While someone on the left might see his comments as a smoke screen, Mr. Snow actually has a point, but not the one that I think he was trying to make. In any free and fair election, we need to be able to guarantee three different things: 1) that the people who vote are the ones who are supposed to be voting, 2) that the votes that are cast are accurately counted, and 3) that any count of the votes gives the exact same result as any other count.

Issues 1 and 2 above get at the notion of the validity of an election, and I believe that, as a nation, we should demand valid elections. This certainly implies that we should guarantee that only citizens who are allowed to vote are the ones at the polls casting their ballots. Whether this requires a National Voter ID or not is debatable, although I generally think that the push to create a National ID is probably really about money rather than about good citizenship. Indeed, during the 2004 presidential election, there were only about 2900 voter ID related fraud incidents reported throughout the country, which would indicate that the vast majority of voters already adequately identify themselves at the polls. The second item, the security of voting machines also speaks to the validity of an election. That we would trust the future of our nation and our democracy to a private, for-profit corporation is worrisome enough. That this same corporation created machines that can be altered by malicious persons to generate results that are impossible to independently verify is quite simply unacceptable.

The third issue, that of generating consistent results over successive recounts gets at the reliability of an election. While it’s possible to have reliable results that are invalid (as in the case of hacked voting machines), it’s impossible to have valid results that are unreliable. In the 2000 presidential election, there was much ado concerning vote recounts (imagine that!), and while there were certainly issues of law at play, the bigger issue was one of logistics: it was expensive to conduct vote recounts. With today’s technology, recount costs should be both dramatically lower than in previous elections, and recounts should be more reliable as well. In my ideal world, every vote recount generates the exact same result, and if anyone challenges the tally, there would be an audit trail that would independently support the final results.

So what are we missing now? I’ll tell you: We need a voting system that cannot be hacked, in which each voter gets just one vote, one that creates a paper audit trail, and that generated the same results each and every time a recount is conducted. Here’s one idea for a cheap voter ID system:

As always, KO is brilliant. Here’s my favorite part:

Watergate—instantaneously—became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting—in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood – that he was the law.

Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.

Just – Mr. Bush – as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush—and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal—the average citizen understands that, Sir.

It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one—and it stinks. And they know it.

Much of the criticism of this uptick (about a 20% increase in American troops, most of whom will be deployed to Baghdad) rests on the thinking that the time for a military solution in Iraq has passed, and that any plan that will solve the civil war in Iraq must be a political one.

I wonder if there isn’t something else going on. I think it’s very likely that the thinking in this White House is driven by something known as an Illusion of Control, and that it’s strategy has fallen prey to a classic management trap: The Sunk Cost Dilemma.

Illusion of Control is probably best described here:

The theory of the illusion of control (IOC) was first defined by Ellen Langer (1975) as an expectancy of a personal success probability that exceeds the objective probability of the outcome. This type of overconfidence is likely when an event that is at least partially determined by chance is characterized by factors that normally lead to enhanced outcomes under skill-based situations, such as choice, stimulus or response familiarity, competition, and passive or active involvement (Langer, 1975). These skill-related cues thus give rise to individuals’ perceived control over an outcome, which in turn leads to an unrealistic subjective probability of success.

It doesn’t take much of an intellectual stretch to see how this might have applied to the war planning of this White House: Planners had great expectations of a quick military victory – and this led to an unrealistic perception of control in an environment that became increasingly violent and chaotic over time. Such misperceptions of control could clearly support the now discredited notion that, by simply staying the course, we would have greater success – and ultimate victiry in Iraq.

One thing that this White House needs to be honest about is exactly what we do and do not have control over in Iraq. We do have control over our troops, and largely over where they’re sytationed and what they do. We do not have control over the Iraqi government, its forces, and its policies. We do not have control over the insurgency, or the various factions and their death squads. In addition – we do not have control over the perception of American military policy and motivations at home, in Iraq, or anywhere else.

Another thing this White House appears to be doing is falling into a Sunk Cost Dilemma with regard to the Iraq War. Indeed, it’s not uncommon to hear proponents of the war within the administration cite the costs already spent in terms of American lives and dollars as a justification for continued investment – and now – escalation. The sunk cost dilemma – also known as simply throwing good money after bad – is a known project management issue. It often occurs in large organizations that have already made substantial investments in a particular project, and will continue to invest in the same project – even though these investments may not be paying out. Apparently, in some large organizations, some projects seem to take on a life of their own, and there is no easy way out of the trap.

One site outlines these factors to consider when faced with such a situation, and it’s interesting that these were not generated in response to the Iraq War:

• Be careful and realistic when assessing projects and organisational capacities to run large projects. Try to avoid over-optimism. Set up a list of “project risks” and decide, if you are prepared to accept these risks. Use your entire tool set to analyse those heavy investments and set up a worst case scenario. Define a PSR (point of safe return). Look also only at incremental costs and revenues.
• Prepare the organisation to stop and to kill strategic projects early when they are not able to meet milestones.
• Employ a gated funding strategy: Set up certain small milestones, which have to be met. If the project overrun these milestones, stop it.