Part of what was fun about the drawing of straws was that it gave me an opportunity to talk about my first book, in that earlier post. Now, I get to talk about something else about which I have actually published. (I only rant about bitcoin in my spare time). Take a look at this ballot image.
For whom did this person vote: Simonds, or Yancey? This is actually the central legal question right now. The drawing of lots has been postponed because of it. The GOP argues that this voter meant to vote for Yancey. You see, the rest of the ballot had votes for GOP candidates. The Democrats are arguing the voter meant to vote for Simonds. See that line through Simonds's filled-in bubble? That's an extra mark. That's extra effort. So, that's a vote for Simonds.
What do I think? I think this is what we call, in technical terms, an "over-vote." When a voter marks too many names for one office, that is an over-vote, as opposed to an "under-vote," which is when a voter fails to mark a name for an office (or at least, fails to make a sufficient mark for a vote to be counted). Some under-votes are intentional, and some are unintentional. Unintentional under-votes are the result of screwed up voting systems. Punchcard voting systems sucked because they led to high rates of unintentional under-voting (if you failed to punch out the chad entirely, the vote wouldn't be counted-- hanging chads!). Over-voting is almost always unintentional. The voter screws up, tries to correct it, and leaves a messed-up ballot. One of the advantages of electronic systems is that they don't permit this. With a paper ballot containing an over-vote, though, figuring out the voter's intent isn't always easy. Did the voter make that line in an attempt to say, "YES, I'M VOTING FOR SIMONDS!," or as an effort to cross out that accidentally filled-in bubble, or as a slip of the hand, or... We don't know.
And, since we have a secret ballot, we can't ask this person. I bet whoever it is has seen this ballot on the news by now and is embarrassed as hell. And maybe kind of frustrated.
Whoever this is, though, screwed up. Control of the Virginia House of Delegates may get flipped because some voter couldn't fill in bubbles properly.
Yay, Democracy!
Or, rather, yay democracy, when elections are competitive.
You see, this kind of shit doesn't matter when elections aren't competitive. The Simonds versus Yancey contest is a marginal election, being decided by the drawing of lots, or maybe not, depending on what happens in the courts, and the House of Delegates is itself so close that the chamber may be decided by a drawing of lots, or maybe not, and all of this depends on a court's interpretation of one person who couldn't fill in bubbles as instructed.
People screw up. Everyone screws up once in a while. The closer elections are, though, the more susceptible outcomes are to being flipped by this kind of stupid shit. Do you want elections being flipped by this kind of stupid shit? Do you think that the proper way to determine control of a legislative body is by having a court try to interpret that ridiculous ballot image above and then order the drawing of lots?
No?
Then you don't like competitive elections any more than I do.
Oh, and...
Right here...