The election reforms now being proposed will improve the accuracy of voting and vote counting in Washington, but they will never succeed in achieving 100 percent accuracy. There will always be a margin of error – a difference between the “true” vote and the vote as counted or recounted. This means that in a close election where the margin of victory is less than this margin of error, the losing candidate and his or her supporters will feel cheated and will be unable to recognize the legitimacy of the outcome. As we are seeing, this leads to bitterness on the part of the losers, defensiveness on the part of the victors, and hampers government’s ability to deal effectively with its issues. It is therefore in everybody’s interests that election victories be clear cut and beyond question.
To make sure this happens, the reforms need to also include provision for a revote between the two leading candidates whenever the difference, after a recount, is within the margin of error. What should this margin be? This would need to be determined and would probably vary from office to office, but the criteria for it would be broad enough so that any result exceeding it would be accepted by everybody as legitimate, yet narrow enough so any result with a substantial chance of being changed through revote would receive one.
Clark McKee
Monroe
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