The technique of Fault Tree Analysis ("FTA") was first developed in the aircraft business and carried over to nuclear weapons. Simply it is an attempt to determine each and every fault event, ascertain how it can be measured and then determine how it can be remedied. A good FTA will try to understand the entire process associate with a desired outcome; a safe flight or no exploding hydrogen bombs.
Now with the upcoming elections we could do an FTA on the classic system of voting booths and see where they could fail. Bad machines, poor locations, incompetent staff, incomplete reporting. But having done this way for over 200 years most of the errors have been washed out, except for the chads in Florida and well Chicago no matter how they vote.
Along comes New Jersey, and other states, and the mail in votes. Let's look atone location. northjersey.com reports:
More than 1,600 Sussex County ballots from the July primary election were found last week and quickly counted, said Board of Elections Administrator Marge McCabe. The ballots did not change the results of any races, McCabe said in a statement on Monday. The 1,666 ballots cast in the July 7 primary had been placed in a “mislabeled” bin in a “secure area” at the board office and were not discovered until Thursday. After notifying the state Attorney General’s office of the error, the remaining votes were counted Saturday and certified by the county clerk’s office the same day. It was not immediately known how many of the misplaced ballots belonged to each local race. However, according to the Board of Elections, the newly tallied votes “did not change the outcome of any Sussex County primary election in any race for any office, Republican or Democrat.”
The FTA for Mail In is ever so more complex. It starts with the sending of the ballots, receiving the ballots, filling them out properly, re-mailing them, receiving them, determining whether they are valid or not, checking signatures, then counting and finally reporting. Each step has major problems. Take signature checks. If one registered to vote say 40 years ago, your signature will most likely not match what you sign today. Thus will you be rejected? Most likely. Will you ever know? Never!
This system in New Jersey will be open to mass corruption and gross incompetence, just look at the Post Office. The result will undeniably be a highly contested election and a serious blemish on our dwindling democracy.
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