Electile Dysfunction

I am somewhat fascinated — it's about an eight on a scale of ten — with the Senate recount in Minnesota. I'd like to see Al Franken win but that's of less interest to me than the process being made public here. I think we are very sloppy in this country about how we count votes. You wouldn't go near a bank that counted your money as haphazardly as we count votes…and no one ever seems to care except when caring might enable them to win an election they would otherwise lose.

I was very disappointed in 2000, not just by the presidential election results but even more by the following: That after all the anomalies and lost ballots and ballots that were supposed to be recounted and never were even after other recounts were yielding massive changes in the totals, no Bush backers were the least bit bothered. It was like, "Our guy won so shut up, get over it." My very Conservative friend Roger even believes the Bush side cheated and that was a good thing because the future of mankind depended on Al Gore being defeated, and anything that made that happen was morally justifiable. At least, I think Roger still believes this. He hasn't mentioned lately what a wonderful president he thinks Bush has been…

You'd think even folks who thought Bush really did get more votes would regret that it wasn't a cleaner count; that it was in any way arguable that their guy had triumphed, fair and square. But if anyone said, "Let's fix the process so this doesn't happen again," I sure didn't hear about it. It seems like whatever improvements were made were made only because local election officials around the country were worried they'd get in personal trouble if they were suddenly in the midst of a messy recount some day.

The Secretary of State in Minnesota, Mark Ritchie, seems to be doing a good, honest job of cleaning up the mess. Ballots are being recounted via such an open and visible process that there may even be a few people who will have backed the losing candidate and will actually believe he lost fairly. But I'll bet you that Mr. Ritchie is learning what could have been done to avoid many of the current snags…and maybe others who run elections will learn from this, as well.

Meanwhile, here's something I don't get. There are a lot of things I don't get but here's one that sticks out at the moment. Ballots are being disqualified in some cases because the voter made an identifying mark on them. Here's the relevant law from article 204C.22 of the Minnesota statutes…

Subd. 13. Identifying ballot. If a ballot is marked by distinguishing characteristics in a manner making it evident that the voter intended to identify the ballot, the entire ballot is defective.

Okay, why is that a rule? And I believe it's a rule in most, if not all states. If I put an identifying mark on my ballot, it doesn't count.

Why is it fatal that my ballot is identifiable? And identifiable to whom? If I do a little scribble on the bottom or draw a picture of Snagglepuss, that's not going to tell anyone else that Mark Evanier cast that ballot. In order to "identify" something, you need to be able to link a name to it…and if I don't sign my name or put down my Social Security number or something, that's not going to make my ballot "identifiable" to anyone else. But they'd still toss it out.

So I think, "Maybe they mean it can't be identifiable to me." I can't put anything on my ballot that would make me able to recognize it as mine…but what would be the harm in that? First of all, I'm never going to see my ballot again after I cast it but even if I did, I couldn't prove the little doodle in the margin made it my ballot and I couldn't change my vote, even if I could tell it was mine.

Moreover, the law allows for write-in candidates. See, right here in the same statutes, it says…

Subd. 4. Name written in proper place. If a voter has written the name of an individual in the proper place on a general or special election ballot a vote shall be counted for that individual whether or not the voter makes a mark (X) in the square opposite the blank.

So if I write in "Alan Keyes" or "Snagglepuss" for some office — and Snagglepuss would get more votes — my ballot is not void, even though I could easily identify it because of the name and also my ability to recognize my own handwriting. This morning, the Minnesota Election Board tossed out a ballot with a write-in for "The Lizard People" because, apparently, that was a plural. The voter had voted for more than one person in an office and it was therefore an "overvote." On the other hand, there was a voter who wrote in "Flying Spaghetti Monster" for some office. That didn't void the ballot and since that voter voted for Al Franken for the Senate seat, Franken picked up a vote. If the individual who voted for "The Lizard People" had voted for "One Lizard Person," that would have been okay. By the way, at the moment, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is tied with Alan Keyes. Really.

Could someone explain the reason we reject ballots that have identifying marks, even though you can make them identifiable without them being rejected? I assume it has something to do with some impossible scenario where the people counting the ballots have bribed or threatened certain voters to vote a certain way and we don't want them to be able to check and see if the voters complied…but not only does that never happen, the "write-in" provision provides a simple way to circumvent the rule. So why does a stray mark mean my ballot won't get counted?

Oh…as you can probably guess, I'm back.