Our system of electing people to office is, fundamentally, an approximate piece of business. That is, we declare Candidate A the winner with 32,416 votes versus her opponent's 19,401 votes. Seems fairly specific, no?

In fact, those numbers are at best fairly good, but never 100 percent accurate. If you don't believe that, just look at any race where a recount was ordered.

Each time the ballots are tabulated, the vote total changes. Sometimes by a little. Sometimes by enough to change the outcome. And it seems that no matter how many times the count is conducted, the results will vary at least a little.

Is this a big problem? Hardly. Normally, the margin of victory is outside the margin or error, so the winner will remain the winner and the loser, the loser.

But there are times when — against statistical odds — the race is so close that a recount is mandatory. A classic case in point is the race in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman.

A court ruled this week that Franken won, but by a margin of 312 votes out of more than 3 million cast. Statistically, that's a margin almost impossible to measure. Most of the difference came in the recount of absentee ballots, which tend to come in all kinds of conditions. These are not machine-read ballots. They are produced by humans, filled out by humans and then counted by humans.

Result: Human error is almost inevitable.

Still, politics works when we agree to trust the system, however imperfect it might be.

This point is critically important as Honolulu engages in its first experiment with an all-mail election: The race for the City Council seat left vacant by the death of Councilwoman Barbara Marshall.

More than 54,000 ballots have gone out to households with registered voters in Kailua, Kane'ohe and Waimanalo. Eleven candidates are fighting for the spot.

This is truly a big experiment. There will be lots of confusion and concern about the mail-in ballots; how well they are filled out, whether the intent of the voter can be determined or even whether the ballot was produced by a voter or some other interested party. Who knows?

But if it works and if the candidates accept the results, Hawai'i may be on the way toward a more accessible mail-in system of voting for all races. Yes, there are dangers here, but as we know, marching people though balloting stations on Election Day is no guarantee of 100 percent accuracy, either.

Jerry Burris' column appears Wednesdays in this space. See his blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com/akamaipolitics. Reach him at jrryburris@yahoo.com.