Professors R. Michael Alvarez and Bernard Grofman and the authors of the individual chapters in this book have given a finely detailed study of many of the crucial aspects of election vote casting, administration, counting, and litigation. In particular, they have developed the granularity of the stories of individual American elections that lead to discussions over these issues. That is, each close or mismanaged election is like Tolstoy’s statement: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The broad issues only come to life in individual disputed races and practices. Each contested election, or controverted election practice, depends mightily on the individual circumstances and the positions of the contesting parties. If you win on a machine count, you disparage hand counts; if you are behind, you want hand counts.

A second key point is that these issues are endemic to elections, but rise to the surface only in very close elections. In assessing Florida 2000, it needs to be noted that Florida was unique in being the closest state presidential result (in percentage terms) in American history, rivaled only by Henry Clay’s four-vote margin in Maryland in 1832, out of 38,000 votes cast. Florida was equivalent to counting 10,000 votes and having the count come out 5,001 to 5,000 – 500+ consecutive times! By contrast, the somewhat controverted result in Ohio in 2004 was exceeded in closeness hundreds of times in past state presidential elections – eleven times in 1960 alone.