Not sure why this merited its own Hit & Run post. Unless Montana has really weird laws, the principle seems pretty obvious to me: If a voter chooses two candidates for a race in which you're only allowed to vote for one candidate, then that's not a valid vote period. The court did exactly the right thing.
My slightly more controversial (but only slightly) opinion: Likewise, if you not only vote for one of the on-ballot candidates the normal way but also redundantly add that candidate on the write-in slot, you've spoiled your ballot. Yes, the intent may be obvious, but if you did something that stupid and that plainly invalid... UPDATE: See Richard's comment and my response. If a locality changes its laws in time for the next election, I can buy this one, since there's absolutely positively no ambiguity about the voter intent here.
It's hard to tell what my opinion on hanging chads would be if I'd formulated it in a situation without an axe to grind (admit it: unless you honestly didn't care about Bush vs. Gore, there's a strong chance that your opinion about the Florida 2000 chads was the convenient opinion). Subject to the "you would think that..." objection, I don't like the idea that the jostling and fondling involved in a manual recount can physically alter a ballot and its validity.
(Reminds me of the climactic scene in Caddyshack, where deus ex machina eventually causes the ball to roll in.)
Anyhow, the best solution going forward is not to use anything as stupid as chad displacement for any election more important than baseball All-Stars.
Posted by Matt Bruce at December 30, 2004 11:27 AMI have much less of an opinion on the specifics of Bush v. Gore than I do about the other elements of the Florida election in 2000: the felons' list, which is the only purely damning evidence of partisan tampering I can think of, and the failure to count overvotes (check Al Gore, write in Al Gore on the bottom), particularly in counties like Duval with high rates of spoilage where the ballot said "choose one from each page" and listed a "fill-in" space on the second page after listing Gore on the first page. I don't think that voters should lose the franchise because they are considered "stupid" for not filling in a form correctly, but as you said, we disagree.
Also the butterfly ballot sucked but that was a problem lacking an immediate solution.
Did we really want to get into this again? I suppose my point is that reducing it all to Bush v. Gore can be misleading because I don't feel as strongly about that as I do about the obvious failures of democracy.
Posted by: M.S. at December 30, 2004 01:21 PMLikewise, if you not only vote for one of the on-ballot candidates the normal way but also redundantly add that candidate on the write-in slot, you've spoiled your ballot. Yes, the intent may be obvious, but if you did something that stupid and that plainly invalid...
I strongly disagree. Any system, be it a voting booth, a DVD player, or an automobile, where the user indicates, "I want X, I want X," and the system concludes the user doesn't want anything, is not a well-designed system.
Only from the perspective of a (lazy) designer or vote-counter is this user behavior "plainly invalid", because the designer's life is easier if users behave with complete predictability. Those "stupid" users! How dare they violate the designer's rigid rules, clearly laid out in the small print!
But from the perspective of the user/voter, there is nothing inherently stupid or invalid about expressing the same choice twice (for emphasis, or redundancy, maybe). When I write a check I fill in the amount in words, then I write the amount again in numerals. This should make the check invalid? Even if the amounts agree?
The ballot is there to serve the voter, not vice versa. The clear intent of the voter should not be thrown out on a Pharisaic technicality.
Posted by: Richard Mason at December 30, 2004 03:15 PMRichard, you've actually convinced me on the regular-plus-writein situation. Now the trick will be to get all the places that set up their election law "my" way to change those laws by the time the next elections come along.
Posted by: me at December 30, 2004 04:35 PMThis Montana case is relevant, I think, in that it highlights the validity of your second paragraph. Once you say that the rules don't apply when it is "obvious" what the voter "intended," you get into a huge mess. The problem, IMHO, isn't with the rules, but rather with the explaining of the rules. As such, I would argue that all overvotes should be thrown out and the Democrat should be seated in Montana (assuming, of course, that there were no other problems).
Posted by: Dr_Minus at December 30, 2004 06:22 PM