We won’t go into all the details here, but in case you have not been keeping up, there have been many small and large problems occuring across the country lately. It started with recent elections in Washington D.C., Palm Beach, and Rhode Island highlighted at CTVotersCount.org <read> <read> Now with early voting and problems with absentee voting we have several stories each day of election problems from around the country. The best place to keep up is Daily Voting News – too many stories in one day to read them all <latest> Along with some good summary articles on some of the problems at BradBlog.
Commentary:
- The Ugly: These incidents point out the ugly facts that every voter’s opportunity to vote is not effectively guaranteed, and that counting every vote, and counting every vote accurately is a myth. We must improve the system such that we can trust the final outcome of elections, even if counting every last vote is a ideal that may never be quite realized. We should have a fully protected right to vote.
- The Bad: We may elect the wrong candidates or decide questions incorrectly through fraud, error, incompetence, and lack of vigilance. Many of these problems may be small and ultimately irrelevant to the result – many may be significant.
- The Good: At least we are surfacing and highlighting these problems. Apparently many similar problems have been going on for years – but were either covered up, brushed aside, or just did not get the national attention deserved. More and more the public is becoming aware of the problems which is the first step toward solutions.
