There's an old saying (perhaps I saw it on a bumper sticker...) that goes something like "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me". For some reason this comes to mind when I contemplate the state of elections in Florida, and I'm apparently not the only one thinking in these terms. It seems that Dave Barry has also been giving the matter a good deal of thought as well.
The question you're asking yourself is: Does South Florida contain the highest concentration of morons in the entire world? Or just in the United States?
The reason you're asking this, of course, is South Florida's performance in Tuesday's election. This election was critical to our image, because of our performance in the 2000 presidential election -- the one that ended up with the entire rest of the nation watching, impatiently, as clumps of sleep-deprived South Florida election officials squinted at cardboard ballots, trying to figure out what the hell the voters were thinking when they apparently voted for two presidents, or no presidents, or part of a president, or, in some cases, simply drooled on the ballot.
Before it was over, we had roughly 23 million lawyers down here -- nearly a quarter of the nation's lawyer supply -- filing briefs and torts and arguing in endless televised hearings, until finally the whole mess wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which declared George W. Bush the winner, but only because it would have been unconstitutional to apply the more logical remedy, which would be to kick Florida out of the union. We were a national joke. The phrase ''Florida voter'' became a standard comedy-routine synonym for ``idiot.''
And thus there was a lot of pressure on Florida, and particularly South Florida, to redeem itself in Tuesday's election. We knew that we could not afford to repeat the 2000 fiasco, and our election officials had more than a year and a half to develop, and test, a voting procedure that even we could not screw up.
So what did our election officials do? Let's examine the problem, and two possible solutions:
THE PROBLEM: Voters had trouble understanding a balloting system that required them to punch holes in a piece of cardboard.
SOLUTION A: Use an even simpler system.
SOLUTION B: Use a more complicated system.
Of course, you're saying to yourself, we'll use a system that is even simpler. What could possibly go wrong with that? Ah, but then you're not in Florida, are you? Miami-Dade and Broward counties went out and spent a combined total of $41.2 million on 14,400 computerized voting machines called the "iVotronic". That's...well, you do the math on this one....
As Barry himself points out, "Never buy a product whose manufacturer does not understand the basic rules of capitalization".
OK, but what could possibly go wrong? After all, the iVotronic is the height of state-of-the-art voting technology. Well, let's see...nothing COULD go wrong unless:
- Poll workers aren't trained adequately
- Instructions on using the iVotronic are confusing and obtuse, or
- Inadequate technical support is available on election day
Of course, this is Florida, so all of these mistakes were made, leading to the predictable chaos and cluster&#%# that was Election Day.
So, what's a state to do?? Well, Barry has a sensible, practical, and surprisingly economical solution:
How can we avoid being international laughingstocks in the next election?
My suggestion -- call me crazy -- is that we print the ballot on paper, with a box next to each candidate's name. We instruct the voters to put an ''X'' in their candidate's box. Then we have human beings count the ``X''s, and the candidate with the most votes wins.
I realize this is a radical system, but I believe that it would be difficult for even South Floridians to screw it up.
We could get our elections over within a single day, like everybody else, and we would have more time to enjoy the pleasures of South Florida.
Such as scuba diving. On our new artificial reef.
Formed by 12,400 iVotronics.
