The Election Isn't Over Till It's Over

What you say?
Yes, the electoral college is yet to vote, and elections are yet to be certified. But we all know the outcome right? Let's look at Missouri.

The race has tightened over the last week. McCain now leads by less than 5,000 votes out of something close to 3 million. There are some 7,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted. 3,200 votes were recently 'found' in the electronic voting machines when it was discovered that they weren't tallied properly by poll workers. Until the election is certified in a couple of weeks, no one can request a recount. Why a recount? What's at stake? Missouri's bellwether status!

More important undecided races (unless your from Missouri of course) are Senate races. In Michigan, there are about 200 votes out of almost 3 million deciding the race between Franken(D) and Coleman(R). The lawyers are now wrangling over the recount process ala Florida 2000. In Georgia, the race is starting all over, with Chambliss(R) getting only 49.8% in a state where a plurality is required to win. It looks like every Republican presidential candidate from the primaries will be down there campaigning - McCain, Huckabee, Guliani and Romney are all slated to hit the campaign trail. Obama is sending aids from his campaign staff to assist Jim Martin (D) in getting all those people who voted for Obama to turn out again for this new battle. Too bad they didn't all vote for Martin to begin with. It seem there were a lot of ballots cast for Obama that didn't vote the rest of the ticket.

Of course, there is still the pending election in Alaska, where recently convicted felon and incumbent Ted Stevens is still leading by a few thousand votes. There are over 90,000 votes yet to be counted (mostly absentee ballots), half of which should be counted by this weekend. His opponent, Mark Begich will probably benefit from the absentee and early voter counts that are going on now. Of course, if things tighten up, there will probably be a call for a recount, and more lawyers arguing and deadlines for election certification looming. In any case, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint (R) is calling for a vote next week to eject Stevens from the Republican caucus. While not exactly expulsion from the senate (the GOP wants to wait until his appeals process is complete), it would remove him from any committees and any Republican only decision making process. At least one conservative Senator has some integrity left.

A lot of pundits are questioning the turnout and results in Alaska. I'm sure that many questions will be asked more aggressively if a recount gets underway. Alaska is the only state that pollsters got COMPLETELY wrong. Turnout was lower than 2004, even with historically large turnouts for caucuses earlier in the campaign season. No one expected such a low turnout. Pollers expected Stevens to lose by double digits.

Personally, I think that the major media projecting the Obama victory as early as 3pm Alaska time might has suppressed a lot of the turnout. None of the media pundits are giving that much weight, but I do remember how loudly people here in California complained when they called elections before the polls closed. They didn't call the election, but it was everything BUT that, and anyone who listened or watched knew it. So, how should the media be responsible? Should they not project results until polls are closed everywhere? Is that realistic? Tough questions. Perhaps they should run a poll in Alaska and actually find out why people didn't vote.

Why does all this matter? Politically, it matters because the Senate is close to a filibuster proof majority. More importantly, it's about the integrity of the election process in general. There is still a lot of suspicion surrounding the voting process and voter suppression tactics that we've seen in 2000 and 2004.

Elections like the Michigan senate race highlight the need to have certainty not only in the result, but also in the process by which that result is achieved, down to the individual ballot. Quite the task, and I'm not sure that the systems we have are completely up to it.

Watch the process closely. It will tell us a lot about what progress has been made. In Michigan, expect that every absentee ballot that was rejected will be challenged, and probably any recounts that vary or ballots that don't scan. At least there are no hanging chads in Michigan, but optical ballots have those little boxes to fill in, so be prepared!