I agree with this.

I think when you have a panel of people trying to determine voter intent it makes the likelihood of further error even greater.

Personally i would like to see run offs in cases where neither party receives greater than 50% of the vote-much like the requirement in Georgia.

But if that is deemed to expensive and difficult, then I actually think a coin toss or some other random action (pulling a name out of a hat or similar) should determine the winner. At the very least it wouldn't turn into courts getting involved and people changing the rules or standards as they go along.

Frankly, I think we should only be looking for fraud on the subsequent examinations.

I recommend Stone, Paper, Scissors, though the number of "go's" should be stipulated up front.

Pistols at dawn would have the advantage of diminishing the total number of politicians, but may conflict with other state laws.

There is no flaw-free voting system. I don't believe there every will be. As long as there is no flaw-free voting system there will be a margin of error. Whenever the margin of error exceeds the margin of victory, whatever either of those things are, the results of the election have become arbitrarily determined.

The law in Florida in 2000 and current Minnesota law manifestly produces elections with arbitrary results. That undermines the confidence of the public in the electoral process and should be changed.

The problem isn't the system for deciding, the problem is the system for counting. If the counting is reliable, the decision is easy. If the counting is unreliable, well, garbage in garbage out, as they say.

The problem is that we're unlikely to get much better at counting.

I've addressed this in previous posts on the matter but I'm talking about a cutoff point for a runoff, instant runoff voting, or other mechanisms that would likely produce less narrow outcomes by having voters chose between the top two candidates rather than having the results distorted by multiple spoiler candidates.

We need a better system for deciding the outcome of very close elections.

We have a very good system for deciding the outcome of close elections, whomever has the most votes wins.

The problem isn't the system for deciding, the problem is the system for counting. If the counting is reliable, the decision is easy. If the counting is unreliable, well, garbage in garbage out, as they say.

Please provide links to your comments on Bush v. Gore circa 2000.

Difficult, seeing as how the blog wasn't established until 2003. Most commenters don't have paper trails going back eight or nine years.

My contemporary position, as best as I recall, was that Bush won the initial vote and the legally mandated recount and that everything else that happened was illegal and an expost facto changing of the rules, which I believed both unfair and in violation of federal law.

I believed then and continue to believe that it's quite possible more people in Florida intended to vote for Gore than for Bush, that the actual outcome was as good as a tie, but that Bush was correctly declared the narrow winner given how people actually voted and the rules in place at the time.

Please provide links to your comments on Bush v. Gore circa 2000.

I need a reference point before commenting