The Recount of the Great Minnesota Recount, Recounted

A week after the November election, I wrote that the razor-close Senatorial contest in Minnesota between Coleman and Franken would now become, "The most important test of the integrity of the Federal elections process since Florida 2000." A few weeks after that, as the initial recount neared completion, I noted that much had been learned from Florida and this time, "Everything is being done out in the open, and standards are uniform and clear. This may be the best-managed recount in US history."

But it has now been more than four months since election day, and no one has been certified as the winner. It took two months for the canvassing board to complete its work, and of course immediately the result was challenged in court. The current hearings are expected to last another two weeks, and regardless of the outcome there will very likely be an appeal to the Minnesota State Supreme Court and probably to the U.S. Supreme Court as well. Thus while the recount was managed fairly well on a technical level, in the larger sense the Minnesota election has failed to achieve the primary purpose of all democratic elections: to make a choice, in a manner deemed fair (albeit grudgingly) by most of the people.

I assume I am not alone in my conviction that more reforms are needed. This time, the problem is not with the regular ballots. No doubt there could be some improvements with the regular balloting process--determining voter intent is not the cleanest standard that could have been applied--but with the exception of about 30 misplaced ballots in one Minnesota precinct (which would not have been dispositive) there were no major challenges to the integrity of that process, and the result of the initial recount was essentially the same as the original election result. This time the fault lies with the mail-in absentee ballot system.

There are on the order of 10,000 absentee ballots that were irregular to some degree in terms of the identifying information provided on the outside of the envelope. This is the most serious area of contention. In some cases, the voter name and address did not match those in county records. In other cases, the voter signature did not match or was omitted. Pretty much every possible thing that could go wrong with the mail-in process happened with hundreds of ballots, whether through fault of voter or registrar or both. From a purely engineering point of view, the problem is that the process of registration and voting is not sufficiently standardized and has too many points of failure.

But no system is immune from these problems, of course, and so once again the real issue is how to handle the disputes when they arise. In my opinion the Minnesota Supreme Court made a very stupid ruling regarding counting absentee ballots. Rather than devising a set of clear standards for the entire state, the Minnesota Supreme Court ordered each irregular absentee ballot to be decided on a case-by-case basis: each individual ballot would be counted only if the county in question and both campaigns agreed. The court's preoccupation with being Minnesota Nice has produced a hodgepodge of non-uniform non-standards which has now become the underlying basis for the seemingly endless legal appeal.

From this I draw three lessons. First, we really need to fix voter registration rolls in this country. This business of separate records for the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Social Security Office, the Registrar of Elections, etc. (not to mention the differing systems between states) has got to go. It is high time for strong, secure national ID cards. (You may commence the tossing of rotten eggs at me now.) Second, we need uniform federal standards for all federal elections. Senate business has been slowed down by the absence of Minnesota's Senator, and the peculiarities of Minnesota's process will likely make this a federal issue anyway before it is through. Finally, state elections officials need more money to hire more staff and have faster recounts when necessary.