2005/01/09
A little more than ten years ago I had the most inspiring, stressfull, exciting job: helping in the first democratic elections of South Africa. (link to a Wired article about that)
I worked in the IT department of the electoral commission, helping to write software to tally the vote counting. My main job was to write the data transmission system to send the interim results out to the outside world.
The working conditions were wild. We were warned not to stand too close to windows, to hide from snipers. There was permanent millitary protection, emergency power generators in the basement, and bomb-threats (and a few actual car-bombs in the neigbourhood). But then, I grew up in a mad country, so it was 'normal'. The world was watching with bated breath, waiting for mayhem to break out. And then voting day came.
I had written the software to start and stop the transmission of results by pressing the space bar on the keyboard. We had to wait until enough results were in to be 'meaningfull'. I had a small radio with headphones, listening to the news. Everyone was waiting. And then the bosses said: "OK". i could press the spacebar, and the first results flowed out to the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation).
And the radio, (and TV etc.) said: "The first results are in, and...bla bla bla". I was so proud. Tired and heady with joy to be a small part of this momentous time.
So why am I writing this? Well in the near future, people are planning to run elections in another country that has the world watching it. There will be people running themselves ragged trying to set up some kind of electoral system. They will try and do it as good as possible, they will want to make it work, and be good. They will want to be proud. But conditions are MUCH worse than we had to work in. How on earth does anyone in their right minds think it is possible to get a plausible election result in those circumstances? Even without the people doing their damndest to ruin things, it just seems like the logistics of running an election is simply not possible.
In our election that I worked in, the vote-counting apparatus was thrown out at the end of the day. There were just too many problems, and I suspect that they finally reached a result through pragmatism and consensus, in stead of saying: "Sorry people, the results are actually fucked up beyond recognition, let's try again." They realised that peoples lives were at stake, and chose to forge ahead with a result that people could live with.
I just don't see how that could happen in their coming election. May there be a miracle.
