Voting can be a mess if you don't make a major effort to keep things straight, and even the best states and countries aren't perfect.
Normally the election isn't so close that it matters. But with all the really close elections we have been having lately the imperfections in voting have gotten a lot more attention. Not just the margin of error, but also voter fraud, and votes that are unclear. The laws in many states suggest or require that an attempt be made to figure out the intention of a voter on unclear ballots but how and when this should be done isn't always clear so you get each side arguing for the method that they think will work to their partisan advantage. Do you count "dimpled chads", "hanging chads", double punched votes (probably not), ect. The mess in FL with such things caused a big push for electronic voting machines, but they are also imperfect in their own way.
Even the challanges and recounts have a margin of error, may fail to detect fraud, and can be subjective (in the "hanging, dimpled ect chad case, and probably in certain other scenarios), so more and more recounts doesn't make things perfect either.
Tim |
