How hard can it be to count a few million votes?

Quite hard, apparently--that's what Florida taught us in the presidential election of 2000. And Florida was not alone--errors cropped up around the United States. We focused on Florida because the vote was so close, but it turns out American elections have always been riddled with errors.

Since that Y2K election, over 500 counties nationwide have replaced their primitive voting systems with sleek, new electronic machines. By 2002, Georgia had 22,000 touch screen machines in operation. Did Georgia enjoy a high-tech, error-free election that year?

Nope.

Did anyone?

Not really. In fact, so many questions have now been raised about touch screen voting machines that some Californians are trying to have them decertified.

Folks, lots of factors make democracy difficult, but really, can't we get that core part right: the mechanical act of voting? (And counting?)

It's a global question now, as so many societies are taking their first baby steps toward democratic elections. We complain about hanging chads and frozen touch screens, but survey the globe and you see that it could be worse.

Voting in the developing world
I happened to be in Afghanistan in 2002. The Taliban had fallen from power and a United Nations conference in Germany had cobbled together a temporary replacement government. That summer, Afghanistan was asked to ratify the new government, so it held an election of sorts: Delegates were chosen from around the country to meet in Kabul and say yes or no.

Shortly after the grand assembly was over (having said yes), I was talking to an old farmer in the countryside. I asked him how delegates from his area had been chosen. His answer went something like this.

"Well, sir, some suit-wearing city fellows came around with bits of paper and kept trying to tell us about 'voting, voting.' We humored them for a while, because you know how city folk are. It turned out they just wanted us to decide who should represent us in Kabul. Well! We didn't need 'voting' to decide a thing like that, sir! Around here, everyone knows our Big Man is Sayaf."

"And how did you decide on Sayaf as your Big Man?"

"What? Why, come to the top of this hill with me, sir--even from here you can see his house. It's the biggest one for miles!"

Lining up
Granted, democracy is a new idea in Afghanistan; but it's new in a lot of other places too. Andrew Reynolds, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, studies the electoral process and has observed elections all over the world. He's currently advising the government of Sudan, where parliamentary elections are under way.

There, he says, the baseline process for recording and counting votes is for people to line up physically behind their candidates. That's right: physically. They literally stand behind their choice. A parliamentary district can have as many as four thousand voters, and on election day the candidates appear in a big field and the voters mill over to the one they like. Whoever ends up with the longest line, wins. Secret ballot it ain't.

Counting marbles
In Botswana, until 1999, voting was done by colored marbles. Polling places had jars of marbles for the candidates. Each candidate's jar had marbles of a different color. Voters filed through, picked a marble from their candidate's jar, and dropped it into a box. At the end of the day, the marbles in the box were sorted and counted.

The trouble was, ruling party people could visit the polls late in the day and see at a glance how their candidate was faring. If his jar was still full of marbles, that polling place was apt to have … an unfortunate accident.

Don't assume, however, that the likes of Afghanistan and Botswana are doomed to play a long, slow game of catch-up with Western democracies when it comes to voting technology. Consider India.