Thursday, December 30, 2004
Narrow Margins
It seems to me there's a test in life we could apply whenever we're tempted to do something that could have a potentially negative effect on another person: If the shoe were on the other foot, and that other person wanted to do the same thing, thus producing the same negative impact on us, would we object to it? If the answer is "yes," then maybe we ought to rethink what we're tempted to do. That simple test points up the silliness of Repug gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi's call for a revote in the Washington state governor's race. If it were Rossi who'd been certified the winner by 129 votes out of 2.8 million, and Democrat Christine Gregoire were the one calling for a revote, Repugs from coast to coast would be overcome with the fantods. For them to call on the Democrats to be gracious in this situation is pretty ridiculous, then, because they'd never for one second consider doing the same thing themselves.
A revote isn't a bad idea in theory. Trouble is, revoting close races is not the way the game is played now--and it's hard to imagine a system in which revotes might work. What if there were a law that said any election decided by less than 0.00005 percent of the vote had to be revoted? That's 140 votes out of 2.8 million. There would always be a magic number at which the lawsuits would begin to fly. And because we're dealing with human beings, there's always going to be a margin of error. The only sure way to avoid it is to stop having elections altogether. (Give us time--we might get there.)
The statesmanlike thing for Rossi to do at this point would be to put his energies toward reforming the election system to help make sure the kind of irregularities seen in Washington and in other jurisdictions around the country (hello, Ohio; how ya doin', Florida) don't keep every vote from being fairly and consistently counted. He could be Exhibit B for why such reforms are necessary. Exhibit A, of course, would be Al Gore.
Recommended Reading: At Daily Kos, a contributor observes that gay families are the canary in the coalmine of social repression, and wonders if it will soon be time for his family to leave the United States. And at Editor and Publisher, editor Greg Mitchell collects some of the e-mails and letters he received after his magazine noted USA Today founder Al Neuharth's pre-Christmas column, which innocuously suggested that it was time to start bringing troops home from Iraq. They'll make you feel a bit like a canary yourself.
It seems to me there's a test in life we could apply whenever we're tempted to do something that could have a potentially negative effect on another person: If the shoe were on the other foot, and that other person wanted to do the same thing, thus producing the same negative impact on us, would we object to it? If the answer is "yes," then maybe we ought to rethink what we're tempted to do. That simple test points up the silliness of Repug gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi's call for a revote in the Washington state governor's race. If it were Rossi who'd been certified the winner by 129 votes out of 2.8 million, and Democrat Christine Gregoire were the one calling for a revote, Repugs from coast to coast would be overcome with the fantods. For them to call on the Democrats to be gracious in this situation is pretty ridiculous, then, because they'd never for one second consider doing the same thing themselves.
A revote isn't a bad idea in theory. Trouble is, revoting close races is not the way the game is played now--and it's hard to imagine a system in which revotes might work. What if there were a law that said any election decided by less than 0.00005 percent of the vote had to be revoted? That's 140 votes out of 2.8 million. There would always be a magic number at which the lawsuits would begin to fly. And because we're dealing with human beings, there's always going to be a margin of error. The only sure way to avoid it is to stop having elections altogether. (Give us time--we might get there.)
The statesmanlike thing for Rossi to do at this point would be to put his energies toward reforming the election system to help make sure the kind of irregularities seen in Washington and in other jurisdictions around the country (hello, Ohio; how ya doin', Florida) don't keep every vote from being fairly and consistently counted. He could be Exhibit B for why such reforms are necessary. Exhibit A, of course, would be Al Gore.
Recommended Reading: At Daily Kos, a contributor observes that gay families are the canary in the coalmine of social repression, and wonders if it will soon be time for his family to leave the United States. And at Editor and Publisher, editor Greg Mitchell collects some of the e-mails and letters he received after his magazine noted USA Today founder Al Neuharth's pre-Christmas column, which innocuously suggested that it was time to start bringing troops home from Iraq. They'll make you feel a bit like a canary yourself.
