence, I believe it is RCmac who says what he says to back his candidate, and in so doing also backs a position(you might call fair) which intentionally and unnecessarily would allow unfairness to crop up in accomodating these ballots. This is clearly not not the intent of our election laws.
Of course RCmac can make the case that rules are laid out where-in candidates have the opportunity to employ the chad engendered vote recovery methods in counties of their choice, so long as various county canvassing boards permit it when asked. But I maintain this was never intended as per the law. Were it intended by the law, it would clearly lead to the sort of unfairness I've explained and I think you've recognized. Common sense and a complete lack of prior cases like this, indicate that the playing field RCmac settles on was never intended. And there is much more to this, as I hope we will see.
Do you know that in a county wide race, if a hand-count is ordered because one precinct had machine failure, ALL precincts must be hand-counted? This is, of course, because they recognized the fairness issue that is at the bottom of my argument.
The statewide provisions denying voter error(chads remaining attached, etc.) and demanding only machine error and fraud as reasons for hand-counting, served to limit such activities as we see here from taking place. The legislature was well aware of the high error rates when using these machines, and they thus intended to demand of counties choosing these machines to accept those error rates. Were these rules followed, no candidate would be allowed a hand-count in his own chosen territories in a statewide race, simply because of the existence of chads left to count there. This would serve to prevent one candidate from seeking an unfair advantage, and thus maintain a level playing field while preventing the very activity we see going on now.
What these counties have done is to alter the intent of the law, and I again stick my neck out and predict that the original intent of this election process will be upheld(though I see what the Supreme court has done this evening, I think???).
Dan B |
