Election 2006
This has nothing to do with politics which is why I have waited so long after the election to post it. Instead, I want to mention the issue of results and how quickly we seem to want them in here in the United States. As is well known, we live in a culture based in many ways on instant gratification. We are unwilling to wait for anything, and certainly not something as import as the results of an election. In the last two presidential elections this caused some problems, with news networks making calls in very close races that were then overturned multiple times, and eventually ended up in prolonged recounts.
Our age of electronic communication makes us feel that we deserve to have all the information we can handle (and more than we can handle in some cases) instantly as soon as it is available. I do not think that this is necessary when it comes to our elections. If the price we pay for mistakes in counting votes is months of uncertainly, then I think that we perhaps should be willing to wait a few days, and give the process time to work itself out correctly.
