Sincere Concern for Democracy and its Antithesis
The lawyers the Democratic Party paid to observe the ballot counting all went away after the results were released at eight last night, but it took the volunteer Republican observers some time to figure this out because they were so busy observing the process and so used to the opposition being thin on the ground. The central thing to keep in mind about this is that the most optimistic Republican in the building only dreamed of getting 33% of the Multnomah County vote in his wildest flight of fancy. There never was a serious race to win in the Portland Metro area; there was only a contest to put in a respectable showing. The observers from the Republican Party were there to make sure that an honest election functioned. The lawyers from the Democratic Party were there to impose the form of an open election was observed. Once the initial results were released, it appears the process became irrelevant to them.
The Republicans in Multnomah County total about 89,000 of the 429,000 registered voters, slightly less than 21% of the electorate. President Bush got 27% of the county's votes in the
initial results last night, not enough help to carry the state, but a respectable performance in this bluest of blue regions this side of Berkeley. The funny part about all this is that
four years ago Nader pulled more than 5% of the county vote and Bush got about 21% here. The Republican candidate got a smaller percentage when Nader was in the race in Multnomah County. That has just got to suck a whole lot for some people.
Kerry just conceded and one can only hope that this loss will show the fundamental vacuity of injunctive interference in the electoral process. Playing pettiness games with the Democratic lawyers was a tedious and pointless activity that I hope will not be repeated in four years. The willingness of Democratic money sources to continue to shovel funds down rat holes in pursuit of non-existent rewards remains to be seen. The willingness of vastly outnumbered Republican supporters to show up and put in long hours to help keep things honest appears undiminished. Last night the Republicans had no problem producing as many polite, orderly, and intelligent observers as they needed to observe every aspect of the process. These were mostly just folks who wanted to keep things honest in a profoundly partisan county. The failure of the Democrats to keep anybody in the building after the initial results were released was the best indicator of their sincerity.
A brief note of congratulations to John Kauffman Director of Elections for Multnomah County and his superlative staff who have worked long hours in conditions made horrible by the interference of litigators without an abiding interest in the honest exercise of democracy. These people did their best to maintain their dignity and integrity under terrible stress. Last night, long after the litigious opportunists had departed the building and the last (drunk) procrastinator had staggered through the door to vote, he and his exhausted staff were still working hard to keep democracy functioning.
Observing the Election from a Tester's Perspective
Yesterday I learned that I trust my vote to clear eyed ladies who cast their first vote for Wendell Wilkie more than I do young lawyers in short skirts who cast their first vote for Bill Clinton. I also learned how to scare young lawyers in short skirts from the room with an even tone and a reasonable statement. I spent election eve at the Multnomah County Elections office observing the process and doing my part to maintain healthy stress on the system, and keep an eye on the lawyers trying to screw it up. While there I got to see the entire process, and the hash Democratic lawyers have made out of the system of observing it.
For those of you who don't know me, I'm a systems tester currently between contracts who grew up in a fiercely partisan Democratic family. I did eight years in the Navy and left during the Clinton administration after a couple of pretty hard tours on tin cans. As a civilian, I leveraged my self-taught PC skills into a series of testing jobs at Intel and Microsoft. I've found enough bugs and written enough test plans to be able to spot deficiencies (bugs) in a process almost instantly.
After the election I will discuss the biggest single potential bug I saw, but the biggest existing bug in the election process I saw yesterday was the presence of lawyers as observers. Any test will affect the process being tested to a greater of lesser extent, but some testing methods are so invasive as to invalidate the results. Before the 2000 debacle, retired persons from across the political spectrum acted like tribal elders in preserving the traditions of the vote; in Oregon that system worked for generations. One thing good testers learn is that working systems rarely need to be messed around with.
Regrettably, this year Oregon became a swing state, and the tremendous amount of money flooding into the election economy resulted in the presence of lawyers from the Democratic Party showing up to observe the vote count. Oregon votes by mail and the ballots have been collecting for weeks and observers have been present watching the process to ensure that everything stayed above board. The observers from the Republican Party are predominantly mature ladies with clear eyes and a firm commitment to democracy. One lady I met yesterday was born before women got the vote and cast her first vote in the 1940 election. The observers from the Democratic Party are mostly young lawyers who have spent some time in DC. Because the Republicans showed up early with plenty number of people, the opposition lawyers made their presence felt by establishing boundaries where observers could and could not be and in what numbers and what representations.
The notion that democracy exists at the sufferance of injunctive relief is a new one that doesn't sit well with the sharp eyed ladies who have been watching the process for generations. One of the problems created by the lawyers is that many of the places where ballots are handled cannot possibly be observed from the newly defined observation locations, and the observers can only see one small set of the available ballot handling boards. In Oregon the mailed in ballots are contained within a secrecy envelope inside an envelope signed by the voter. At tables called "Boards" four people, predominantly retired ladies, from different political affiliations open the secrecy envelopes, review the ballots for quality of marking, and order the ballots for machine counting. If necessary, the ballots are enhanced, in accordance with state law supporting voter intent, by these people. As observers, our job was to count the ballots we can see being enhanced in order to note any particular trends and to help keep things honest. At the elections office, there are more than thirty Boards, and the observers can now only keep their eyes on at most eight of them from their newly imposed observation locations. In the interest of "fairness" we have lost transparency.
After watching the Boards for a while I went upstairs and relieved the fellow watching the front. Out front the people who had problems with their signature or their ballot were obtaining a ballot and voting. At one in the afternoon of the eve of the election, people were lined up halfway down the block with no shelter from the rain. Observing this process, I realized that the people engaged in voter fraud were most likely to be caught right at this stage. As a systems tester, I figured that the bugs in the registration system should be caught right at this point, and that the bad people bent on distorting the system should be rolled up by the police. Instead of a law enforcement problem, this was being handled as a bureaucratic function, however.
When the Democratic Party types surrounding me were gushing about the willingness of people to stand in line in the rain to vote, I let slip that I would feel better about the process if sometime in the next 20 hours somebody was hauled out of the building in handcuffs. It appears the notion that voter fraud should be punished acts upon Democratic lawyers like garlic does to vampires. If you are ever surrounded by Democratic lawyers, say in a clear voice your belief that voter fraud should be treated as a crime.
The great realization from yesterday's experience was that for the political operatives, reality was established only at elections. Those of us who test systems and methods more frequently, who are confronted with a more harsh reality than a malleable electorate, make political types distinctly uncomfortable. The central threat of non-activist bloggers discussing political matters from a variety of perspectives is that we are not accountable to that electorate and so we can make uncomfortable statements without fear of refutation. We can risk offending voters by arresting them for fraud because we have nothing to lose; in fact, we have a lot to gain from this behavior.
I hope that we have a clear decision tonight because the legalistic imposition of fairness has diminished transparency in Oregon, and probably elsewhere. They have muddied the water in an attempt to control the vote and the best result free people can hope for is that this effort was futile. I hope this election establishes a reality that lawyers cannot control the will of the people. A decisive win by Bush will re-establish the notion that power flows from the people to the government, without the consent of the trial lawyer's bar.
