From the Editor in Chief: Veni, Vidi, Sensi

" As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it? " –William Marcy " Boss " Tweed I write this in Menlo Park, California, on 5 October 2003, when it's still unclear whether the citizens of this state will choose to have the American governor with the best pectoral muscles , despite his seeming to have the same trouble with the multiple meanings of " respect for women " that Bill Clinton had with " sex. " If they do, well, at least our governor will be able to beat up anyone who has been your governor, unless you're from Minnesota. Elections are curious, both in a scientific and political science way. Scientists, when performing an experiment that takes five million Boolean data points and finds them equally divided to one part in 10,000, declare the result to be below experimental error, yielding no meaningful result. Scientists know that really small differences don't mean anything, unless you're counting a sample size that gives a result like 5 to 4. Socially (and fortunately limited by the Bill of Rights), we in the US believe in the tyranny of the majority — that although might doesn't make right, 50.001 percent of the electorate does. This is in the face of a system with a large experimental error — one that lost four to six million votes from the 2000 Presidential election, an election in which the difference in popular vote between the top-finishing candidates was only half a million votes. American elections have been, and continue to be, increasingly automated. In the 19th century, they were cast by paper ballot. Since then, we've seen mechanical voting machines, punch-card ballots (genesis of the famous " hanging chad "), optical mark readers, and most recently, " electronic voting. " This consists of giving the voter some form of touch screen and a computer to drive the interface, record the selections, and transmit the results. Our European readers, who still cast paper ballots , might wonder if this is evidence of an unhealthy American fascination with things artificial. In practice, it's a reflection of the American political system's complexity. I have a friend who tells me that when he lived in England, he voted only for his Member of Parliament and city coun-cilor. I, on the other hand, vote for (and this is just off the top of my …