JB: What did we learn? How does the system work, or not work, as the case may be?
RW: The answer varies largely by state and in some cases, by county. I believe, Wisconsin conducted recounts in every county. Some were done by hand and others by using the scanners that originally tabulated the ballots, which is less reliable. But in some areas, recount observers were able to use "clickers" to tabulate the count as each ballot was fed into the scanner and confirmed the accuracy of the counts that way. The recounts shifted vote totals slightly but did not change the outcome of the election.
In Michigan, the courts prevented most of the recounts. But Detroit, which had experienced many problems on election day, decided to do its own recount anyway. They uncovered many types of procedural and other systemic problems that will help them improve their election process.
In Pennsylvania, most counties cannot conduct a meaningful recount because there is no independent voter-verified record of the votes. A couple of counties there that vote on paper did recounts, and some jurisdictions, including Philadelphia, conducted a fairly meaningless "recount" by reprinting the results from each machine. The court denied the Stein campaign the right to have computer scientists review the software that operates the machines. I believe that decision is being challenged through ongoing litigation.
Overall, the effort shed light on how difficult it is to be sure that US presidential election results are accurate. As former president Jimmy Carter said when asked why his foundation monitors elections all over the world but not in the USA, American elections can't meet his standards. They are pretty good at determining who won in a landslide, but when a contest is close, our policies and practices leave a lot of room for doubt about the outcome. Several years ago, he and Republican James Baker III formed a bipartisan commission that suggested ways US elections could be improved. Notably, they recommended paper ballots. Some progress has been made towards that goal but we still have a long way to go.
JB: Thanks for bringing us up to speed, Rebecca. What's happening in Wisconsin now? It's encouraging that legislation is trying to tackle this thorny issue of assuring verifiable and accurate elections. How're they doing with it?
RW: Well, unfortunately they're moving in the opposite direction. Of the three states in which Stein filed for a recount, Wisconsin was the only one that actually conducted one. The intention of this bill is to prevent that type of recount from happening in the future. It would restrict recounts to a candidate who lost to the winning candidate by 1% or less, or to a voter in a referendum that lost by that margin. This means that any contest where the margin of victory is more than 1% cannot be recounted. So if an election is successfully hacked to a margin greater than 1%, the results cannot be challenged by anyone. And even if the margin is less than 1%, the only candidate who can challenge the results is one who lost to the winner by that narrow margin. Stein would not have been able to file in Wisconsin under these rules.
Here's an example of an election with a large margin of victory in which the results were wrong. In Pottawattamie County, Iowa in 2006, an unknown college student beat the long-time incumbent county recorder when the absentee ballots were counted. Election officials decided to hand-count the ballots to check the results and discovered that the scanner's programming failed to account for the rotation of candidates' names on the ballot. This is just one example where the margin of victory would have prevented the losing candidate from filing for a recount under the law Wisconsin is considering, even though the results were wrong. But a manual audit quickly detected the error.
While the Wisconsin recount did not change the outcome of the election, it did uncover procedural issues and other errors, as recounts often do. This kind of quality check ultimately helps to improve our elections and should be built into the process in the form of routine audits.
One of the great things about American elections is that they are staffed by tens of thousands of volunteers who operate the polling places on election day. I have served as a pollworker for the past 14 years and it's a wonderful experience to be on the frontlines watching democracy in action -- I encourage all of your readers to give it a try (and huge kudos to any of you who already do!). But it's a very long day and pollworkers are expected to work with highly specialized equipment to perform complex tasks and to administer complicated laws and procedures that they may only come in contact with on that one day every couple of years or so. It's easy to make mistakes and rules are not always followed uniformly.
In addition, the vulnerabilities of the election technology itself and the fact that few election offices have the cyber security expertise to be able to fend off sophisticated attacks by skilled hackers make it important to have good quality controls built into the system. Recounts are one means of allowing the public to see with their own eyes whether an election was conducted fairly and accurately. We should think carefully before restricting that right.
JB: What's your theory for why Wisconsin is moving to be more restrictive? It seems very anti-democratic, to say the least. Are they mistaken about what this bill would do, misguided or something else?
RW: I should be clear that I am not directly involved in Wisconsin. All I know is what I read in the news so I won't speculate on motives. Clearly, the intent of the law is to prevent another recount like Stein's, which many people perceived as a waste of time and money even though she paid for it in full. But restricting the right to challenge the results of an election is a very serious threat to democracy. Recounts are the last recourse in ensuring that those who govern us are the leaders we genuinely selected. Good quality checks throughout the process should help make recounts a rare occurrence and build public confidence in the accuracy and fairness of our elections, but sometimes only a recount can determine exactly what happened. Democracy requires patience and hard work sometimes, but isn't it well worth the effort?
JB: I certainly think so! Anything you'd like to add before we wrap this up?
RW: Nothing that occurs to me at the moment. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
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