Schroedinger's President

Paul Haahr
13 November 2000

Imagine the following scenario. All votes, except one, in Florida have been counted perfectly accurately. We can ignore votes for Nader and Buchanan, and assert that true intent has, somehow, been discovered for voters who cast invalid ballots or incorrectly marked ``butterfly'' ballots. With all these ballots totalled, we have a tie between Bush and Gore.

However, there is one legitimate, uncounted ballot left. It is inside a steel cage. It is known that the ballot has been punched for Bush or Gore. If the cage is opened, the ballot will be incinerated and rendered unreadable.

What we are left with, effectively, is a quantum election. We know that a winner was selected, but we can't accurately determine who that was.

I'd argue the US is in that situation right now. There is, without question, a winner in the popular vote in Florida. But, as near as I can tell, there is no way to determine who that winner is with enough confidence to declare it with certainty. The US will need to accept a result where we say that we have some confidence (hopefully greater than 50%) that the president fairly won the electoral college.

I think close elections always have that effect. The ``if onlys'' that pile up end up being disheartening for all sides. I don't think quantum physics provides any useful insight into how to deal with the situation.

Parliamentary democracies may be able to deal with this better, especially those which lack fixed terms. It would probably be easier for Americans to accept either result in Florida if they knew that the President could fall in a confidence vote before and need to stand again for election again, say, the next Supreme Court seat came available.

I also think that the closeness of the election (along with the closely divided congress) reflects something fundamentally problematic. This is not, in my opinion, a result of a consensus in America, nor of a divided nation. It is the effect of very efficient political parties playing in a zero sum game.

Both parties have become tuned to maximize their votes; no surprise, that's their role. But, as they become equally good (or bad) at it, we get a situation where the parties tune their appeals to voters so carefully that, barring changes in the beliefs of the polity*, they can't do anything to increase their votes -- any change will cost them more votes than it will gain them.

Right now, it appears that the situation will only change by the Democrats moving towards the Naderite left or the Republicans moving towards the Buchananite right; either of those actions will, of course, hand the other party a majority. The third parties seem to use this argument to make the case that third parties should be more important, but since support for third parties more likely helps those with diametrically opposed views, I don't expect that to change the standoff in any substantial way.

More likely, the state of the nation will change (probably in something more like a crisis than this procedural intermission we're seeing), and it will push a little bit of the populace enough to the left or right that a ``consensus'' will develop and one party will get a mandate for some amount of time. If we're lucky, that doesn't happen for some time, because crises usually hurt everyone.

For the record, I voted for Gore, though it was probably more a vote against Bush. In general, on the issues, I agree none of the candidates more than I agree with any particular candidate, but I agree with Gore more than Nader and Nader more than Bush. (In the California primary, I voted for McCain, but if Nader had been running as a Democrat, I would have voted for him. Given current rules, I would never have voted for a third party candidate in the actual election.)

Before election day, when I expected Bush to win the popular vote and thought Gore had a chance in the electoral college, I thought that one positive outcome would be that this would draw attention to the flaws of the electoral college. (Setting that goal was not hard -- last week's New Yorker editorial says as much.) Of course, the current situation appears to be somewhat reversed, with Gore leading in the popular vote, and Bush expected to win the electoral vote.

What I would hope to see, aside from direct election of the presidency, is a system of preference -- or proportional, or ranked, or immediate runoff, or cumulative -- voting, where voters get to indicate first and second (and maybe third, fourth, etc, choices) on their ballots, so that it's possible to both cast a ballot that counts in for the actual election as well as expressing a true preference.

Given that you can find members of both parties who believe third party candidates could have cost them the presidency in the last three elections, the major parties should support this reform. But I doubt they will -- any opening to third parties is suspect to them, even if it would likely benefit the major parties in the long run.

* For example, I'd argue that the Columbine shootings did change the beliefs of, at least, a significant number of Colorado voters.