Over in Virginia today, Democrat Mark Herring today moved into the lead in the Attorney General election over Republican Mark Obenshain by exactly 100 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast. Seems that one precinct in Fairfax forgot to count one of the machines, and once that was found and included, Obenshain’s previous 17 vote lead was reversed. Anyone who has been following this — and I highly recommend Dave Wasserman on Twitter for blow-by-blow, or, rather, ballot-by-ballot, updates — knows that this could reverse again before it’s done. The twists and turns are highly entertaining but hardly something to be proud of. Election law expert Rick Hasen makes the right point: “[E]lections are always this messy. We just never had Twitter before to demonstrate that in real time” (see also Ed Kilgore, who makes the point that we don’t usually care about missing ballot boxes and uncounted machines unless the count is very close).
Anyone who has looked into this, or been stuck in a line to vote for over an hour or had a ballot challenged because of an inexact name match between the voter rolls and a driver’s license (okay, that last one is just for Texas), knows this is a disgrace. And very, very fixable. This is one case in which throwing money at the problem would probably solve most of it. If poll workers had more training, if outdated machines were eliminated and broken-down machines replaced promptly and if more and better-equipped polling places were the norm, voting could be much easier and the tallies much more accurate. That they’re not is basically because we collectively don’t really care very much about it. That’s the truth.
Full Article: U.S. elections are still awful. We should fix that..