Immigration March III, courtesy of maxedaperture
If you don’t make it past the first few pages of the Metro section you’d miss it – WaPo reported today that the D.C. Board of Elections still hasn’t managed to certify the primary election results. To some extent it doesn’t matter – we’re assured the announced results won’t change and this is just a legal formality. However the fact that it’s two weeks on and they still haven’t managed to complete this task certainly raises certain questions about how well they’re going to handle the upcoming Presidental election.
DCBE’s own statistics show this primary had a turnout of less that 13% of the registred voters. The 2004 certified results [pdf] listed a 59% turnout – more than four times as many ballots cast. That doesn’t even address the higher interest in this election or the 12,000 additional voters on the rolls now – a 4% increase with another week and a half left for D.C. residents to register to vote.
Here’s hoping they get their act together by November.
Well I used to say something in my profile about not quite being a “tinker, tailor, soldier, or spy” but Tom stole that for our about us page, so I guess I’ll have to find another way to express that I am a man of many interests.
Hmm, guess I just did.
My tastes run the gamut from sophomoric to Shakespeare and in my “professional” life I’ve sold things, served beer, written software, and carried heavy objects… sometimes at the same place. It’s that range of loves and activities that makes it so easy for me to love DC – we’ve got it all.
I’ll come right out and say: It’s not looking good for November for the DC polls. The difficulties in the code of the optical scan recognition machines are still being tracked down (as of Kojo’s show a week or so ago?) and it’s unlikely that any fixes could be applied to all of the voting machines in time for the November general elections.
Now, the good thing about optical scan ballots is that they, unlike all these touch-screen receiptless machines in VA, can be hand counted if the worst comes to worst. However, that’s still some 400,000 ballots that would need to be hand-counted, which is something no one should hope for. Especially when we need, now more than ever, electoral confidence in the results.