Clueless in Seattle
The Seattle Times reports on the mammoth effort that will go into the hand recount of its 2.8 million ballots in the aftermath of Republican Dino Rossi's 42 vote victory over Democrat Christine Gregoire. The effort is entirely wasted. Any mild understanding of (a) large numbers and (b) human fallibility tells me that, even if you ignore (c) the potential for corruption (i.e., bribing some of the counters) or (d) the potential for bias (i.e., counters who unconsciously and therefore innocently err on the side of the candidate of their choice), there is no way that the hand count will give a result that is any more reliable than what they already have in Washington. Consider: the 42 vote margin represents .0000015 of the total number of votes cast. Put differently, if 1 vote out of every 66,666 changes to Gregoire, the result will change. Put still differently, that means that the hand recount has to be better than 99.9985% accurate, or else the error rate will be greater than the margin of victory.
Listen: think about every job you've ever had, and every co-worker you've every had, and every employee you've ever had. Now think about every repetitive, mind-numbing task you've every had to do. Is there any task remotely similar to counting the same ballots over and over and over and over again that humans have ever done that has a 99.9985% accuracy rate?
It's like the Barry Bonds records and the argument that his late-career resurgency could have happened without steroids. It takes just stopping and thinking like an adult for a minute to realize.... IT CAN'T HAPPEN.
This is why grownup politicians for much of our history accepted the "necessary fiction" that the results on election day were the real and (more importantly) the only results that mattered.
Listen: think about every job you've ever had, and every co-worker you've every had, and every employee you've ever had. Now think about every repetitive, mind-numbing task you've every had to do. Is there any task remotely similar to counting the same ballots over and over and over and over again that humans have ever done that has a 99.9985% accuracy rate?
It's like the Barry Bonds records and the argument that his late-career resurgency could have happened without steroids. It takes just stopping and thinking like an adult for a minute to realize.... IT CAN'T HAPPEN.
This is why grownup politicians for much of our history accepted the "necessary fiction" that the results on election day were the real and (more importantly) the only results that mattered.
posted by PDB at 6:50 AM
1 Comments:
Yes, comayo, the recount in 2000 should not have taken place. Al Gore should have conceded. That would have been the honorable thing to do. The reason should be obvious... politics ain't beanbag. Al Qaeda plays for keeps, and we have to do likewise. The transitions between administrations must be smooth and as seamless as possible. The Cole was hit in October 2000... how much did the delay caused by the recount hurt Bush's ability to get a foreign policy team up and running? How much did the acrimony created by the recount hurt relations between Clinton holdovers like Richard Clarke and the new administration? We'll never know. But the win at all costs mentality of the Gore Democrats in 2000 did, in fact, have costs.
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