Excitement abounds till the very last hundredth of a second – a sports commentator might shout about the Ladõnskaja vs Sester race for Riigikogu. One is reminded of the Finnish national tragedy back in 1980 – at Winter Olympics, their Juha Mieto lost gold medal to Swede Thomas Wassberg by 0.01 seconds in 15 km cross country skiing.
On elections day eve, Viktoria Ladõnskaja (IRL) was announced to have made it to Riigikogu. A little while later, Sven Sester (fellow IRL) was said to have pulled slightly ahead. Now, post protest, Ms Ladõnskaja has one vote more to show.
Oh the personal drama, but even in Estonia we have had vote counting of the more dramatic kind when a few votes were deciding the amounts of mandates some parties would get. In recent history, a famed votes recounting happened in Florida, USA, in 2000 – the result deciding if democrat Al Gore or republican George W. Bush became president.
At the moment, the vital issue is: were there systemic errors in procedures, or were these the inevitable kind of mistakes at counting the votes and the correction thereof a natural part of elections. Initial assessments suggest no significant systemic errors surfaced. In the future, electoral committees might better inform voters about what to do when writing the candidate’s number gets messed up – having spoiled a ballot paper, ask for a new one.
On the papers, voters write digits with hands either steady or shaky. Human beings then have to decipher these. In individual cases, there’s room for interpretation whether the number is comprehensible or the paper invalid. Obviously, such human errors at interpretation are inevitable.
For every thousand ballot papers, two were interpreted otherwise at repeat counting. Transferring the percentage of errors detected to entire electorate, over a thousand papers could have been spoiled the whole Estonia over. For the victorious Reform Party, flawed interpretations would have equalled plus/minus 300 votes, and for the top vote magnet candidate Edgar Savisaar, plus/minus 50. It only makes sense to protest and contest if something is at stake; with the narrow gap between Ms Ladõnskaja and Mr Sester, it did make sense – as shown by results.
No reason to doubt the righteousness of electoral procedures, while these allow setting candidates in an adequate row according to votes tally. And for such «close calls», candidates do have the option to contest and call for repeat counting.
True: at e-elections, numbers cannot be interpreted in various ways, and a voter may verify the vote given and alter it if needed. Meanwhile, no-one is ready – in years or even decades to come – to totally do away with paper ballot elections.