Bushed

BushedIn the 2000 election, the problem was that the numbers in Florida (not the only such state but the most obvious) were within the margin for error. This time round, there seem to have been at least two such states – Ohio and New Mexico. This seems to me the key issue: probably no system we ever devise will be perfectly accurate down to a single vote, so there will always be a percentage difference below which the count is unreliable.

Slashdot has been collecting reports, of course, but the central clearinghouse is the Election Incident Reporting System site, where more than 31,000 incidents were logged and counted. The raw numbers don't tell you anything, of course. Many of the logged incidents are minor-league stuff, like people who have been issued with absentee ballots wanting to vote in person instead, or people unable to find their polling places. What matters, and will take much more lengthy analysis, is the pattern of these incidents.