If fraud investigations uncovered 140,000 new Kerry votes in Ohio, or enough votes elsewhere to just barely flip a state and give Kerry the win, in my opinion, that result would be nothing more than a lucky, undemocratic gift.
I did a study on the vote totals of all fifty states, awarding the electoral votes proportionally instead of all-or-nothing. The end result is that each state has exactly the same amount of electoral power as it normally does, but every vote counts. Using this approach, for instance, Kerry gets 9.7 EVs in Ohio, and Bush gets 10.2. Kerry also gets just under 13 EVs in Florida.
Those extra EVs would sure be welcome. So, if we did that nationwide, what are the results?
Bush: 275.293
Kerry: 257.596
Nader: 1.9379
Other: 3.1731
Why? Because Bush just flat-out beat us. He had more electoral support nationwide. It's not the straight national vote - it's every vote properly weighted by a state's electoral strength. And the Republicans beat us, by a lot.
What's interesting about this is that even if Kerry had gotten a couple hundred thousand more votes somewhere, it wouldn't have changed these numbers all that much. Millions of votes would, but that would mean that we had a 2% fraud rate nationwide - 2 out of every 100 votes in every precinct, perfectly hidden and untraceable. That just isn't possible.
I know that to some, this could look like inventing a new system and using it as proof. But the point is, it's a baseline representation of how the electoral college would play out at its most efficient. A candidate may be able to outperform these numbers, but only by taking advantage of the inefficiencies in the electoral college and trying to win all the close states. And, that's a strategy that can't be relied upon. The candidate with the higher number here really does have broader support.
What's interesting is that the same held true in 2000. Using this approach, the election was closer, but Bush still won - he had more electoral power nationwide than Gore, even if we had won Florida. Gore outperformed by winning almost all of the tightest states that could have gone either way.
The sooner we accept this, the better: they outnumber us. Not just nationally, but electorally. If they're coming out in droves in rural Texas, they're coming out in droves in rural Ohio, too. If our goal in examining voting machines is to better protect votes in the future, then fine. But if it's to try and find a way to get Kerry elected by swinging a couple hundred thousand votes, I think that even if it's successful, it would be undemocratic.
And just as importantly, I believe that it would get in the way of future success. Focusing on how we were robbed in 2000 actually did us a disservice by getting in the way of realizing what we needed to do to give ourselves a chance to win outright. I believe that deciding we are the rightful winners this year will get in the way of us accomplishing the needed transformation to be able to win in the future.
We are in the minority. By far. Not by just a couple of hundred thousand votes in a swing state. We have to let go of the belief that we were the rightful winners in 2004, 2002, and 2000. Only by doing that can we be open to the creativity to attract a majority again.