John, the Democrats are only looking for a manual recount where it may have affected an outcome, and where that outcome may affect who occupies the White House. This seems quite prudent to me.
As for accuracy, it is a fact that the mechanical counting is inaccurate. In fact, the more times you run the ballots (where are just 80-column computer punchcards) through the counting machine, the more loose chads (the rectangular scraps that get punched out) fall off. That is why more votes were found on the mechanical recount. In fact, if they were to do a few more mechanical recounts, Gore would probably win the election!
The purpose of a manual recount is to examine just the ballots that showed two votes, or no vote, for president. They will find many ballots where one chad is indented or loose, but not open, and they may recount these as open. They may also find other ballots with two holes, where one is a loose chad but the other is actually open, and they may count these as a vote for the open hole.
There is ample precedent for a manual recount. There's some Democrat in Massachussetts (I don't have the details) who lost his primary, but had the results reversed based on loose chads recategorized during a manual recount.
Dave |
