Latest Count Reveals Santorum May Have Won Iowa, State Declares a Tie

Apparently, there were some problems calculating the votes in the Iowa Caucuses. Rather than the original official word that Mitt Romney won the state by less than 10 votes, the new story is that Rick Santorum actually won the state by 34 votes - at least among the votes that can actually be counted. In addition to the confusion surrounding the official vote count, it is now being reported at least 8 voting precincts in Iowa have votes that were never counted, so there will never be a definitive determination as to who actually won in Iowa.

Of course, with human nature and human error such large factors in a statewide voting exercise, it's probably best to consider any election a "tie" in the event that the difference in votes is less than say, one thousand votes. Or perhaps base the number on a pre-determined percentage of the total votes cast, in much the same way that polls note a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent, typically.

Otherwise, we end up with the nonsense that we have in Iowa, as well as in years past in Florida and other places. To think that a quasi-government run operation, like statewide voting, manned largely by volunteers with inferior equipment and training, is going to produce accurate voting results is absurd. And when the results are so close as to be statistically insignificant, there should be rules in place to account for that.

We should know with some certainty who "won" the state of Iowa. And if we can't know that, then there should be a very clear policy in place to state as much. Or there should be a procedure for clarification in the event that the results are "too close to call." It's a safe bet that we should expect more of these shenanigans in the general election as well.