Fresh ideas: Getting to know Chad

This presidential election has been a learning experience for many of us.

For instance, when I was growing up, the only Chad I knew was Chad Marshall. We went to school together from third grade until we graduated from college. He wisely became a fire chief because he could get four days off in a row.

Last week, I learned another meaning for the word "chad." According to the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary it is "a small piece of paper or cardboard produced by punching paper, tape of data cards." This word is so obscure that the only meaning given for chad in the MSN Encarta World English Dictionary is, "a landlocked republic in north central Africa created in 1960."

To complicate matters, it turns out that there are not only chads but there are different kinds of chads. There are hanging chads, attached chads, pregnant chads, all of which has provided fertile ground for comedians. There are also dimples. If you think that this is a slight indentation in one's cheek when she smiles, I suggest you crawl back in your voting booth and come out again next summer when hopefully we will have elected a president of the United States.

In addition, we have learned that some people vote early and often, or at least twice in the same race in each election. For whatever reason, they punch the chad next to the name of more than one candidate. In Florida they did it an inordinate number of times. One cannot help but to admire their enthusiasm for voting. I guess they subscribe to the theory, that if voting is a good thing, the more you do it, the better.

Once again, I was naive. Silly me, I thought that when the machine counted the votes, it counted, one, two, three. This is evidently not the case. Local Election Czar Alan Glover tells me that any number of conditions from quality of the cards, humidity, and static electricity can change the count hence the results of a second machine count of the same ballots can produce varying results. I guess it is all relative, esoteric and existential. Einstein was right one more time. Things are seldom as they seem.

As an observer of this ongoing debacle, I wondered if it were Nevada's election system that was in question, would we see some of the same issues, inconsistencies, and opportunities for tampering with the system?

Alan Glover reassured me that Nevada's laws are more definitive than the election laws in Florida. In Nevada, the Nevada Administrative Code at 293(c) provides that if a chip - that I believe is synonymous with a chad (the paper, not the African country) - is attached by one or 2 corners it is counted as a vote. If the chip is attached to the ballot by three corners, it is counted as a vote. If the chip is attached by four corners but the sides are broken, creating "unimpeded light," and then it is counted as a vote.

In Nevada, if there is more than a 1 percent or a five-vote difference between the first and second machine recount, then a manual recount is required.

In the last election, the recount in Carson City for the Reid-Ensign race gave Reid two additional votes and Ensign two additional votes.

I am glad to know that should Nevada's election system come under scrutiny, that it would fare better that Florida's. However, I think that given the gravity of this situation, it is incumbent upon the Congress, each state Legislature, and state and local election officials to identify the problems that have been uncovered as a result of the Gore-Bush outcome and to address those issues. This is an urgent matter and while we use humor to assuage our feelings of uncertainy, there is way too much at stake to allow these problems to go unresolved.

I am writing this column 13 days after the election, in the midst of the Florida Supreme Court hearing, and the only thing that I am fairly certain of is that when Alan Glover sits down to his turkey dinner, he will be thankful that he is not an election official in Florida.

Linda E. Johnson is a wife, mother, attorney and a 25-year resident of Carson City. She had voted in all elections since she became eligible and in each case she only voted for one candidate in each race.