Historical Ignorance

After taking in a tasty meal at one of the area’s best restaurants, I took the longer way home to just chill out with a nice relaxing drive around the metro area.  Of course, since iPod was not in the car, I was left to the devices of the metro’s radio stations, each of them fantastically crappy in their own right.  So, I made my way towards the AM part of the dial, which I thought might, at least, have some sort of play by play of the Arizona-Carolina game.  Knowing this town as I do, I should have known better that the game would not be broadcast on the radio, so I ended up on one of the local all-talk stations.  This particular station, I guess in some sort of cost savings maneuver, was rebroadcasting a nationally syndicated radio show.  The topic of the show was the debacle of the recount process in the Minnesota Senatorial race.

The Minnesota race has been in recount over since the November 2008 election, because the race between Incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken was within a couple of hundred votes.  The past 8 weeks has had the similar overtones of the 2000 Presidential Election between Bush and Gore.  Since the count of the original ballots was completed, both candidates have been battling over absentee ballots, spoiled ballots, missing ballots, extra ballots, and disputed ballots.  I guess the one glimmer of hope is that I don’t remember hearing the term chad throughout this process.

What is most troubling is that as a country, we are having to go through this process again.  Have we not learned anything since the 2000 election that we are back to square one, here eight years later?  How have we not yet figured out a balloting system where the voter’s intent can not be clearly determined?  How have there not been set standards to the vote counting process?  I am of the belief that if you can not follow the simple instructions of marking a ballot box with an X or color in the bubble or press the square on the screen to cast a vote for your candidate, your ballot should be considered spoiled.

How have we not learned how to conduct a recount of the ballots in under 8 weeks?  On Election Night, and sometimes into the next day, the votes are tabulated and finalized.  Granted, when you are slogging over the last couple of ballots that could push one candidate ahead of the other, it should be take a little extra time, but 8 weeks?

Even more troubling from where I sit is that the incumbent candidate had the lead after Election Night, but as of today, challenging candidate has the lead and is moving towards being certified as the victor of the election.  I think if we were talking about a couple of votes, 10 or 20 or 30, it might not disturb me as much as a couple of hundred votes in either direction.  How can the two tallies be that different?  Were that many voters “disenfranchised” on Election Day?

Continuing further down the trail of disturbing information, a member of the Minnesota canvassing board, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson believes that there is a possibility that some of the votes were counted twice (see the 3rd and 4th paragraph down).  How can an election be certified when there are allegations of precincts with more votes than voters?  I remember back in 1996 during a Louisiana Senatorial election, it was alleged that there were precincts in New Orleans that had more votes than voters, but we all shrugged our shoulders, figuring that this was just Louisiana politics in action.  How have we not solidified a qualifying process for voters and voter registration, so we don’t have situations where there are more votes and than voters?  If we have not or can not put these policies in place, does it even matter to have elections?

I guess George Santayana was correct, when he wrote that “those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it”, as we are currently knee deep in the condemnation process.  Let us learn this time, so that we do not have do go through this charade again.

Please?