Zappini

Should we trust our elections officials and politicians to conduct our elections fairly and accurately? It's an interesting question. What is trust? And how might we attain it? This entry (essay) is my attempt to articulate my thinking.

First, some recent background, to set the stage.

Last Tuesday, during the 11th LD Dems monthly meeting, KC Council Member Julia Patterson asked us to trust that she will do everything she can to ensure the security and accuracy of our elections. A number of us showed up to express our concerns with touch screen voting machines, optical scanners, and all mail voting. I do not feel that Patterson understood our concerns, nor has sufficient understanding of our voting systems, so is in a poor position make such broad reassurances. Consequently, I do not trust.

The Elections Assistance Commission had a meeting here in Seattle last Thursday. Our Secretary of State Sam Reed was asked for his wisdom on handling the controversy of our 2004 gubernatorial contest. He emphasized the need for good relations, among other things. His office works hard to support the county auditors, the state and county elections officials communicate almost daily, the political parties are involved at every step, the elections officials coordinated media relations. Reed basically said that mutual trust was key to smooth elections. I disagree.

During last night's "Fixing Elections" event, someone asked "I want my vote to count. What is the best and safest way to vote in King County?" A very good question. The answer from the elections officials was much like Reed's, that they need to be build the trust of the voters. That's an admirable goal.

In response, Paul Lehto said (paraphrasing) that the only way to ensure the integrity of an election is to rely on the mutual suspicion of antagonists. That's accomplished with checks and balances. The most familiar example is our Constitution, which was formed during an "Orgy of Mistrust". The framers understood that complete trust is unattainable and that power should not be concentrated.

After the panel, I was chatting with Bobbi Egan and Courtney Caswell, both from KC Elections. Egan was troubled by Letho's assertion that he does not trust them. Answering from the hip, I did a poor job. So here's my second attempt.

I believe that no one shows up to to work every day to do a bad job. I have complete faith that Egan and everyone else are doing their best. I know that I would feel put out by someone questioning my contribution.

Thinking about it over night, I'm trying to define for myself what it'd take for me to trust Egan and her colleagues. To do that, I have to first define my expectations.

Elections officials are like referees. I expect them to observe, enforce the rules, make sure everyone plays nicely together, and to penalize offenses. Referees must remain impartial and take care to not influence the outcome. Of course, that ideal is tough to attain. Witness the last SuperBowl, where the Seahawks were robbed. The referees are the final authority. There is no check on their power. So that contest was unbalanced. And just like our elections, there is little recourse to a flawed contest.

How do we add checks and balances to elections? I'm told of, and hope to someday observe, Canada's unique approach to manually counting the ballots. A representative from each party collaboratively counts their set of local ballots. When they agree on the count, they kick their results up to the next level, also staffed by a member of each party. And so on, all the way up to the top. Canada is roughly the size of California. They have elections results in 4 hours. There are no recounts. Because the process is completely transparent and everyone trusts it.

(At this point, wags typically say stuff like "manual counts are too expensive", "our elections are more complicated, so can't be counted manually", etc. Excuses. Last year, we 13 poll workers stood around for 90 minutes watching the precinct based optical scanner tabulate 400 ballots. I'm pretty sure we could have done it faster and just as accurately. As far ballot complexity, that's a design problem. One possible, trivial, fix could be to put statewide and federal races on a separate ballot. That would allow quick results for highly charged races. And we could count the local stuff at leisure.)

The first compelling aspect of Canada's system of manual counting is that elections officials are not responsible for the results. They set up and enforce the structures and procedures. The actual outcomes are determined by the parties themselves. That clean separation of concerns removes a tremendous amount of pressure from the elections officials. I can think of nothing more trustworthy than that.

Another compelling aspect is that Canada's system is easily understood. I don't trust what I don't understand. Worse, I thought I understood how our election and voting systems worked, but I was wrong. Further fostering mistrust. Worse still, the aspects that I do understand as a geek, like the failings of touchscreen machines and optical scanners, I fully distrust.

Other countries have elections systems that are trusted, best as I can tell. In Germany, elections are administrated federally by an non-partisan bureaucracy. Their checks and balances comes from relying on both exit polling and a full manual count.

India actually exclusively uses electronic voting systems. I have no idea if the results are trusted. But it's worthy to note that India has a parliamentary system chosen by proportional representation. Indian voters choose a platform, not an individual. And unlike our "winner takes all system", proportional representation means that no viable platform is fully excluded from governance.

Which brings me to my last point: Our winner takes all system heightens the mistrust. It taints everything about our elections, including voting and election systems. When a 2 vote swing in results can change the entire outcome, the stakes are high indeed. Our country's recent partisan divide only increases the pressure. Therefore, expend an extraordinary amount of effort to ensure that every vote counts, with every diminishing returns. I do not think there's a way to square that circle. There will always be some errors and trying harder only treats the symptoms, not the causes. I do not envy our elections officials.

In summary, it is unreasonable for our elections officials to ask use to trust them. They must demonstrate that the results are trustworthy by relying on transparency as well as checks and balances.

Equally, and just as importantly, it is unreasonable that we put our elections officials in the compromised position of asking for our trust. It's an inherently unfair request. Proper, appropriate expectations for our elections officials is that they administrate the structures and procedures correctly, allowing us voters to determine the outcomes for ourselves. Such as system of checks and balances would be inherently trustworthy, be design.