Tallying Votes

Okay, I lied, we will see more political posts this month.

Specifically, it's interesting to note that the midterm election results aren't final yet. To a certain extent, this always happens; there are always some races that are decided by rather thin margins or races where late-arriving absentee or provisional ballots might make a difference. Of course, since Florida is the site for this particular dispute, and because the races in question are some of the statewide races, this instance is drawing a bit more attention than usual. Florida's close elections and history with election recounts almost certainly aren't helping; problems that might go unnoticed in an election that's not close or in a district with no history of problems aren't going to escape notice there.

These debates do tend to irritate me a bit more than most, because they highlight the ways in which most sides here don't care about anything except victory. You'd think we would all easily agree on the notions that we want every legitimate vote to be counted, and that we want to check in detail for any errors in the process that might be preventing the result from reflecting the will of the people. For that matter, there's also the point that some elections will simply be close, and while additional checks are wise in that scenario, we can't allow them to leave the result in doubt for months or more. Balancing those two can be tricky, but shouldn't be impossible.

In practice, though, whoever is ahead when the recounts start almost inevitably seems to complain that there should be no need for the extra trouble, regardless of how close the results are, what the laws say about mandatory recounts, or what the possible sources of error in the initial count were. Whoever is behind when they end almost inevitably seems to complain that there's an obvious need to triple-check (or quadruple-check, or more) in order to remove every possible error, regardless of how long that will take or how wide the final margin ends up being. I'm sure most of the people involved in these disputes legitimately think that delaying the results of an election or not checking as much as necessary for errors are both problems we shouldn't tolerate. However, how they balance those two concerns always seems to benefit their side, regardless of the facts of the situation.

And if a recount or late-arriving votes actually ends up changing the winner, well, then we all get to deal with conspiracy theory bullshit about those votes being manufactured out of thin air, regardless of the evidence for or against that claim. I suppose I shouldn't be too pessimistic (there aren't claims like that being made in Arizona, for example, despite the post Election Day swing back towards Sinema), but the sort of claims that are coming out of some people about Florida don't exactly build faith in humanity here.

In the end, I don't think it will matter all that much; the recounts are unlikely to change the election result. I'm looking forward to not having to worry about this particular debate any more, but I also think there's a lesson here about tribalism that we should try not to lose sight of.