A Common Sense Approach to Election Recounts

The point of doing a recount should be to get the most accurately count possible. Here's a common-sense approach on how to do it.

Machines are going to count more accurately than people, for the ballots that machines are able to count. The recount for machines readable ballots should be by machine, and any ballots that cannot be counted by machine should be examined by people to determine if the intent of the voter is discernable. The examination should be done by a two person team representing the parties of the two candidates in contention. If the democrat and the republican representative agree that the voter intended to vote for a specific candidate, did not vote on the race in question, or did not mark the ballot in a conclusive manner, then the ballot should be counted that way. There should be no alteration of the ballots except for the initials of the two examiners and how they agreed the ballot should be counted.

Recounts should include all ballots cast in the race, not specific counties or percents, as any geographic selective recounting will favor one candidate or the other and will not create the most accurate possible count. There should not be incremental or country-by-county results announced. All results of the hand count should be secret until the entire process is complete. Having a daily "horse race" of announced results only creates a media circus and increase the likely hood for lawsuits to interfere with the process.

This way, there is only one recount. It will represent the most accurate count possible, so unless a box of uncounted ballots is discovered, there is no reason for further recounts. This is what should have happened in Florida in 2000, and what Washington should have been doing in the past month.