I found the following viewpoint from an election judge interesting. I never thought about doing this, but it makes a lot of sense. I've heard a larger than average number of people complaining about the lack of a real choice between the two candidates this year. This may explain why there was a larger than average number of multiple votes this year -- almost as a protest two the two major candidates. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/746085 From Viewpoints, in the Chronicle 11/14/00: Use the Constitution As an election judge for the past several years, I have been trained to tell voters who did not wish to vote for any one candidate in a particular race to vote for two candidates and that would void their ballot in that race only. If a voter left that space blank, it could conceivably be punched for a particular candidate later [by someone else], whereas a double punch would void the ballot just in that race. Isn't it possible that in Florida there might have been a few thousand voters who didn't wish to vote for any candidate and, therefore, voided their ballot in that way? Must we assume that these voters were incompetent? Or that their votes should be counted as votes for Al Gore? What we have is a virtual tie. Only one of these candidates can be elected. We must use some standard to determine the winner -- why not the Constitution? Nelson James Sr., Katy ------------------ Stay Cool...
