The United States and Numbers

Does it bother anyone out there in the Minnesota’s hinterlands that it’s now six months and one day (see how accurate math outside the government is?) past the election and you still don’t know exactly how many people in Minnesota voted for Al Franken and how many voted for Norm Coleman? I live in New York where I suspect we fix elections before they happen so we avoid these messy aftermath issues, but if I lived in Minnesota I’d be opening my window (I think it’s warm enough now) and screaming that line about not taking it anymore. Rise up, Minnesotians, be heard!

Voting is really very simple. You either push a lever or check a box in person or send in an envelope with your vote.  Minnesota’s election boards says that 2.8 million people voted. Already I’m nervous.What are the odds that exactly 2,800,000 people voted? It had to be 2,857,394 or something. And, each time they come up with a voting number for the Senate race, it’s a little different than the time before. “The gap is widening with each new recount” they say with pride, and that’s supposed to make me feel better about the accuracy of the results? Everyone knows that if the balance sheet is off a penny it could mean it’s off by millions. Just get the same count twice, and I’ll feel better.

Last week more than 42,000,000 votes were cast (see TV rounds out the number too but they tell you they rounded it out) on American Idol. You vote by calling in. You vote by sending a text, or you vote online at the website. Twenty-four hours later we hear the news. What’s his name or other was voted out. I know you must be reading this paragraph thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute? Is it possible that more votes were cast on American Idol last week than in the last highly contested election last fall?” But we are not here today to talk about our messed up American values, but rather numbers, so let’s stick to the numbers’ facts. They are able to get an exact count hours after it is made for a TV show, with twenty times the numbers of voters, and we can’t get an accurate count of votes in Minnesota six months and one day later?

The US numbers problem is not limited to the election results in Minnesota. It was announced this morning that the amount of bonuses given out by AIG was four times more than originally reported. Huh? I assure you that every company who did not get money from government knew right from the get go how much money went out in bonuses the day after the bonus money left their bank accounts.

I worked at Peat Marwick Mitchell in the eighties – although not in the smart accounting section but in the marketing section. I know how accountants worked back then before it was all done through computers. They could tell you to the penny anything you wanted to know in a balance sheet and it was never months later, but days. So now that it’s all in the computer and they need only to click reports at the top of the screen to create a report (I use Quicken and highly recommend it which is why I know how to print financial reports), they can’t seem to get a number that is accurate? Or even better than four times off accurate?

Let’s talk census bureau numbers. Here is what I don’t get. When someone dies, we enter it in the computer (or should). When someone is born, it’s entered in the computer. When someone is naturalized, it goes in the computer. That means all you need to do is take the base number from the census however many years ago (go back to 1960 when things were simpler, I don’t care), add in the number of those added through birth and naturalization, deduct those that died (may they rest in peace) and voila, you have the number of people in this country. I hear you. I hear you. “What about illegal aliens?” you shout? (Why do we call them that? There are no legal aliens. Aliens are little people with strange heads that most of us don’t believe exist. Shouldn’t we start calling persons here without permission illegal immigrants?) I assure you illegal immigrants do not invite the census taker in for coffee when he or she comes knocking. And, they do not generally have telephone land lines, but rather cell phones, which are not used in census taking, so who are we kidding? I don’t want to complicate the point I was making by also pointing out that the census takes three years to conduct, and therefore it’s obsolete by the time they hold the press conference anyway.

I could go on and on about how our government (I call it my government when I’m filled with pride and our government when I’m vexed) has made a mockery of the Numbers Code that my exacting math friends find so comforting. For example, I could get back to election numbers and discuss the Gore/Bush election, but I’d have to take to my bed for days and just can’t afford to go there. And, my (love the guy, thus the my) President has asked me to look forward angel.

I think a lot about the fact that the world supposedly looks to us for how to do things like run elections, world financial markets, and do math really really well. Either we are kidding ourselves as a country and they don’t really look to us at all (you know what I mean, when you think someone really likes you and find out later through a supposed real friend they talked shit about you behind your back), or the rest of the world is stupid. Either way, it’s not exactly uplifting.

Look forward Americans! Start a petition to have the producers of American Idol run our next elections! Demand that we do census by Facebook or Twitter! Ask Peat Marwick Mitchell (it’s called something else now, but I can’t remember what) to take over government accounting! What to do about AIG in general? I’m clueless. Totally without words.