It is very important, in the current controversy, to re-stress that it is not persuasively charged that any voting precincts in Florida acted as they did on Nov. 7 in order to advance partisan interests. The argument about proffering identification aid to absentee ballots is superficially arresting. True, GOP co-adjutors were here and there present in Seminole County volunteering to give ID's to absentee voters.
But it is not charged that the voters who benefited from this little courtesy were exclusively Republican. If you forget to jot down, in your application, a piece of information the supplying of which, done by a third party, is on the order of a civil courtesy, something less than a distortion of the vote is in order. Anyone who has filed a customs declaration form on returning from abroad is accustomed to seeing obliging officials write in details inadvertently omitted (the proper date ... the flight number ... the airline traveled).
What will certainly need to be advertised more widely than was done in Florida are disqualifying irregularities. If an impression will be required that can't be abbreviated, the point must be made entirely clear. No pregnant ballots? Then no inseminated ballots.
But then perhaps the voting machines that will eventuate under the Torricelli program will not themselves permit halfhearted votes. Maybe, adding an additional $10 million to the program, they can be designed to spit forth: "ASS! PULL LEVER FARTHER DOWN TO REGISTER YOUR VOTE!" This message could be communicated in two languages, to satisfy any charge of ethnic discrimination. And we'd end up with a tally that corresponded to a) the numbers of votes cast, and b) the number of votes that observed the minimal requirements imposed by non-discriminatory laws and regulations.
Are there other reforms? If that means different ways of doing things, the answer is yes, obviously. One could abolish the electoral system, institute proportional representation, levy fines for a failure to vote. The list goes on, but requires that we pause in our reformist zeal to ask: Isn't the constitutional mode a pretty good way of doing things, never mind the statistical anomaly of 100 million voters split almost exactly down the middle?