Via the NYT comes a tale of woe: Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul

William Shambora, 53, is the kind of diligent voter who once assumed that his ballot always counted. He got a rude awakening this year.

Mr. Shambora, an economics professor at Ohio University, moved during the summer but failed to notify the Athens County Board of Elections until the day before the presidential election. An official told him to use a provisional ballot.

But under Ohio law, provisional ballots are valid only when cast from a voter’s correct precinct. Mr. Shambora was given a ballot for the wrong precinct, a fact he did not learn until after the election. Two weeks later, the board discarded his vote, adding him to a list of more than 300 provisional ballots that were rejected in that heavily Democratic county.

“It seems like such a confused system,” said Mr. Shambora, a John Kerry supporter who blames himself for the mistake. “Maybe if enough people’s votes had counted, the election might have turned out differently.”

This is just plain silly: this isn’t a “confused system”–Professor Shambora should have registered to vote at his new address when he moved back in the summer. One of the first things I do when I move is change my voter registration so that I don’t get to election day and not be able to vote–because if I move and fail to fill out a 3×5 card with my address and such and then I don’t get to vote, it’s my fault.

To describe the professor as a “diligent voter” in the story is ridiculous: the man failed to engage in a fundamental aspect of the system: registering to vote. Gee whiz, the guy has a Ph.D. in economics–it is hardly unreasonable to assume that he can take care of his own voting status–it isn’t like we are talking about the tax code here. If this is the best vignette that the reporter could find to lead the story, then I am thinkging that things are largely fine in Ohio.

Indeed, the provisional ballot system, as I understand it, isn’t even meant for people like Shambora, who failed to properly register. Rather, it is for people who have, in fact, registered but the poll workers don’t have the appropriate records.

Now, I will grant, things such as the following are problematic:

From seven-hour lines that drove voters away to malfunctioning machines to poorly trained poll workers who directed people to the wrong polling places to uneven policies about the use of provisional ballots, Ohio has become this year’s example for every ailment in the United States’ electoral process.

However, the following reaction is a tad over the top:

“This has fundamentally shocked people’s sense of whether any election can be accurately counted,” said Daniel Hoffheimer, counsel to Mr. Kerry’s Ohio campaign.

The truth of the matter is that an overwhelming super-majority of ballots are properly counted and that there will always some level of error. No process involving human beings is perfect, so why should there be an expectation that a voting process should (or can) be perfect?